Theory & Criticism
Poststructuralism
Poststructuralism is a movement of philosophical-literary thought that, from the late 1960s, developed and at the same time radically revised the premises of structuralism. Where structuralism sought stable, closed structures and objective laws of meaning, poststructuralism emphasizes instability, plurality, and the endless 'play' of meanings, and the dependence of the sign on context and power. Key figures: Jacques Derrida (deconstruction, the critique of the 'metaphysics of presence'), Michel Foucault (discourse, power-knowledge), the late Roland Barthes (the essay 'The Death of the Author,' 1968, in which the reader replaces the author as the source of meaning), Julia Kristeva, and Gilles Deleuze. Poststructuralism denies the idea of a completed, self-identical structure and a centralized subject. It became the theoretical ground of postmodernism, deconstructive criticism, and feminist and postcolonial studies.
Video
Compare “Poststructuralism” with another term
Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
A movement and its revision. Structuralism (1960s) seeks stable, OBJECTIVE structures and closed systems of meaning, believing in the scientific character of describing the "grammar" of culture. Poststructuralism (from the late 1960s) EMPHASISES instability, plurality and the endless "play" of meaning, the dependence of the sign on context and power, dissolving the centralised subject and the completed structure (Derrida, Foucault, the late Barthes). The first builds a system; the second shows its limits and ruptures.
