STRUCTURALISM

&
POST-
STRUCTURALISM
 STRUCTURALISM
 History
 Definition
 Proponents
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism, such as
that propounded by Jean-Paul Sartre, was the dominant
European intellectual movement. Structuralism rose to
prominence in France in the wake of existentialism,
particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of
structuralism in France led to its spread across the globe.
Structuralism is an intellectual movement developed in
Europe from the early to mid-20th century. It argued that
human culture may be understood by means of a
structure—modeled on language (i.e., structural
linguistics)—that differs from concrete reality and from
abstract ideas—a "third order" that mediates between
the two.
In literary theory, structuralism relates literary texts to
a larger structure, which may be a particular genre, a
range of intertextual connections, a model of a
universal narrative structure, or a system of recurrent
patterns or motifs. 
Structuralism argues that there must be a structure in
every text, which explains why it is easier for
experienced readers than for non-experienced readers
to interpret a text. Hence, everything that is written
seems to be governed by specific rules, or a "grammar
of literature", that one learns in educational
institutions and that are to be unmasked.
Structuralist readings focus on how the structures of the
single text resolve inherent narrative tensions. If a
structuralist reading focuses on multiple texts, there must
be some way in which those texts unify themselves into a
coherent system. The versatility of structuralism is such
that a literary critic could make the same claim about a
story of two friendly families ("Boy's Family + Girl's
Family") that arrange a marriage between their children
despite the fact that the children hate each other
("Boy - Girl") and then the children commit suicide to
escape the arranged marriage; the justification is that the
second story's structure is an 'inversion' of the first story's
structure: the relationship between the values of love and
the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed.
Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the
"literary banter of a text" can lie only in new
structure, rather than in the specifics of
character development and voice in which that
structure is expressed. Literary structuralism
often follows the lead of Vladimir
Propp, Algirdas Julien Greimas, and Claude Lévi-
Strauss in seeking out basic deep elements in
stories, myths, and more recently, anecdotes,
which are combined in various ways to produce
the many versions of the ur-story or ur-myth.
Structuralism rejected the concept of human
freedom and choice and focused instead on
the way that human experience and thus,
behavior, is determined by various structures.
Structuralism has often been criticized for
being a historical and for favoring
deterministic structural forces over the ability
of people to act.
Structuralists seek to understand the historical
interpretation of cultural concepts, but focus
their efforts on understanding how those
concepts were understood by the author in his
or her own time, rather than how they may be
understood by the reader in the present.
"Structuralism" sought to bring to literary studies
a set of objective criteria for analysis and a new
intellectual rigor. "Structuralism" can be viewed
as an extension of "Formalism" in that that both
"Structuralism" and "Formalism" devoted their
attention to matters of literary form (i.e.
structure) rather than social or historical content;
and that both bodies of thought were intended
to put the study of literature on a scientific,
objective basis. "Structuralism" relied initially on
the ideas of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de
Saussure
Like Plato, Saussure regarded the signifier (words,
marks, symbols) as arbitrary and unrelated to the
concept, the signified, to which it referred. Within the
way a particular society uses language and signs,
meaning was constituted by a system of "differences"
between units of the language. Particular meanings
were of less interest than the underlying structures of
signification that made meaning itself possible, often
expressed as an emphasis on "langue" rather than
"parole." "Structuralism" was to be a metalanguage, a
language about languages, used to decode actual
languages, or systems of signification. 
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by
American academics to denote the
heterogeneous works of a series of mid-20th-
century French and continental
philosophers and critical theorists who came
to international prominence in the 1960s and
'70s. A major theme of post-structuralism is
instability in the human sciences, due to the
complexity of humans themselves and the
impossibility of fully escaping structures in
order that we might study them.
Post-structuralism is a response to structuralism.
Post-structuralist authors all present different
critiques of structuralism, but common themes
include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the
structures that structuralism posits and an
interrogation of the binary oppositions that
constitute those structures. Writers whose work is
often characterised as post-structuralist
include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles
Deleuze, Judith Butler,Jacques Lacan, Jean
Baudrillard, and Julia Kristeva, although many
theorists who have been called "post-structuralist"
have rejected the label.
The author's intended meaning is secondary
to the meaning that the reader perceives. Also
the author's identity as a stable "self" with a
single, discernible "intent" is a fictional
construct. Post-structuralism rejects the idea
of a literary text having a single purpose, a
single meaning, or one singular existence.
Instead, every individual reader creates a new
and individual purpose, meaning, and
existence for a given text.
A post-structuralist critic must be able to use a
variety of perspectives to create a
multifaceted interpretation of a text, even if
these interpretations conflict with one
another. It is particularly important to analyze
how the meanings of a text shift in relation to
certain variables, usually involving the identity
of the reader (for example: class, racial, or
sexual identity)
In the post-structuralist approach to 
textual analysis, the reader replaces the author
as the primary subject of inquiry. This
displacement is often referred to as the
"destabilizing" or "decentering" of the author,
though it has its greatest effect on the text itself.
Without a central fixation on the author, post-
structuralists examine other sources for
meaning (e.g., readers, cultural norms, other
literature, etc.). These alternative sources are
never authoritative, and promise no consistency.
Post-structuralism offers a way of studying
how knowledge is produced and critiques
structuralist premises. It argues that because
history and culture condition the study of
underlying structures, both are subject to
biases and misinterpretations. A post-
structuralist approach argues that to
understand an object (e.g., a text), it is
necessary to study both the object itself and
the systems of knowledge that produced the
object.
Post-structuralist studies often emphasize history to
analyze descriptive concepts. By studying how cultural
concepts have changed over time, post-structuralists
seek to understand how those same concepts are
understood by readers in the present. For example,
Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization is both a
history and an inspection of cultural attitudes about
madness. The theme of history in modern Continental
 thought can be linked to such influences as 
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche's 
On the Genealogy of Morals and Martin Heidegger's 
Being and Time.