Post-Structuralism and

Deconstruction
Peter Barry – Chapter 3
 Structuralism
• Language doesn’t just reflect or record the world; it shapes it.
• ‘How’ we see is ‘what’ we see.

• Delhi incident – Pogrom? Ethnic cleansing? Local Scuffle? Premeditated

riots? Our language constructs our reality.
 Post-Structuralism
• Post-structuralism maintains that if language creates / constructs our
reality then we enter a world of ‘radical uncertainty’.
• If there is nothing beyond language, there can be no fixed measurements
or standards.
• Fixed points permanently removed if there is only language to go by as
claimed by structuralists.
• No fixed points means no fixed centre. (if you don’t know ‘down’ you
cannot know ‘up’)
• A ‘decentred’ universe is the hallmark of poststructuralist thinking.
• A world-view where the centre does not exist or is undermined is post-
structuralist thinking.
• Why do poststructuralists have this anxiety about language especially when it
seems to work well for us on a daily basis?
• Post structuralists feel that we have to be anxious about those instances other than
daily casual exchanges – with people we know and with those we share our status.
• Example:
• Writing a letter of apology to a friend – the feeling that we will be misunderstood.
• Asking a teacher for a letter of reference.
• Phrases like : Do you get what I mean?
• Structuralist thinking highlights the fact that language is a system. Post-
structuralist thinking highlights the fact that we are not in control of the
linguistic system.
Differences

Origins

Tone / Style

Attitude to language

Aims /Project
 Origins
Structuralism Post-Structuralism

1. Derives from Linguistics Derives from Philosophy

2. Believes that objective knowledge or reliable Knowing the ‘truth’ of things is difficult if not
truths can be established impossible.

3. Nietzsche: There are no facts, only interpretations.

4 Philosophy questions that which is taken for

granted. Philosophy is sceptical of accepted truths.
The only certainty is that there is no certainty.
 Tone and Style
Structuralism
1. Abstract, generalized style
2. Detached, neutral tone. Objective. Non-
invsested.
3. Diagrams, orderliness, data collection – make
things appear logical, systematic, accurate.
Post-Structuralism
Emotive style. Self-conscious use of language.
Random , spontaneous style.
Derrida begins his speech with the word
‘perhaps…’
 Attitude to language
•Structuralists believe that we do not have access to reality other than through the linguistic medium. Yet, it continues to accept
language. Language is chaotic but it can be used in an ‘orderly’ fashion.
•Post-structuralists are anxious that
•‘reality is textual’.
•No knowledge is possible through language.
•Signifier and signified are not connected at all.
•Free floating signifiers.
•Meanings ‘slip’ and ‘spill’.
•No ‘giving and ‘receiving’ of fixed meanings – there’s only dissemination.
•Words understood only as binaries

•Linguistic anxiety is central to post-structuralist thinking and outlook.

 Project = Aims and goals
• Structuralism uses reason to categorise reality
• Post-structuralism questions reason.
• The individual is not an independent entity – we are constructed subjects.
• The individual is a product of social and linguistic forces
• The individual is not an essence – only a ‘tissue of textualities’.
• Its skepticism attacks the intellectual grounds on which Western
civilization is built.
 Derrida
• Binary oppositions, Logocentricism, centre-decentred, free-play,
deconstruction.
 Answer: Your views
• Is post-structuralism a continuation of structuralism or a rebellion against
it?
 Your views
• Are you a structuralist or a post-structuralist?
• Take any one recent socio-political event and justify your position.
• For instance: the class had raised the issue of the ‘me-too’ movement.
Based on the structuralist and post-structuralist world-views, where would
your outlook fit in?
• Would you consider structuralism / post-structuralism as yet another
limiting binary?