Structuralism and post-structuralism

Name            :            Rabhadiya Vinod

Roll No.        :            34

Batch Year   :            2014/15

Semester       :            2

Paper No       :            7 (Literary Theory & Criticism)

Topic             :            Structuralism and post-structuralism

 

 

Submitted To :         S.B.G. Dept. Of English

                                 M.K.K.S. Bhavnagar University

 

    

                                   

Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Introduction:

Structuralism is a theory focused upon the structure of human expression. It is a complex intellectual movement that first established its importance in France in 1950 and 1960. A simple explanation of structuralism is that it understands phenomenon using the metaphor of language. That is, we can understand language as a system, or structure, which defines itself in terms of itself.

                               Post structuralist is entirely too difficult a subject to benefit from a very short introduction. Post structuralism is really a cultural movement more than an intellectual movement. Post-structuralism moved beyond this, questioning the very nations of truth, reality, and meaning. Sincerity good. Etc. While this series can be very useful for certain movements, ideas, belief systems or historical periods. I think, for post structuralist, brevity sacrifices far too much clarity. Several times, I found myself spending three, four, five minutes trying to unpack a single one sentence.

Let’s look glance on these two terms structuralism and post structuralist.

Definition of Structuralism:

                      A method of interpretation and analysis aspects of human cognition, behavior, cultural and experience which focuses on relationship of contrast between elements in conceptual system.                                                                                                                                                                     

                     In philosophical way something behind the truth which on this meaning structuralism. Something behind the world of ‘Appearance’ for example Marxists might argue that we can understand the world (appearance) by examine the relation of production (reality) or some which is very importance fundamentalist. According to Christians that we should kept something in our mind that the world is as a battle of God against Satan. So its hidden agenda but in fact it explains the world.

There are many great examples of such structuralism are Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques La can etc. So we can see that the main theme of these structuralists   is their attack on ‘Foundationalism’ attacking and thought, ideas in which we new foundation. All the things something we discover or something around beliefs or can ‘start from’ but a structure which society invents.

Definition of Post-structuralist:

  “Any of several theories of literary criticism

As deconstruction or reader response criticism

That use structuralists methods but argue against

The results of structuralism and hold that there is no one true reading of a text”

   Post structuralism is the reaction of structuralism, a variety of postmodernism. The post-structuralists accuse structuralist of not following through the implications of the views about language on which their intellectual system is based. One structuralist said that language doesn't but just reflect or record the world.

According to the post-structuralist we have such kind of belief that we enter a universal of radical uncertainty. Since we can not have fixed landmark or fixed place. Without a fixed point of reference against which to measure movement we can’t tell whether or not we are moving at all. For example if I am seating in a stationary train with another train is running at that time we think that it’s my train is moving but it isn't. So when the train gone we can see that I am till now on the platform. So post structuralism says that fixed intellectual reference points are permanently removed by properly taking on board.

Saussure’s theory about linguistic structuralism:

     Saussure was a key figure in the development of modern approaches to language study. In the 19^th century linguistic scholar had mainly been interested in historical aspects of language such as working out the historical development of languages and the connections between them. Saussure concentrated instead of patterns and functions of language in use today, with emphasis on how meaning are maintained and established and on the functions of grammatical structures.

           But there is so interesting which is found Saussure structuralism. These can be explained by three pronouncements. First he emphasized that the meaning we give to word are purely arbitrary and these meaning are maintained by convention only. Words are to say are ‘unmotivated signs’ meaning that there is no inherent connection between a word and what is designates. Foe example the word’ Hut’ for instance is not any way appropriate to its meaning, and all linguistic signs art arbitrary is a fairly obvious point to make perhaps and is not a new thing to say(Plato said it in Ancient Greek times) but it is a new concepts to emphasis (which is always very much important that if language as a sign system is based on arbitrariness of this kind then if follows that language isn't reflection of the world and of experience, but a system which stands quite separate from it. This point will be further developed later.

Secondly he emphasized that meaning of word are rational. This is something no word can be defined in isolation from other words. The definition of any given word depends upon its relation with other ‘adjoin’ word. For example, that word ‘Hut’ depends for its precise meaning on its position in a ‘Syntagmatic chain’ that is, chain of words related in function and meaning each of which could be substituted for any of others in a given sentence. The Syntagmatic chain in this case might include the following.

         Hovel, shed, hut, house, mansion, palace

The meaning of these words may be change if any word from this chain removed. Thus, ‘Hut’ and ‘She’ are both small and basic structures but they are not quite the same thing. One is primarily for shelter (a night watchman’s hut for instance) while other primarily for storage.

    Saussure used a famous example to explain what he meant by saying that there are no intrinsic fixed meaning in language – the example of the 8.25 Geneva to Paris express train.

      Hardly for Saussure has language constituted our world, it doesn't just record it or label it. Meaning always attributed by and expressed through language. It is not already contained within the thing. Well-known examples are what would be the first choice between ‘Terrorist’ and ‘Freedom Fighter’. There is no neutral or objective way of designating such a person merely a choice of two terms which ‘construct’ that person in certain ways.

The scope of Structuralism:

Structuralism means not about language and literature. When Saussure’s work was co-opted in the 1950 by the people. We now a day’s structuralist their feeling was that Saussure’s model of how language works was ‘Transferable’ and would also explain how all signifying systems work. The Anthropologist Claude Levi- Strauss applied the structuralist outlook to the interpretation of myth. He emphasized that the individual tale (The parole) from a cycle of myths did not have a separate and inherent meaning but could only be understood by considering its position in the whole cycle (the language) and similarities and difference between the tale and others in the sequence. So in interpreting the Oedipus myth, he played the individual story of Oedipus with the context of the whole cycle connected with the story of the city of Thebes.

                      This is the typical structuralist process of moving from the particular to the general, placing the work within a wider structural context. The wider structure might also be found in for instance for example of “Dickens’s Novel Hard Times’ in terms of its deviations from novelist conventions and into those of other more popular genres like melodrama or the ballad or in the identification so sets of underlying fundamental “dyads’.

                 Fashion, dressing style is also speaking something about language. Separate items or feature are added up into a complete ‘outfit or ‘look’ with complex grammatical rules of combination. For example we don’t wear an evening dress and carpet slippers. We don’t come to lecture in military uniform etc.  Like wise, each component sign derives its meaning from a structural context.

                        The other major figure in the early phase of structuralism was Roland Barthes who applied the structuralist method to the general field of modern culture. He examined modern France (o the 1950s) from the stand point of a cultural anthropologist in a little book called ‘Mythologies’ which he published in French in 1957. This looked at a host of items which had never before been subjected to intellectual analysis such as difference between boxing and wrestling the significance of eating steak and chips. He placed it as a key understanding it.

                                                              “Verbal Diagram”

                                     

Parallels                                          -                                Plot

Echoes                                                     -                         structure

Reflections/ repetitions                    -                          character/Motive

Contrasts                                                  -                        situation/circumstance

Patterns                                                     -                         language/imagery

                      

(2) Post-structuralism/ Deconstruction:

The post-structuralism accuse structuralist of not following through the implication of the views about language on which their intellectual system is based. We saw one or other structuralism characteristic views is the notion that language doesn't just reflect or record the world rather it shapes it, so that how we see that how  we see that.

v Post-structuralism life on a decent red planet:

Post-structuralism emerged in France, in late 1960s. The two figures most closely associated with this emergence are Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida (1930). Barthes’s work around this time began to shift in character and move from the structuralist phase to a post-structuralist phase. The essay ‘The Structural Analysis of Narrative’. First published in 1966. ‘The death of the Author’ which is the ‘Hinge’ round which Barthes turns from structuralism to post structuralism. In that essay he announces the death of the author. Hence, as Barthes says in the essay the corollary of the death of author is the birth of the readers. The difference between the 1966 essay and the 1973 book is a shift of attention from the text seen as something produced by the author to the text seen as something produced by the reader and as it were by language itself. The phrase of post-structuralism seems to license and revel in the endless free play of meaning and the escape from all the forms of textual authority.

v Jacques Derrida a key figure in the development of post-structuralism:

             Jacques Derrida was the key figure in the development of post-structuralism. Indeed the starting point of post-structuralism may be taken as his 1966 lecture structure, sign and play in discourse of the human sciences. Derrida sees in modern times a particular intellectual event which constitutes a radical break from past ways to thought, loosely associating this break with the philosophy of Nietzsche and Heidegger and the psychoanalysis of Freud. The event concerns the ‘decent ring of our intellectual universe. Prior to this event this existence of a norm or center in all things was taken from granted thus ‘man’ as the Renaissance slogan had it was the measure of all the things in the universe white western norms of dress, behavior, architecture, intellectual outlook and so on provide a firm center which deviations, aberrations, variations could be detected and identified as other the marginal. Such as the way the First World War destroyed the illusion of study material progress but on the way of modernism in the arts in the first thirty years of century rejected such central absolutes as the harmony in music, chronological sequence in narrative and the representation of the visual world in art. Derrida’s rise to prominence was confirmed by the publication of three books by him in the following years (translated as speech and phenomena of Grammatology and writing and difference) All these books are on philosophical rather than literary topics but Derrida’s method always involves the highly detailed ‘Deconstruction’ reading of selected aspects of other philosophers works and these deconstructive methods have been borrowed by literary critics and used in the reading of literary works.

                    A key text in post-structuralism is Derrida’s book of ‘Grammatology’. The slogan ‘There is nothing outside the text’ is the most frequently quoted line from his book.

v Theoretical difference between structuralism and post structuralism:

It will be helpful simply to list some differences and distinctions between structuralism and post structuralism under the four heading below.

(1)     Origins: Structuralism derives ultimately from linguistic is a discipline which has always been inherently confident about the possibility of establishing objective knowledge. It believes that if we observe accurately collect data systematically and make logical deductions then we can reach reliable conclusions about language and the world.

By contrast post-structuralism derives ultimately from philosophy. Philosophy is a discipline which has always tended to emphasis the difficulty of achieving secure knowledge about things. This point of view is encapsulated in Nietzsche’s famous remark ‘there are no facts only interpretations.

(2) Tone and style: Structuralist writing tens towards abstraction and generation it aims for a detached ‘Scientific coolness ‘of tone. Give its derivation from linguistic. Science this we would expect. An essay like Roland Barthes’s 1966 piece ‘Introduction to the structural Analysis of Narrative.’

  Post-Structuralist writing by contrast tends to be much more emotive often the tone is urgent and euphoric and style flamboyant and self- consciously showy. Titles may well contain puns and allusions and often the central line of the argument is based on a pun or a word-play of some kind often deconstructive writing fixes on some ‘Material’ aspect of language, such a metaphor used by a writer, or the etymology of a word.

(3) Attitude to language: structuralists accept that the world is constructed through language, in the sense that we do not have access to reality rather than through the linguistic medium. After the same, it decides to live with that fact and continue to use language to think and perceive with. After all, language is an orderly system, not a choice one. So realizing our dependence upon it need not induce intellectual despair.

                   By contract, post structuralism is much more fundamentalist in insisting upon the consequences of the view that in effect, reality itself is textual.  Post-structuralism develops what threaten to become terminal anxieties about the possibility of achieving any knowledge through language.

(4) Project: The fundamental aims of each movement. What it is they want to persuade us of structuralism firstly, question our way of structuring and categorizing but it believes that we can thereby attain a more reliable view of things.

            Post-structuralism is much more fundamental it distrusts the very notion of reason and the idea of human being as an independent entity, preferring the notion of the ‘dissolved’ or ‘constructed’ subject where by what we may think of as the individual forces that is really a product of social and linguistic forces that I not an essence at all, merely a ‘Tissue of textual ties’.

Conclusion:

Thus, to conclude we may say the structuralist idea is to follow literature in its overall evolution while making sychroniccuts at various stages and comparing the table’s one wit another.   

                A few words more, we may clarify that earlier the term like development of critical study this term came into highlight, which brought a drastic change and the post-structuralism came into existence. So, as a whole ,here the difference and comparison between structuralism and post-structuralism has been very well shown simultaneously in this work of criticism by its practitioners.