POST

STRUCTURALISM
“TO UNDERSTAND AN OBJECT,
IT IS NECESSARY TO
UNDERSTAND THE OBJECT
ITSELF AND THE SYSTEM OF
KNOWLEDGE THAT PRODUCED
THE OBJECT”
•Post-Structuralism is a move-
ment that emerge in France
during the 1960’s.
•The period was mark by political
anxiety, nearly causing the
downfall of French government.
•Post-Structuralism can be
broadly understood as a body of
distinct reactions to
structuralism.
•It is either a continuation or
rejection to structuralism.
GENERAL PRACTICES
•The authors intended meaning is
secondary to the meaning that the
reader perceives.
•Self-perception plays a critical role in
one’s interpretation of meaning.
•Binary concepts are no longer
opposites rather compliments.
•Post structuralism rejects the
idea of a literary text having a
single purpose, meaning and
existence.
•Every individual creates a new
meaning and existence for a
given text.
•Post structuralism is a body of
work that followed in the wake of
structuralism, and sought to
understand a world irrevocably
dissected into parts of systems,
they focus on specific.
•Post structuralism rejected the theory
that one could map the structure of a
language or culture. Rather, meaning is
constantly slipping from one sign to the
next. Signifiers do not produce signifieds,
they merely produce an endless chain of
signifiers.
•Post structuralism is marked by a
rejection of:
a.totalizing-concepts put all in one
phenomena
b.essentialist-enlightenment view
c.foundationalist-signifying systems are
stable and unproblematic
representations of fact
 CONTRIBUTORS
OF
POST STRUCTURALISM
JACQUES DERRIDA
In his lecture
“Structure, Sign, and
Play in the Human
Sciences” at John
Hopkins University
in 1966, often appears in collection
as a manifesto against structuralism
•His essay was one of the earliest to
propose some theoretical limitations
of structuralism (introduction to
post structuralism)
ROLAND BARTHES
He wrote the essay
“Death of the Author”
in 1967, it is an
attack on traditional
literary criticism
that focused on trying to retrace
the authors intentions and original
meaning.
•Instead Barthes asks to adopt a
more text oriented approach that
focus on the interaction of the
reader, not writer, with it.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
He said “knowledge is
power”.
KNOWLEDGE is defined
as acquired facts and
information.
POWER is the capacity or ability
to direct or influence the
behavior of others or the course
of events.
•The quote means knowledge
gives us authority or power to
understand and interpret text.
POST STRUCTURALISM
AS
LITERARY APPROACH
•Post structuralism is historical
(diachronic) in its approach.
•often emphasize history to
analyze descriptive concepts by
studying how cultural concepts
have changed over time
•seeks to understand how
those same concepts are
understood by the readers in
the present
•Reader is the main object of
inquiry.
•Post structuralism
positions itself as a
study of how knowledge
is produced.
•SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF
POST STRUCTURALISM
1.Language is no where.
2.Language is not fixed.
3.Language differs from segment to segment of a
population.
4.Language reflects a great deal of social history.
5.Language is constantly changing.
6.Language taking in new experience
and new words and therefore
transforms itself in unpredictable ways
and both enables and frustrates the
perfect communication between
speakers.
1-5.Explain in your own word. What is post
structuralism?
6-8.Who are the main contributors of post
structuralism and what are their main
contributions?
9. Who is the main object of inquiry in post
structuralism?
10. What is the main focus of post
structuralism in interpreting a text?
 THANK YOU
FOR YOUR
PARTICIPATION
PREPARED BY:
JENIFER B. CAO BSED III- ENGLISH