III Sem-Eng-Literary Criticism

LITERARY CRITICISM
AND THEORY – PART II

(ENG3 C10)
III SEMESTER
CORE COURSE
M.A. ENGLISH
(2019 Admission onwards)
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT
School of DistanceEducation
Calicut UniversityP.O.
Malappuram - 673 635 Kerala
190010
School of Distance Education
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT
Study Material
III SEMESTER
Core Course (ENG3 C10)
M.A. ENGLISH
LITERARY CRITICISM AND

THEORY – PART II
Prepared by:
Dr. C. G. Shyamala,
Assistant Professor of English,
Mercy College, Palakkad.
Scrutinized by:
Dr. Betsy Paul C.
Associate Professor and
Head of the Department of English,
St. Aloysius College, Elthuruth, Thrissur.
DISCLAIMER
“The author shall be solely responsible for the
content and views expressed in this book”
Literary Criticism and Theory - II 2

CONTENTS
Introduction
UNIT 1. Structuralism: An Overview. Major theorists:
Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude- Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes,
Gerrard Genette. Key concepts: Structure, Sign, Signifier,
Signified, Semiology, Semiotics, Langue and Parole, Mythemes,
Structuralist Narratology.
Text for Detailed Study: Roland Barthes: “The Structuralist
Activity”
UNIT 2. Post-Structuralism/ Deconstruction: An Overview.

Major theorists: Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel
Foucault, The Yale School. Key concepts: Deconstruction of
Sign, Decentering, Logocentrism, Aporia, Supplement, The
Death of the Author, Knowledge, Power, Discourse.
Text for Detailed Study: Jacques Derrida: “Structure, Sign
and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences”
UNIT 3. Psychoanalysis: An Overview. Major theorists:

Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan. Key concepts: Id, Ego,
Superego, Dream Mechanism, Oedipus Complex, Unconscious,
Mirror Stage, Imaginary, Symbolic and Real, Ego Formation and
Constructions of Selfhood, Jouissance, Unconscious is structured
like a Language.
Text for Detailed Study: Jacques Lacan: “The Mirror Stage
as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in
Psychoanalytic Experience”
UNIT 4. Feminism: An Overview. Major theorists: Virginia

Woolf, Kate Millet, Elaine Showalter, Helene Cixous, Adrienne
Rich. Key concepts: Gynocriticism, Eccriture Feminine,
Womanism, The Language Problem in Feminism, Marxist
Feminism, French Feminism, Lesbian Feminism, Black
Feminism, Dalit Feminism, Post-feminism.
Text for Detailed Study: Elaine Showalter: “Towards a
Feminist Poetics”
UNIT 5. Cultural Materialism/ New Historicism: An

Overview. Major theorists: Raymond Williams, Jonathan
Dollimore, Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose. Key concepts:
Neo-Marxism, Culture: New Definitions, Thin and Thick
Descriptions, Textuality and Historicity, Texts, Contexts and Co-
texts, Rereading the Renaissance and Shakespeare, The Politics
of Representation and Power.
Text for Detailed Study: Louis Montrose: “Professing the
Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture”
UNIT 6. Postcolonialism: An Overview. Major theorists: Frantz

Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, GayatriSpivak, Benedict
Anderson. Key concepts: Critique of Eurocentrism and
Universalism, Decolonization, National Consciousness,
Critiquing Nationalism, Postnationalism, Imagined
Communities, Orientalism, Strategic Essentialism, Subaltern
Studies, Hybridity, Ambivalence, Mimicry.
Text for Detailed Study: Edward Said: “Jane Austen and
Empire”

UNIT 7. Ecocriticism: An Overview. Major theorists: Jonathan

Bate, Cheryll Glotfelty, Laurence Coupe, Patrick D.Murphy,
William Rueckert. Key concepts: Anthropocentrism, Shallow
Ecology vs Deep Ecology, The Crisis of Humanism,
Nature/Culture, Green Studies, Environmental Imagination,
Ecofeminism.
Text for Detailed Study: Cheryll Glotfelty: “Introduction:
Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis” (From
The Ecocriticism Reader)
UNIT 8. Critiquing Theory: An Overview

Text for Detailed Study: Graham Good: “Presentism:
Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism”


Introduction
Literary theory is the set of principles that is abstract in
nature and provides for the study of genres, meaning and formal
unity. Literary criticism entails explaining, categorising,
explicating and assessing works of literature. On a wider
implication, criticism encompasses literary history and literary
theory, elaborates the nature and function of literature and
interprets, evaluates, and makes judgement of literary works.
A rather simple way to make a distinction between
criticism is to account for intrinsic and extrinsic criticism. In
intrinsic criticism, aspects related to structure and style of the text
to locate a particular meaning is conducted. All extraneous factors
such as social, political, cultural and economic influences are not
considered. This method of criticism strictly engages itself with
the text only. It gives importance to the meaning of the text.
Extrinsic criticism not only studies the extraneous factors
of a text but also finds out what the text signifies. The background
meaning of the text is also given importance. While intrinsic
criticism is interested in the meaning of a text, extrinsic criticism
looks into the significance of the text.
While meaning denotes examining the thematic and
structural design of a literary text, significance searches for
meaning that is not found in the text. The text and its features are
taken into account by intrinsic criticism, while extrinsic criticism
deals with the text and the context. This division includes all the
critical approaches and methods of criticism.
One of the earliest classifications of Western literary
criticism is given by M. H. Abrams, in The Mirror and the Lamp:
Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953), which
underscores the major perspectives of critical analyses that center
around the author, the world, the text, and the reader, which are
namely:

1. Mimetic Theories: Ancient theories about art that see art as

an imitation of the world- and that art imitates ideas and
objects that already exist in the world. For instance, Greek
criticism of Plato and Aristotle.
2. Pragmatic Theories: Literary works as instruments to
achieve desired effects on readers and hence the desired
objective is to please and instruct readers. An example would
be Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesy or An Apologie for
Poetrie (1595).
3. Expressive Theories: Also called impressionistic criticism,
this criticism gives importance to individual emotions. The
spontaneous expression of the artists’ feelings is expressed
through poetry as the expression or of feeling. For example,
Wordsworth’s theory of poetry in Preface to the Lyrical
Ballads (1798).
4. Objective Theories: Literary works are recognised as self-
sufficient entities and external points of reference are done
away with. New Criticism or Practical criticism or Russian
Formalism are examples of this type of criticism.
Reading literature and its dimensions in the contemporary epoch
have raised several significant questions related to concepts such
as meaning, truth, context, ideology, realism, reality, self,
identity, author, reader, text, work and so on. There are diverse
perspectives through which literature can be deliberated upon.
In contemporary times, literature is classified into author-
decentered, reader-centered, context-centered and text or
language-centered approaches that would include several forms
of criticism:
1.Author-centred approach: Classical criticism and Humanism.

2.Reader-centred approach: Reception theory and reader-

response criticism.
3. Context-centered approach: Psychoanalytic criticism,
Gender/Sex/Queer theory and criticism, New Historicism,
Cultural materialism, Postcolonial criticism, Diaspora criticism,
Nationalism/Transnationalism, Marxism, Myth Criticism, and
Dialogism.
4. Text/Language-oriented approach: Formalism, Practical/New
Criticism, Structuralism, Stylistics, Poststructuralism, and
Deconstruction.
The author-centered approach gives importance to the
author’s intentions, though the extraneous factors are not entirely
neglected. The critical treatises of Aristotle, Plato, and the Roman
critics belong here. According to this approach, literature aims to
project universal values, and the essential human nature. The
reader-oriented approaches place the reader’s interpretation as
important. The reader is given equal importance as the author or
the producer of the work.
Context-centered approaches use psychological theories,
socio-cultural references such as gender, historical contexts,
postcolonial conditions, Marxist approaches, interpretations of
myth, trace nationalism and transnationalism and diasporic
experiences. Text-oriented theories centre on concepts and beliefs
that order, create disorder, understand continuities and breaks
within texts.
The division into literary movements or critical schools or
even critical approaches into compartments is only for
convenience of study. However, there is no monopoly of a theory
or approach because each theory or approach of analysis
destabilises the other. A brief timeline of the literary periods is:
● Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BC-present)

● Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism

(1930s-present)
● Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism(1930s-present)
● Marxism(1930s-present)
● Structuralism/Semiotics (1950s-present)
● Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)
● Feminisms (1960s-present)
● Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)
● Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)
● New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
● Postcolonial Theory (1990s-present)
Some areas of theory and criticism include:
● New Criticism
● Archetypal/Myth Criticism
● Psychoanalytic Criticism
● Marxist Criticism
● Postcolonial Criticism
● Phenomenology, and Hermeneutics
● Russian Formalism/Prague Linguistic Circle/Linguistic
Criticism/Dialogism

● Avant-Garde/Surrealism/Dadaism
● Genre Criticism
● Memoir /Biography/ Autobiographical Theory and
Criticism
● Travel Theory and Criticism
● Ecology and Criticism
● Disability Theory
● Cultural Theory
● Race Theory /Ethnicity
● Diaspora Criticism and Migration
● Gender and Transgender Criticism
● Chaos Theory
● Complexity theory and Criticism
● Ethical Criticism
● Trauma and Testimony Studies
● Spatial Criticism
● Cyber Criticism
● Spectral Criticism
● (A)material Criticism
● Digital Humanities

● Medical Humanities
● Posthumanism
● Memory Studies
● Cultural Ecology
● Climate Studies
● Asexual Studies
● New Cultural Studies
● Pandemic Literatures
The areas of theory and criticism are diverse and they evolve
and extend over time and periods, and often act as responses to
the dynamism of each epoch. The endeavour of the student should
be to understand and interpret works of literature and all forms of
art within the purview of theory. Literary theory is highly
argumentative and complex and the activity of criticism is vast,
laborious, plural and diverse. It is important to reconsider
postulates, differ views, make references, question formulations
and arrive at plausible conclusions.
The objective of this core course is to familiarise the
students with contemporary literary theories that emerged during
the early and the later twentieth century and afterwards. The
attempt is to help students understand the precepts of each theory,
the theorists who have contributed to the origin and development
of each theory, elaborate the theories in the light of the essays
prescribed for study and learn to apply the theories in specific
texts.

A Brief Outline of Contemporary Literary Theories

Structuralism
This theory emerged in the 1950s and extended to the
1960s. It attempts to identify the underlying structures that make
experience possible. In contrast to phenomenology that describes
consciousness, structuralism analyses structures of language, the
psyche or the society that operate unconsciously. Thereby, it
analyses how meaning is produced. The reader acts as the agent
of meaning because he undertakes the task of deciphering the
codes that generate meaning.
A group of French thinkers under the influence of the
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory of language
applied concepts from structural linguistics to the study of social
and cultural phenomena. The principles of structural linguistics
were applied by Claude Lévi-Strauss to anthropology; Roman
Jakobson, Roland Barthes and Gèrard Genette to literary and
cultural studies; Jacques Lacan to psychoanalysis; Michel
Foucault to intellectual history; and Louis Althusser to Marxist
theory. The structuralists influenced theory in England and the
United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
In studies related to literature, structuralism tries to
explain how works can have meanings and the effect of those
meanings, but does not give importance to new interpretations of
works. The main effort is to provide new ideas about literature
and frame one signifying practice among several others. Hence,
it launched the way to symptomatic or suggestive readings of
works of literature and initiated cultural studies to try to open up
or discover the signifying procedures of diverse cultural
practices.

Poststructuralism
The efforts to master and codify structures is replaced by
the poststructuralist turn especially seen in the works of Roland
Barthes, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault. These thinkers had
earlier sown the seeds of poststructuralist thought in some of their
earlier works. They try to explain how theories get enmeshed in
the phenomena they try to elaborate and how texts generate
meaning by disrupting any conventions that structural analysis
identifies.
The thinkers point out that it is impossible to describe a
whole or coherent signifying system because systems always
change. Rather than point out the errors of structuralism,
poststructuralism critiques knowledge, totality and the subject
and considers them problematic. As objects of knowledge, the
structures of systems of signification are dependent on the
subject. At the same time, they are structures for subjects that are
in the grip of forces that create them.
Deconstruction
Marxisms, Psychoanalysis, Feminisms, and historicisms
are offshoots of poststructuralism that not only recognise the
fluidity of the subject and question identity, which is considered
purely contextual but also assess critically the notions of objective
knowledge. Poststructuralism also describes the philosophy of
deconstruction and the contribution of Jacques Derrida, and
offers to comment critically on the notion of structure as
propounded by structuralism.
Deconstruction is a strategy that evaluates the hierarchies
in the binary oppositions in Western thought namely,
speech/writing, presence/absence, nature/culture, mind/body,
form/meaning among others. To deconstruct a binary opposition
is to expose that the construction is produced by a particular
discourse, and that the binary does not have a natural relationship.

The aim of deconstruction is not to destroy the binary, but to undo

it, and reassign it a new structure and mode of functioning.
This essentially involves a new practice of reading the
text, where the text is shown to read against itself. The text is
multiple, and disunited with shifts and breaks, contradictions,
silences, “aporias” (gaps or blind spots) and fault lines (cracks)
that expose any earlier activity and movement.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is the systematic analysis of the
unconscious mind. Freud claims that creative writing is the
product of the unconscious and psychoanalysis aims to unearth
this operative process. The unconscious desires and drives in the
author’s unconscious mind are embedded in the literary work and
the psychoanalytic reading explains this process by identifying
the hidden linguistic and symbolic patterns.
Carl Jung’s “collective unconscious” explores the
relationship between the literary work and the unconscious,
which, he claims, is formed with racial memory. Lacan states that
“the unconscious is structured like a language.” Psychoanalysis
plays a definitive role in trying to understand the condition of a
patient that happens through reconstructing or replaying a critical
moment or event from the past. Events that are traumatic are
easily decipherable because they provide the route to understand
the complexity of a human personality.
Feminist Theory
Feminist theorists demand equal rights for women and
encourage a gynocentric discourse. While feminism embarks on
dissolving the gender binary man/woman, it also unearths a
history of women’s writing. While British and American
feminisms have delved into women’s consciousness, they have
been criticised for neglecting other feminisms and the related
issues of caste, race and ethnicity. Feminism rejects patriarchal

discourses and psychoanalytic feminists reject the implicit sexist
foundations and articulations of psychoanalysis. The range of
issues that feminism discusses is evidence of its relationship with
masculinity and queer and sexuality studies apart from the social,
economic and political bearings.
New Historicism/Cultural Materialism

The theoretical engagement with studies related to history
branch out into Cultural Materialism in Britain and New
Historicism in America simultaneously during the 1980s and the
1990s. The historical formation of the subject and the debatable
role of literature during the Renaissance period is important for
Cultural Materialism. New Historicism traces the
interconnections made among texts, discourses, power and the
foundation of subjectivity in the Renaissance.
Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose and others
emphasise how Renaissance literary texts are placed among the
discursive practices and the institutions of the times and consider
literature not as the outcome of a social reality but as one of
diverse hostile or opposed practices. New Historicism offers a
critique of religious and political ideologies of the period and
decipher the extent to which the discursive practice in literature
with its apparent subversiveness functions to limit subversive
energies.
Postcolonial Theory
The earlier and continuing European imperialist strategies
and their consequences are thoroughly analysed by postcolonial
theory. The idea of an independent nation, culture and practices
that reinforce, question or analyse dominant notions of national
consciousness, conquest, identity, ambivalence, resistance,
hybrid subjects, the other and subaltern are directly addressed.

Conflicting languages and cultures, nativity, and the notion of the

empire writing back are frames of references to probe the
construction of culture and knowledge from intellectuals from
postcolonial societies and write back their unwritten, forgotten or
distorted histories.
Ecocriticism
Shifting from androcentric discussions to geocentric
representations, ecocriticism or green studies locates the
interconnectedness among literature, nature and the environment.
Nature has a natural bearing upon the attitudes and behaviours of
human beings and the affective psychology is reassessed.
Destruction of the environment, environmental crises,
masculinist orientations and feminist notions of equating
domination and control find representations in literature. Animal
studies in particular centers on domination and exploitation. The
resolve of ecocritical studies is to foster and enhance a positive
outlook on human- nature-animal interaction.
Conclusion
Literary criticism has developed into an organised body
of scholarly appreciative and interpretive study. With the
profusion of theories due to increased interdisciplinary and
multidimensional approaches to philosophy, art, science,
technology, society, culture, values and all other facets of human
life and interactions, literary criticism has become more
explorative and adventurous. The endeavour of the student of
literature is to comprehend, observe, scrutinise, analyse, evaluate
and assess works of art from a suitable perspective to gain insight
into the inherent complexities involved in the critical process.

References
● Abrams, M.H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic
Theory and the Critical Tradition. Oxford UP, 1953.
● Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short
Introduction. Oxford UP, 2000.
● Daiches, David. Critical Approaches to Literature.2nd ed.
Orient Longman,1993.
● Day, Gary. Literary Criticism: A New History. Edinburgh
UP, 2008.
● Eagleton Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Basil
Blackwell, 1985.
● Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism.
Blackwell P, 2005.
● Kennedy, George, editor. The Cambridge History of
Literary Criticism. Cambridge UP, 1997.
● Leitch, Vincent B., editor. The Norton Anthology of
Theory and Criticism. W.W. Norton and Company Inc.,
2001.
● Lodge, David, editor. Twentieth Century Literary Theory:
A Reader. Longman, 1972.
● Nagarajan, M.S. English Literary Criticism and Theory:
An Introductory History. Orient Longman, 2007.
● Narasimhaiah, C.D., editor. East West Poetics at Work.
Sahitya Academi, 1994.
● Rajendran, C. Studies in Comparative Poetics. Bharatiya
Book Corporation, 2001.
● Waugh, Patricia, editor. Literary Theory and Criticism:
An Oxford Guide. Oxford UP, 2006.
The Structuralist Activity

Roland Barthes
Objectives:
This unit will enable the student to
● Formulate the principles of Structuralism.
● Comprehend Structuralism as a critical practice.
● Analyse the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude-
Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Gerrard Genette to
Structuralism.
● Explain the key concepts such as structure, sign, signifier,
signified, semiology, semiotics, langue and parole,
mythemes and structuralist narratology.
● Elaborate the essay “The Structuralist Activity” and outline
the main arguments of the essay.
● Apply the precepts of the theory to literary texts.
Introduction
Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was the most innovative
French critic of the 20th century in the sense that he developed
ingenuous models of literary and cultural analyses. He constantly
tried new approaches and methodologies, and never got attached
to a specific perception or critical approach. He points out that the
change in his approach does not arise from the “internal
recasting” of these disciplines but “their encounter in relation to
an object which traditionally was not a part of them.” He was

profoundly influenced by the Marxist ideology and the existential

philosophy during his early years, but moved over to semiology
and structural linguistics, and later turned to poststructuralism.
His work Writing Degree Zero (1953) introduced his
notion of “ecriture”, where he insisted that the writer should free
himself from the traditional ahistorical notion of writing and
understand every work is based on that some kind of ideology.
He believed that the writer cannot influence society or bring about
a social change, and writing emerges from the writer’s interaction
with the society, so it can neither be completely historical nor
personal.
In Elements of Semiology (1964) and S/Z (1970), he
analysed texts using the structuralist framework. In Mythologies
(1958), he adopted Saussure’s notion of signs and applied it to
both literary and non-literary cultural texts like food, clothing,
toys, film, fashion and advertising. In his seminal essay
“Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”, he uses a
sophisticated structuralist methodology to analyse the working of
narrative texts.
His breakaway from structuralism was obvious in the
well-known essay “Death of the Author” (1968). This essay
considers the reader “the modern scriptor”, and rejects the
conventional supremacy of the author. He carries forward the
poststructuralist mode of analysis in S/Z (1970).
He analyses Balzac’s story of Sarrasine with the help of
codes and divides the text into “units of meaning”. The 561 units
called lexias are categorised into five codes, in which one unit
may refer to several codes. Barthes reveals that a text that is
regarded to be unified with a fixed meaning, is in fact made up of
cross-references and diverse meanings.
Pleasure of the Text (1975) analyses reading as a form of
pleasure (jouissance) that a reader derives through free play of
meaning within the text. Reading is considered a sexual act with

erotic body of language that is flexible and transient always.

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975) is his autobiography.
Structuralism
Structure
Structure means a set of interrelations between invisible
underlying principles and the visible form of the principles within
a system. The underlying principles, which are invisible, organise
the structure into a concrete form and control its functioning.
In a system, the structure is the set of underlying
principles that controls its organisation and working. A structure
works as a unit. Structuralism suggests that every system has two
levels- surface structure and deep structure. Surface structure
is physical and observable in human activities, behaviours and
objects. Deep structure, which is abstract and invisible is a set of
principles that lies below the surface structure.
Language is a system, which has several levels of
structural organisations. The words of a language form the
surface structure, and the use of these words in particular
situations and in specific patterns represents the deep structure.
When sounds are uttered in different ways by speakers, who use
them for different purposes, a set of underlying principles is
created, which is called phonetics. Hence, the underlying
structure makes the exchange of words meaningful.
A structure is always active and keeps changing as it
enters into new relations, organising itself and the constituent
parts of the system. Hence, it produces new elements, which are
part of that particular structural system and obeys the rules within
it. Structuralism explains that the deep structure that originates
from the human mind creates structures, the conceptual
frameworks and according to these structures, organises and
classifies activities or objects in nature.

Therefore, a structure is a conceptual (theoretical or

abstract) framework that organises and understands physical
entities. As a conceptual system, a structure has three features: 1.
wholeness- a system functions as a unit, 2. transformation- a
system is dynamic, and 3. self-regulation- transformation does
not extend beyond the system (Nagarajan 152).
Structuralism comprises two components: structure and
ism, where structure refers to the essential constituents or parts of
an entity. A system or a principle is formed when the suffix ism
is attached to the entity. Therefore, structuralism is a system,
composed of essential constituents and describes a structure that
is a complete entity. Structuralism attempts to analyse the nature
of structure and the general laws that govern it.
Structuralists believe that the human perception of the
world is a result of the conceptual framework that is inherent in
man’s consciousness. The world is created according to these
essentials within the consciousness. Through language, beliefs
are conveyed and humans perceive the world, which in turn
structures human experiences. This explanation is significant for
structuralism.
Saussure’s Principles of Structuralism

An intellectual movement in Europe in the early half of
the twentieth century, Structuralism originated from the radical
ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a Swiss linguist,
semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid the foundation for
many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics
in the 20th century, hence he is known as the father of modern
linguistics. He studied philology at Leipzig and published his
major work on the Proto-Indo European vowel system in 1879.
He was professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Grammar at the
University of Geneva. His pioneering work Course in General

Linguistics (1916) (French: Cours de linguistique générale) is a

compilation of his lectures.
Language is generally considered a medium for
meaningful conversation. It is learnt that through social
conditioning, individual thoughts, feelings, ideas and opinions are
conveyed through language. Language is supposed to have an
origin that has evolved over time and acquired its present form.
Language can be studied historically, that is its development can
be traced through several phases and the transformations can be
analysed.
Traditional scholars compare old and new forms of words
in a language and try to discover rules that make such changes
possible. Saussure rejects this traditional approach, which he
labels diachronic. He is interested in language and its relation to
reality. Traditional scholars believe that words directly refer to
the objects they describe. The word is supposed to contain the
meaning it refers to. However, this assumption is also rejected by
Saussure.
He adopts an approach that studies how language works
at a particular period of time, rather than observe changes that
have occurred. He calls this approach synchronic. He gives
importance to the language itself and proposes to study it as it is.
The synchronic approach pays more attention to discovering the
deep structure (underlying principles) that helps a language to
function instead of the individual history of words. He coins two
terms- langue (French: speech) and parole (French: speaking
language) to elaborate the deep and the surface structures
respectively.
Langue is a set of underlying principles or rules that
govern the working of language or any other system and parole
is the specific use or utterances in language. He defines language
as a system of signs, where the sign is the basic linguistic unit.
The sign comprises two aspects: signifier and signified. Saussure

defines the signifier as a sound image and signified as the

concept. Word (signifier) and meaning (signified) depend on
each other and work in association. This association between
them is called signification. Saussure asserts that this connection
is absolutely psychological or conceptual. The same word
(signifier) may represent several meanings (signified). For
instance, take the word cross. It is a sign that consists of:
❖ signifier: the word cross and
❖ signified, which could mean
❖ a mark formed by two short intersecting lines or pieces
❖ go or extend across or to the other side of
❖ pass in an opposite or different direction
❖ annoyed
The signified of the word cross depends on the context in which
it is used. The same signifier signifies different meanings in
different contexts.
Saussure makes the point that there is no direct relation
between words and their meaning. This point could be understood
in two ways. The first, a particular object or thing does not give
meaning to a word and the second, that word does not refer to any
real thing in the world. Words only refer to images of things in
the mind and not the things directly.
Saussure provides the example of a tree to explain this
point. The word tree does not refer to any fixed, single object but
a class of several objects. This means that the word tree does not
have a fixed meaning or object and that it is not by nature,
meaningful. The meaning of the word becomes clear only when
the mind perceives it. Now, several questions arise: What is the
relationship between language and reality? Does language exist
before reality or is it the other way round? How do words get their
meaning- is it through the real things in the world or by the
position of words in a linguistic system?
Saussure’s answer is that language exists before reality
and that it constructs reality. Language, a system of signs works
as a facilitator between the user and the world. It serves to signify
and the mind identifies the messages sent by language. Meanings
are not inherent in words and they do not attain meaning because
they refer to certain things. Words have meaning only because
they are part of a system called language. Hence, Saussure rejects
the conventional referential view of language and instead
proposes a relational view of language.
Saussure formulates two cardinal principles of signs-
arbitrariness and difference. He argues that the relation between
words and their meaning is arbitrary, which means one word may
refer to many objects and an object could be referred to by many
words. For example, the signifier play could refer to a sporting
match, a recreational activity, a theatrical production or the act of
performing on a musical instrument. The word play is not fixed
with any of these objects and no object can make it meaningful
unless it is placed in relation with other words (signs).
Similarly, the word home as an object or signified could
mean house, flat, apartment, mansion, hut and so on. This
linguistic relation of one word (signifier) with many objects as
the example of play, and of one object (signified) with many
words as in the example of home is arbitrary. This would mean
that we could use any word to refer to any object, which is not the
case. However, according to Saussure language consists of “a
given, an inheritance of the past”. Language is not created by the
user and the signs cannot be changed.
Language is used to communicate with the help of a
reservoir of words that is already available, and the conventions
of language are followed. Words are linked with specific objects

language happens due to a
collective agreement.
or meanings because it has been collectively agreed upon. In a

linguistic community, social convention assigns words their
meaning.
A sign is not meaningful in itself. It has to relate itself with
every other sign to make sense. This relation between signs is
based on the notion of difference. This means that each sign in a
linguistic system is meaningful because it is different from all
other signs. Signs are meaningful because they convey meanings
by being different from another.
An example would be the colour red, which is different
from green or blue or any other colour. In the traffic signal, there
is no natural connection between ‘red’ and ‘stop’ or ‘green’ and
‘go’. It is the traffic system that creates this connection.
Nagarajan notes: “Each colour in the traffic system signifies, not
by asserting a positive, univocal meaning, but by making a
difference, a distinction within a system of opposites and
contrasts” (152).
The human mind recognises differences that are opposites
called binary oppositions. Binary means dual or involving pairs,
so a binary opposition would refer to a pair, in which the two
terms are in a state of opposition. Therefore, white is not black,
and tall is not short. Structuralism argues that human language
and discourse can be understood as structured in terms of binary
oppositions.
For political reasons, these oppositions always function as
a hierarchy, where the first term is privileged over the second.
Hence, dichotomies such as white/black, man/woman,
subject/object, nature/culture, God/ man, speech/writing and
presence/absence among others are important for literary
criticism.
Another example would be the word man, which does not
have any meaning in itself and it is not known to possess any
‘man-ness’. Man has meaning because it is different from ban,

can, fan, or pan. Therefore, the differential relation among signs

gives them meaning. Saussure introduces the term value, which
is the relation between one sign and the other. A sign has no
absolute value if it is not part of its system. The relation of one
sign with other signs gives it its value. Saussure uses another term
signification with value. Signification is the relation between the
two components of the sign- signifier and signified.
To elaborate the term value, Saussure gives the example
of the game of chess. Chess is a game bound by rules. The pieces
of the chess board are identified as king, queen, bishop, or knight
only on the basis of the rules of the game; otherwise, they have
no independent meaning or relation with each other. Their value
is ascertained by the rules of the game and so they become what
they are.
a game called language. people come to an agreement with the system
of the language or game for its sugakaramaaya nadathipp or for it to
Structuralism and Literature work
Critics like Jonathan Culler, Gerard Genette, Tzvetan

Todorov and Robert Scholes have applied structuralism to literary
texts. In his book Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics
and the Study of Literature (1975), Culler provides two reasons
for adopting the method of linguistics for the analyses of social
and cultural phenomena.
First, social and cultural phenomena are also signs of a
different signifying system just as words are signs of the linguistic
system, and second, cultural and social phenomena do not have
essences like linguistic signs, but they are defined by a network
of relations. This means that when the study of the meaning of a
cultural artefact or a social event is done, it is seen that similar to
the linguistic sign, its defining qualities are the features that
differentiate it from others and enable it to bear meaning within
the system.

The structuralist critic understands the rules and

conventions that underlie the practice of literature. A literary text
may be identified as parole and the entire system of literature as
langue. The critic would place a particular text in the literary
system, where it actually belongs and where it can become
meaningful. Such a study includes both abstraction and
comparison.
Literature is regarded to be an objective system and a
literary text is an essential component or part of the system.
Abstraction involves studying a literary text without considering
the extraneous factors, its contexts. The critic compares a literary
text and other literary texts to decipher the elements in common.
He tries to discover the rules underlying the system of literature.
This method of criticism is practised by the Russian Formalist
critics.
Structuralism and Russian Formalism

The Russian formalist critics give importance to the
formal or structural aspects of literature. Form is an integral part
of a literary work that organises it into a coherent structure and
imparts meaning to it. The content or subject matter is ignored by
them because they believe that form directs the content. They fail
to explain two aspects- the unity and oneness of content and form
in literary texts, and the relation between one literary text and the
other.
Structuralism explains both these aspects. First,
structuralism studies a literary work as a whole, which means the
relation between the whole and its parts and hence, the nature and
working of the relations between parts and the whole is revealed
and the unity of the text is exemplified. Second, it examines a
literary text as a structure and compares it with other structures.
In this way, it finds out the relation of one text with other texts.

Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) disapproves of Saussure’s

division of the synchronic and diachronic study of language,
although he is influenced by Saussure’s views. Jakobson
proposes that language could be studied structurally across time,
which for Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan is important.
Structuralism across Disciplines
Saussure’s structuralism influenced several disciplines-
anthropology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology and literary
theory. The French structuralists and critics that imbibed his ideas
include A. J. Griemas’ model of narrative analysis; Claude Lévi-
Strauss’ anthropological structuralism; Roland Barthes’ semiotic
study of cultural institutions; Tzvetan Todorov’s project of
grammar of narrative; Jacques Lacan’s search for the unconscious
mind, Michel Foucault’s ideas about power and historiography;
Louis Althusser’s redefining of Marxism; and Gerard Genette’s
application of structuralist ideas to narrative and discourse.
Among these, A.J.Griemas’ model of narrative analysis,
Gerard Genette’s model of narrative and discourse analysis, and
Tzvetan Todorov’s project of grammar narrative involve the
direct application of structuralist ideas to literature. However,
Roland Barthes’ structuralist analysis partakes of literary and
non-literary texts.
Structural Anthropology
Structuralism, in cultural anthropology, analyses cultures
that are viewed as systems in terms of the structural relations
among their elements because all cultures are structurally similar.
Initiated by the French cultural anthropologist and ethnologist (a
person who studies different societies and cultures), Claude Lévi-
Strauss (1908-2009) in the early 1950’s, the principles of
structuralism are used to organise some characteristic features of
human life irrespective of diverse cultural practices.

Lévi-Strauss regards the mental structure alone to be the

structure he could work on because the universal patterns within
systems of culture are products of the structure of the human
mind, which he finds in his extensive analyses of kinship, patterns
in mythology, art, religion, ritual, and culinary traditions. He
worked on the concepts of langue and parole in his search for the
fundamental structures of the human mind in Structuralist
Anthropology (1958).
He considers “culture, in all its aspects, is a language”. He
believes that myths of all cultures and human thought across
cultures share similar underlying structures because they are
governed by universal laws. All the myths of humanity are
variations of certain themes that can be analysed better only if the
underlying basic structure of the themes is understood.
The myths of different cultures could be condensed to a
set of relations called mythemes, which are the central units of
myths. Myths should be read in relation to another and not in
isolated contexts. Myths are a certain kind of language that can
be divided into small units called mythemes. Mythemes help to
understand several myths in the world and if myths are regarded
as forms of narrative, mythemes are narrative structures.
In The Savage Mind (1962), Lévi-Strauss compares the
bricoleur and the engineer and concludes that the savage mind
has a similar structure as the civilised mind, and human nature is
the same everywhere. Hegel’s proposition that every situation has
two opposing forces and their resolution is found in the thesis,
antithesis and synthesis impressed him.
Narratology
The term narratology (French Narratologie) was coined
by Tzvetan Todorov in Grammaire du Décaméron (1969), which
means “the science of narratives.” A.J.Griemas’ model of
narrative analysis, Gerard Genette’s model of narrative and
discourse analysis, and Tzvetan Todorov’s project of grammar
narrative deal with literary texts, and they form an independent

type of literary structuralism known as narratology. A narrative
is usually a story in prose or verse that includes characters, events,
action and dialogue. A narrative communicates certain events
through the experience of the characters.
Narratology focuses on the structure of narration rather
than the content of the narrative. While the study of the content is
the study of the subject matter, the study of the structure of
narration studies the mode of narration. The difference lies in
what (subject matter) is told and how (manner) it is told.
Narratology studies how a story is told and tries to find out an
inclusive model of narration that can incorporate all the possible
ways of story-telling.
Structuralist Narratology: A.J.Griemas and Gerard Genette

According to structural narratologists meaning is derived
from the universal structure of the narrative rather than the
particular stories narrated. Structuralist narratology demonstrates
how a story develops its meaning from the underlying structure
(langue) rather than the theme of every story (parole). Advocated
by Tzvetan Todorov and Roland Barthes, it focuses on identifying
the general codes that construct literary language.
In Structural Semantics (1966), A.J. Griemas (1917-
1992) proposes his model of narrative analysis. He mentions that
all elements and their combinations in narrative employ two
aspects: actants and actors, which are similar to Saussure’s
langue and parole. While the actants function like langue, the
deep structure, the actors are similar to parole, the surface
structure. Hence, actants are abstract entities that organise the
narrative in its concrete form and actors are visible and concrete
elements of a narrative.
Griemas postulates that there are six basic elements of
actants arranged in three pairs, which correspond to three plot
designs. These pairs arrange themselves in diverse combinations.

Though the actants and the actors are interrelated, they do not
often share a one- to-one relation. The role of an actant could be
played by many actors and vice-versa.
Gerard Genette (b.1930) proposes a model where there are
three levels of narrative discourse: the story (histoire), which is
narrated; the narrative itself (récit), and the way the narrative is
narrated (narration). These levels interact with each other so that
the narrative can progress. Their interaction is based on three
aspects: tense, mood and voice.
Tense is the arrangement of events in the narrative that
work within the frameworks of order, duration and time. Mood
creates the atmosphere of the narrative, which depends on
distance and perspective and Voice refers to the voice of the
narrator. Voice helps understand the narrator’s relationship to the
story being narrated and the way it is being told.
Genette’s model indicates that free combinations of levels
and categories reveal the underlying principles on which a
narrative operates. He believes that the study of narrative is
primarily the study of the interrelationship of narrative and story,
narrative and narrating, and story and narrating taken
individually.
In his book Paratexts (1997), Genette extensively deals
with narratives that interfere with the main narrative and “occupy
awkward and undefinable places” (Nayar 30) in it. The term
intertextuality refers to a system of relationships that connect
various texts or parts of the same text. Genette coins the all-
encompassing term ‘transtextuality’, and proposes five main
types of intertextuality:
i.Paratexts: These include epigraphs, prefaces, epilogues,
acknowledgements and illustrations that are in a way connected
to the main narrative.

ii. Intertextuality: Consists of allusions and references, quotes

and citations and even plagiarised parts of a work.
iii. Architextuality: This refers to the relationship of a text to
other texts in the same genre.
iv. Metatextuality: This considers the relationship between the
text and the critical commentaries and other references on the
main text.
v. Hypertextuality: Refers to text that comes after the main or
original text. The original text is the hypotext and the later text is
hypertext. Parodies and adaptations are hypertexts (Nayar 30).
Roland Barthes and His Codes
Barthes’ model of the narrative is explicit in The
Structural Analysis of Narrative (1977) and S/Z (1970). Barthes
mentions that it is possible to break up a narrative into its
constituent elements and find out how they combine with each
other. S/Z is a reading of the novella Sarrasine by Balzac, and
Barthes identifies 561 units of meaning that he names lexias.
The lexias are organised into five main groups called
codes that work in combination in narrative. The codes are the
“narrative’s modes of organising the units so that meaning is
generated” (Nayar 24). Barthes contends that these codes are
common to all narratives.
i. Proairetic Code: The part of the narrative that is most evident
and refers to the order in which the events of a story open up.
Often a temporary sequence, it governs the readers’ expectations
of the narrative.
ii. Hermeneutic Code: This code is about readers’ interpretation
of the story and the questions that are raised.

iii. Cultural Code: This code refers to the elements of common

knowledge related to medicine, literature or even symbols that are
shared by a community. The use of the phrase “Gandhi cap”
would be familiar to Indians without the need of reference. It is
the cultural code of the narrative.
iv. Semic Code: Denotes stereotypes that are self-explanatory
and perceptible. The use of a particular dress code would reveal
his job, which is understandable to the readers. However, both the
Cultural and the Semic Codes would require explanation for a
person from a different community.
v. Symbolic Code: This code reveals something beyond the usual
meaning of an icon or a stereotype. For instance, the use of
images of light and darkness in movies could forebode good
tidings or bad as the case may be.
Barthes observes that all narratives comprise lexis that are
grouped in the form of five codes: proairetic code (arrangement
of a narrative), hermeneutic code (interpretive), cultural code
(customary knowledge), semic code (typecasts) and symbolic
(semantic and symbolic extension of the semic code) (Nayar 24-
25).
Semiotics: Saussure, Roland Barthes, Peirce Sanders and

Julia Kristeva
The study of signs and symbols, which convey spoken or
unspoken ideas or details and generate meaning as part of
signification, is semiotics. Semiotics in the form of
intertextuality, puns, metaphors and the references to cultural
commodities make up written and spoken languages. The
common examples of signs used worldwide are the traffic signs,
emojis and logos of corporates.

The English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) uses

semiotics to mean “the life of signs within society.” Locke is of
the opinion that language initially began with signs. Semiotics is
a key study into the evolution of human consciousness. He
proposes “three steps to the advancement of intelligence:
understanding the nature of things, understanding what to do to
achieve whatever you wish to achieve, and the ability to
communicate these things to another.” The signs, according to
him, maintain a dyadic relation, that is a sign is tied to a specific
meaning.
Saussure and Semiology
Saussure uses the term semiology to describe the study of
signs, and Charles Sanders Pierce calls it semiotics. Saussure
observes language as a sign-system, and his fundamental semiotic
concept is the distinction between the two components of a sign:
the signifier-a set of speech sounds or words, and the signified-
the concept or idea behind the sign. Saussure differentiates
parole, or actual individual utterances, from langue, the
underlying system of conventions that makes such utterances
clear.
John Fiske notes how Saussure defines two ways in which
signs are organised into codes:
i. A paradigm: A vertical set of units, where each unit is a
sign or word. The required selection is taken from this unit.
For example, the set of shapes for road signs: square, round
and triangular.
ii. A syntagm: The horizontal chain into which units are
linked in accordance with conventions to make a
meaningful whole. A road sign is a syntagm; a combination
of the chosen shape with the chosen symbol.

Paradigms and syntagms are important because they inform

about the way any sign system is organised. The letters of the
alphabet are fundamental vertical paradigms. These may be
combined into syntagms called words. These words form
syntagms called phrases or sentences according to the rules of
grammar. Fiske provides an example: A sign of two children
leaving school, in black silhouette, can be syntagmatically
combined with a red triangle or a road sign to mean: SCHOOL:
BEWARE OF CHILDREN (61-64).
Three Modes of Relation Between Signifiers and Referents
According to Saussure
Signifiers, in Saussure’s concept are related to their objects of
referents in three modes:
i.a symbol, related to its referent only by convention (traffic
signals);
ii. an icon, similar to its referent (sign on the road for men
working/onomatopoeic words) and
iii.an index, directly associated with its referent (smoke is a sign
of fire).
Semioticians suggest that the sign can never have a definite
meaning, for the meaning must be continuously qualified. Signs
are made of signifiers (word/sound) and the signified (object) and
the relation between the two can be arbitrary(symbol),
imitative(icon) or direct (index). Semiosis is the process of
interaction between the signifier, signified and the idea or sign
that is produced in the mind when the word is heard or read.

Roland Barthes and the three Orders of Signification

Barthes proposes three levels of meaning or orders of
signification related to the study of signs:
First Order: In the first order of signification, the sign is self-
contained, which refers to the denotative order of signification.
For example, the photograph means the individual car.
Second Order: Cultural meanings that depend on the way society
uses and values the signifier and the signified. This is the
connotative order of signification. For instance, the car could
signify freedom. Barthes mentions that signs in the second order
operate in two distinct ways: as mythmakers and as connotative
agents.
When signs move to the second order of signification,
they carry cultural meanings and representational ones. The signs
become the signifiers of cultural meanings. Barthes labels the
cultural meanings of these signs as myths. The sign loses its
specific signified and becomes a second-order signifier, whereby
it conveys cultural meaning.
For instance, an army general’s uniform denotes his rank
(first-order sign) as well as the respect for it (second-order sign).
In a movie, in war scenes, the uniform, which is torn or worn-out
still denotes his rank, but the connotative meaning will have
changed.
Signs signify values, emotions and attitudes in the
connotative order. In films, background music, lighting and
camera are used to connote meaning. Similarly, the connotative
meaning of any object can be changed by the background music
accompanying it.
Third Order: The cultural meanings of the second order come
together in the third order and provide a cultural picture of the
world. A car becomes part of the imagery of a materialist or
industrial society. The myth of the friendly neighbourhood
policeman as the guardian of peace in a residential area would
organise into a pattern called Mythology or Ideology. Ideology

or mythology reflects the principles by which a culture organises
and interprets the reality it has to cope with, depending on the
social institutions and the individuals related.
Charles Sanders Peirce and Semiotics
Contemporary semiotics is the contribution of the American
philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914),
who prefers to use the term semiotics, which is important for
media studies, film studies and cultural studies apart from literary
criticism.
According to Nayar, semiotics offers the “tools required to
analyse the forms of a text and to read texts as part of the general
social system of signs, where meanings are generated, accepted
and subverted as part of a cultural process” (14). The diverse
elements of a text are not only related to each other but also to the
social system. Structuralist semiotics uses semiotic theories of
signs to read narrative.
Peirce’s conception of semiotics is triadic: representation
(form of the sign, for instance, a word, a gesture or writing);
interpretant (idea that is generated in the mind upon reading the
sign) and object (to whom or what the sign refers, also called
‘referent’). All three constitute the sign and the interaction
between the three is semiosis. The interaction between the three
brings about language.
Juila Kristeva and ‘poetic language’

Julia Kristeva, during the early stages of her work on
‘poetic language’ mentioned that pleasure motivated the subject
to enter language. She categorised signification into two:
i.The Semiotic: Labelled Chora, it is the association of the
mother, body and the pre-linguistic; the material for poetic
language; foundation of language called ‘genotext’.
ii.The Symbolic: Syntax, gramma and the expression of

linguistic acts; the language used to communicate is called
‘phenotext’ (Nayar 16).
Semioticians take interest in the underlying system, and this
interest in the structure behind the use of specific signs links
semiotics with the methods of structuralism that analyses such
relations. Saussure’s theories have influenced structuralism,
structural linguistics and poststructuralism.
The principles of semiotics are applied to a variety of fields,
including aesthetics, anthropology, psychoanalysis,
communications, and semantics that include the works of the
French scholars Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Michel
Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and
Umberto Eco.
The Essay: “The Structuralist Activity”-

Structuralism is neither a movement nor a set of mere
vocabulary. The authors usually associated with this word are
unaware that they are unified by a doctrine or commitment.
Structuralism is an old word that is used in anatomy and grammar
and in all the social sciences. In order to distinguish structuralism
from other modes of thought it is necessary to go back to pairs
like signifier/signified and synchronic/diachronic. While the first
pair refers to the linguistic model as proposed by Saussure, the
second one implies a certain revision of the notion of history.
Synchronic endorses a certain restriction of time, and
diachronic tends to represent the historical process as a pure
succession of forms. It is the serious choice to the nomenclature
of signification, which should ultimately be taken as
structuralism’s spoken sign to see how signifier and signified,
synchronic and diachronic are used, and make it possible to
ascertain whether the structuralist vision is established.

Structural Man
It is presumed that there are certain writers, painters, and
musicians in whose eyes a certain exercise of structure represents
a distinctive experience, and both analysts and creators must be
placed under the common sign of what is called structural man,
defined not by his ideas or the language he uses, but by his
imagination; in other words, by the way he mentally experiences
structure.
Structuralism is not a school or a movement, but an
activity. This activity is undertaken by writers, painters,
musicians and analysts (critics) to have a unique experience of
imagination called the structural. It is this mental activity that
turns one into a structural man.
Therefore, in relation to all its users, structuralism is
essentially an activity that is the controlled succession of a certain
number of mental operations. At this stage, it would be
appropriate to find out the goal of structuralist activity and the
operations involved.
Structuralist Activity
The goal of every structuralist activity is to reconstruct an
‘object’ in such a way that the rules of functioning of the object
are manifested. Structure is therefore, actually a simulacrum, an
image or the representation of the object that is reconstructed in
the mind. Structure or simulacrum is intellect added to an object.
The object that is imitated makes visible something which
remained invisible or unintelligible in the natural object.
The structural man takes the real, decomposes it then
recomposes it. Between the two objects of structural activity,
there occurs something new, which is generally intelligible.
Hence, the object is made intelligible through perception. This
addition has an anthropological value, in that it is man himself,
and his own associations with the various dimensions of history,
situation, freedom and the very resistance, which nature offers to

his mind.
It is important and relevant to speak of a structuralist
activity. Creation or reflection are not, here, an original
‘impression’ of the world, but an authentic fabrication of a world,
which resembles the first one, not in order to copy it, but to render
it intelligible. Hence, it could be held that structuralism is
essentially an activity of imitation, which is also the reason why
there is absolutely no technical difference between structuralism
as an intellectual activity on the one hand and literature in
particular, and art in general on the other. Both derive from a
mimesis based not on the analogy of substances, as in the so-
called realist art, but on an analogy of functions, which Lévi-
Strauss calls homology.
When Propp constructs a folk-tale resulting by
structuralism from all the Slavic tales he has previously
decomposed; when Lévi-Strauss discovers the homologic
functioning of the totemic imagination, or Granger, the formal
rules of economic thought, they are engaged in doing something
like articulating an object, which could precisely be called a
composition by the controlled manifestation of certain units and
their association.
It is insignificant to note whether the initial object, liable
to the simulacrum-activity is given by the world in an already
assembled fashion or remains scattered; whether this initial object
is drawn from a social reality or an imaginary one. It is not the
nature of the copied object that defines art; it is the fact that man
adds to it in reconstructing it.
Structuralism is an activity of imitation. This basic
experience is common to both the poet (creation) and the critic
(reflection). That is, at the structural level, thinkers (poets and
critics) reach out the universal- whether it is called system of
variations, functional mythology, homologic function, the formal

rules, the pertinent features and so on. The power of literature

does not consist in its correspondence with the object imitated but
in what is added (intellect) to the object for its reconstruction,
Hence, structure is not in the work, but in the activity.
Technique is the very being of all creation. Since the goals
of structuralist activity are linked to a certain technique,
structuralism exists in a distinctive fashion in relation to other
modes of analysis or creation. The object is recomposed in order
to make certain functions appear and it is in this manner that a
work is made. This is why it is called structuralist activity and not
structuralist work.
Two Operations Involved in Structuralist Activity
The two distinctive operations in structuralist activity are
dissection and articulation. To dissect the first object, the one
that is given to simulacrum- the activity is to find in it certain
“mobile fragments” whose differential situation generates a
certain meaning. The fragment has no meaning in itself, but it is
nonetheless such that the slightest variation brought about in its
configuration produces a change in the whole.
This means that an object is understood in relation to other
objects in the same system. This is Saussure’s paradigmatic
relationship, which is essentially oppositional and differential.
The ‘mytheme’ in Lévi-Strauss, the ‘phoneme’ in the work of
phonologists, the ‘theme’ in certain literary criticism are units that
have no significant existence except by their frontiers. These
frontiers separate them from other actual units of the discourse
and also from other virtual units with which they form a certain
class that linguists call a paradigm.
The idea of a paradigm is necessary to understand the
structuralist vision. A paradigm is a group or a reservoir of
objects (units) from which one calls for the object or unit one
wishes to endow with an actual meaning. This paradigmatic
object has affinity and dissimilarity with other objects of its class.
Two units of the same paradigm must resemble in certain aspects

so that the difference that separates the units becomes evident.
For instance, ‘S’ and ‘z’ have a common feature (dental sounds)
and a distinctive feature (presence or absence of resonance),
hence they cannot, in French language, attribute the same
meaning to poisson (fish) and poison (poison).
The process of dissection produces an initial dispersed
state of the simulacrum, but the units of the structure are not in a
disordered condition. Before being distributed and fixed in the
continuity of composition, each one forms an intelligent organism
with its own virtual group or reservoir, but this organism is
slightly different from the others in the group, that is, it is “subject
to a sovereign motor principle, that of the smallest difference.”
Once the units are selected, structural man must discover
in them or establish for them certain rules of association, which
is the second activity of articulation that follows the summoning
(calling) activity. This second stage of simulacrum-activity is a
kind of battle against chance. It is by the regular return of the units
and their association that the work appears to be constructed, that
is, endowed with meaning. Linguistics names the rules of
combination, forms. Hence, the second operation, articulation
involves identification of certain properties, rules, forms or
regularities in the object that makes it universally relevant.
Form in Structuralist Activity

Form maintains the contiguity of units from appearing as
a pure effect of chance and the work of art is what man wrests
from chance. A work of art fails to mean or signify something if
the reader fails to see form in it. The simulacrum thus constructed
does not depict the world as it has found it. It manifests a new
category of the object, which is neither the real nor the rational,
but the functional.

Simulacrum highlights the strict processes used by men to

assign meaning to things. The world has always been looking for
the meaning of what is given in it and what it produces. However,
what is new here, is a mode of thought or a ‘poetics’ that does not
allocate complete meaning to objects it discovers, but tries to find
how the meaning is generated, at what cost and by what means.
A thing is intelligible only if it is structured. However, the
object of structuralism as a science just as it is a mode of thinking
is not the object or fabrication but man himself- not man endowed
with meaning but, but man engaged in the activity of fabricating
or structuring meanings- man as Homo significans. It could be
concluded that the object of structuralism is not man bestowed
with meanings, but man fabricating meanings, the Homo
significans.
Structural Man and the Ancient Greek

According to Hegel, the ancient Greek was amazed by the
natural in nature and constantly listened to it, questioned the
meaning of mountains, springs, forests and storms without
knowing what these objects were telling him. He perceived in the
vegetal or cosmic order a forceful shudder of meaning, which he
gave a spiritual name, Pan. Eventually, nature has changed and
become social.
When the ancient Greek perceived meanings in the
objects around him just as the modern man realised meaning in
cultural activities, both the natural things and cultural affairs get
humanised through their recreation in structures. Hence, there is
no difference between the structural man and the ancient Greek.
The activity of fabrication of meaning is more important
to its view than the meanings themselves and the function is
extensive with the works that structuralism constitutes itself as an
activity. Structuralism refers to the exercise of the work and the
work itself to a single identity. The artist, the analyst recreates the
course taken by meaning, he need not designate it. His function,

to use Hegel’s example, is manteia. Like the ancient soothsayer,
he speaks the locus of meaning, but does not name it.
Literature, in particular, is a mantic activity that is both
intelligible and interrogating. It speaks and remains silent and
engages with the world, and in the course remakes with the world
but disengages itself from the provisional meanings elaborated by
the world. It provides an answer to the man who consumes it;
yet, always remaining a question to nature, an answer which
questions and a question which answers.
To conclude, Barthes mentions that structuralism does not
withdraw history from the world. It tends to link certain forms –
the intelligible with the material and the aesthetic with the
ideological. Structural man does not believe in immobility or a
static condition. He is aware that structuralism, too, is a certain
form of the world, which will change with the world.
Semiological Analysis According to Roland Barthes

Barthes, in the essay “The Structuralist Activity”
mentions that semiological analysis involves two operations:
dissection and articulation. Dissection involves looking for a
fragment (element), which associates with another fragment for
suggesting a certain meaning. The analyst looks for paradigms,
which are the classes or groups from which elements have been
chosen and given specific meaning. The elements in this group
share several characteristics.
Two units of the same paradigm must resemble each other
so that the differences between them become clear. For example,
to a foreigner, Indian automobiles seem to look like, but they are
of different make and colour. The second operation is
articulation that includes establishing the rules of combination.
The analyst takes the object, decomposes it and then recomposes
it and makes visible what was previously invisible or vague.
Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, social and cultural phenomena are
delineated by a grid of internal as well as external connections
and they do not have ‘essences’. Any utterance is understood
because of an expansive repository of conscious and unconscious
knowledge that is grammatical, phonological, semantic among
others, known as ‘internalised grammar’ (Nagarajan 157).
Similarly, a poem or a prose work has meaning in accordance
with a set of connotations the reader has assimilated throughout
his life.
Conventions are important for structuralism because it is
the medium or template where individual signs are fixed. These
individual signs acquire meaning and significance within a total
structure and they do not mean anything in themselves. The
process of discovering relationships is called structuring
(Nagarajan 158). Literary competence rests in the ability to
develop these conventions, which students of literature should
nurture.
Structuralism rejects ‘mimetic’ criticism of Aristotle,
which argues that literature imitates reality. Structuralism also
rejects Romantic criticism, which believes that literature
expresses the feelings of the artist. The principal tenets of New
Criticism, atomism (any theory that explains complex phenomena
in terms of aggregates of fixed particles or units) and
individualism are replaced by the belief in universalism.
Jonathan Culler mentions that structuralism “tries to
determine the nature of the system underlying the event” (31),
and neither interprets the sequence of events nor finds out its
meaning. This way, Structuralism departs from conventional
modes of criticism and launches a radical mode of critical
thinking in terms of language, and its connection with form and
structure.

References
● Barthes, Roland. “The Structuralist Activity.” The Critical
Essays, translated by R. Howard. Northwestern UP,
1972, pp.213-20.
● ---. Mytholgies, translated by A. Lavers. Hill and
Wang,1967.
● ---. Elements of Semiology, translated by A. Lavers and C.
Smith, Hill and Wang, 1967.
● ---. S/Z. translated by R. Howard. Blackwell, 1974.
● ---. The Pleasure of the Text, translated by R. Howard. 1973,
Hill and Wang. 1975.
● ---. “The Death of the Author.” Image-Music-Text,
translated by Stephen Heath. Fontana P, 1977,
pp.142-48.
● ---. “From Work to Text.” Image-Music-Text, translated
by Stephen Heath. Fontana P, 1977, pp.155-64.
● Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary
and Cultural Theory. 3rd ed. Viva Books, 2014.
● Berman, Art. From the New Criticism to Deconstruction:
The Reception of Structuralism and Poststructuralism. U
of Illinois P, 1988.
● Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics.Routledge, 2017.

● Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism,

Linguistics and the Study of Literature. Routledge and Paul
Kegan, 1975.
● Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 3rd ed.
U of Minnesota P, 2008.
● Eco, Umberto. A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana UP,1976.
● Fiske, John. Introduction to Communication. Methuen.
1982.
● Habib, M.A.R. A History of Literary Criticism. Blackwell
Publishing, 2005.
● Krishnaswamy, N., John Varghese, and Sunita Mishra.
Contemporary Literary Theory: A Student’s Companion.
Trinity P, 2008.
● Kulkarni, Anand B., and Ashok G. Chaskar. An
Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism. Orient
Blackswan, 2015.
● Malik, R.S., and Jagdish Batra. A New Approach to Literary
Theory and Criticism. Atlantic Publishers, 2014.
● Matthews, Peter. A Short History of Structural Linguistics.
Cambridge UP, 2001.
● Nagarajan, M.S. English Literary Criticism and Theory: An
Introductory History. Orient Longman, 2006.
● Nayar, Pramod K. Contemporary Literary and Cultural
Theory: From Structuralism to Ecocriticism. Dorling
Kindersley, 2010.

● Ryan, Michael. Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction.

Blackwell, 1999.
● Selden, Raman, Peter Widdowson, and Peter Brooker. A
Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 5th ed.
Pearson Education, 2005.
● Sturrock, John. Structuralism. Blackwell 2003.
Web Links
● https://www.britannica.com/science/structuralism-
anthropology
● https://www.britannica.com/science/semiotics
● https://literariness.org/2016/03/21/structuralistnarratology/
#:~:text=Espoused%20by%20Tzvetan%20Todorov%20an
d,isolated%20theme%20(the%20parole)
● Seiler,RobertM.Semiology//Semiotics
https://people.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/semiolog.htm
Questions
I. Answer the following in a paragraph of 100 words
1. Structure
2. Narratology
3. Semiotics

4. Structural Man
5. Signifier and signified
6. Structural Anthropology
7. Homo Significans
8. Signification and value
9. Surface structure and deep structure
II. Answer the following as an essay of 250 words
10. Critically analyse the structuralist activity of
reconstruction discussed by Barthes.
11. What, according to Barthes, is the structuralist activity?
12. Explain the contribution of A.J.Griemas and Gerard
Genette to structuralism.
13. Elaborate Saussure’s principles of Structuralism.

Structure, Sign and Play in the

Discourse of Human Sciences
Jacques Derrida
Objectives:
● Understand the assumptions of poststructuralism and
deconstruction.
● Analyse the contribution of major theorists such as Jacques
Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and the theorists
of the Yale School.
● Elaborate the principal concepts- Deconstruction of sign,
decentering, logocentrism, aporia, supplement, author,
knowledge, power, discourse, readerly and writerly texts,
text and work, and pleasure of the text.
● Analyse the differences between structuralism and
poststructuralism.
● Elaborate the essay “Structure, Sign and Play in the
Discourse of Human Sciences.”
● Attempt to apply deconstructive practice in literary texts.
Introduction
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), a French philosopher was
primarily concerned with the hierarchical construction of
knowledge by Western philosophers beginning from Plato and
extending up to Saussure. Edmund Husserl’s proposition that a
geometer, as an individual, could propose the objective laws of
geometry through language became the centre of argument in

Derrida’s work Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An

Introduction.
Derrida argued that language is neither objective nor
impersonal, and hence its use to state objective and impersonal
laws is problematic. This rudimentary notion became the basis of
his writings that questioned established notions of purity,
originality and centrality. His three fundamental works, Speech
and Phenomena, Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference
all published in 1967 explicate his theory of deconstruction.
In Speech and Phenomena Derrida critiques Edmund
Husserl’s theory of signs and analyses the concepts of voice and
presence. An exemplary work of deconstructive analysis, it
delves into the concepts of speech, presence and absence in a
different perspective. Of Grammatology (1967, trans.1973)
focuses on the Western philosophical approach to language. It
analyses the privileged position of speech over writing and shows
that this conventional practice can be reversed. Derrida also
elaborates Saussure’s hierarchical construction of speech and
writing and Rousseau’s ideas of presence and supplement.
Writing and Difference (1967, trans. 1978), the sequel to
Of Grammatology examines the ideas of philosophers and
thinkers such as Freud, Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas,
Edmund Husserl, Antonin Artraud, Georges Nataille, and Claude
Lévi-Strauss. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of
Human Sciences” is included in this work.
Derrida shows how literary texts interfere into another and
transgress disciplinary boundaries and offer multiple meanings.
Derrida compares the texts of Hegel and Genette to reiterate the
impossibility of definite meaning in a text and the chances of
mutual overlapping among texts. In Specters of Marx (1993), he
examines the contribution of Marx and the postulates of Marxism.

Structuralism: An Overview
It is necessary to recapitulate the principles of
Structuralism before going into poststructuralism and
deconstruction. Structuralism is grammatical in approach because
it tries to analyse the codes or rules in cultural practices that form
a system and attempts to decipher the message to be conveyed.
Scientific and objective in aim, it sets out to find out the structure
of a system in literature and helps understand its meaning.
Anti-humanistic and theoretical in method, it challenges
the notion that reality exists before its expression and that
literature reflects reality. Literature is studied as a system of signs
like language. The codes or rules that govern a literary text are
revealed and the conventional notion that literature is an exclusive
creation of language is rejected. It regards literary texts to be
systems that are analysed by certain coordinates to reveal
meaning.
Language comprises our consciousness, our self, and our
world. Language creates experience. Language arises out of the
inherent stable structure of the human mind. Structuralism refers
to mental concepts and not objects. Language is a system of signs,
which operates through the dual processes of relation and
difference. Structuralism works on the principle of difference of
one sign from the other and relates signifier to signified, but sees
this relationship, arbitrary.
Meaning is derived from the arbitrary nature of signs and
their differential position and relational arrangement within a
system and literary texts are studied within this framework. In
structuralist theory, a signifier is linked to a particular signified as
a matter of social convention. The relation formed between a
certain word and an object or meaning by convention is based on
social approval.
Structuralism postulates that experience is conceptualised
through polarities, binary oppositions that are based on a

hierarchical arrangement, whereby one element of the pair is

privileged. The oppositional view gives an idea of the ideology
forwarded by it. Language is rendered stable, structured and
communicable through the ideology that operates in a literary
work. Structuralism assumes the presence of a centre that tries to
control or govern the entire system and makes it stable and
meaningful.
The structure is a system of codes or rules that are
interrelated and work in unison. All literary texts are composed
of such interrelated structures. The unity and wholeness of a text
can be discovered by operating the inherent rules of the structure.
The critic tries to discover the meaning of a text in an objective
and scientific manner.
Claude Lévi-Strauss and His Study of Myth

Lévi-Strauss is able to refine his approach to structuralism
with the study of myth. He mentions that myths attain meaning
from the way they combine and not from their inherent value.
Therefore, myths represent “the mind that creates them and not
some external reality” (Lechte 116). Myths are eternal because
they refuse to accept history.
The several versions of a myth cannot be considered
fabrications of some true, genuine version, but as essential parts
of the structure of myth. Conversely, different versions are part
of the same myth only because a myth is not “reducible to a single
uniform content, but is a dynamic structure” (116). This means
that all the versions of a myth have to be taken into consideration
so that its structure can become evident.
Seen from another perspective, myth is always the result
of a contradiction. An example Lévi-Strauss gives is “the belief
that mankind is autochthonous”, but the reality is that “human
beings are actually born from the union of man and woman (qtd.

in Lechte 116). The result is that contradiction, which is not a

characteristic feature of human society, generates myths.
Myth originates from the “asymmetry between belief and
reality, freedom and necessity, identity and difference” and so on.
Lévi-Strauss says that from the viewpoint of language, myth is
“language functioning on an especially high level.” If langue, the
synchronic element of language, is associated with reversible
time, and parole with diachronic- the historical aspect, then
“myth constitutes a third-level of language.” Myth is the
unattainable synthesis between diachronic and synchronic aspects
of language.
Therefore, myth becomes the third dimension of
language, where there is the continuous effort to “reconcile the
irreconcilable” aspects of the other two dimensions of language,
langue and parole. Since the complete reconciliation of these two
dimensions is not possible, myth grows and hence, structurally,
the asymmetry, which gives it life cannot be resolved.
Poststructuralism
Poststructuralism is the confluence of theories about
language and its relationship with psychology, sociology,
philosophy and literature. Linguistic and textual in orientation, it
challenges the earlier theories, exposes the inconsistencies in
their propositions and disrupts established notions. It however,
neither claims to be new theory nor proposes one, but interrogates
the efficacy of earlier theories, especially structuralism with
respect to language.
While poststructuralism accepts the structuralist notion of
language as a system of signs and its function of signification, it
redefines the concept of sign, reconsiders the relation between

language and reality and rejects the idea of a determinable

meaning.
Poststructuralism includes the theories of psychoanalysis
proposed by Jacques Lacan, archaeological and genealogical
theory of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes’ semiology and
deconstruction theory of Jacques Derrida. It could be ascertained
that Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, outlined in his paper
“Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences”
and presented at the International Colloquium in October 1966 at
John Hopkins University, Batimore, Maryland is the foundation
and starting point of poststructuralism.
Derrida exposes inadequacies in structuralism and
expresses the need to reconsider its doctrines. Structuralist
notions of a stable centre and binary oppositions in hierarchy are
questioned and a new method of analysis called deconstruction is
framed. Derrida also includes linguistic study of philosophical
texts, which are constructs of language. Critics such as Paul de
Man, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom and
Barbara Johnson, known as the Yale Critics, applied Derrida’s
ideas to literary texts.
Roland Barthes and Poststructuralism

‘Readerly’ and ‘Writerly’ Texts
In S/Z (1970), Barthes claims that texts can be either
lisible (‘readerly’) or scriptable (‘writerly’) that differentiates
the role of the reader. In a readerly text, the text controls meaning
and explains and describes everything, so the reader is a passive
consumer of meaning. According to Barthes, a readerly text
presents a world where the characters are effortlessly identified
and the events, characters and their actions are comprehensible.
Novels of George Eliot and Arnold Bennett are readerly texts.
In a writerly text, the reader has an active role to play

because the meaning of the text rests on the reader, who elicits
(extracts) meaning from the textual process. “The text teased, hid,
offered, offered clues to the reader to decode” (Nayar,
Contemporary 37). James Joyce’s Ulysses and William
Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury are literary works where the
reader is given an active role to interpret elaborate language of
the text.
Death of the Author and Birth of the Reader
The essay “The Death of the Author” (1967), later
published in Barthes’ Image-Music-Text (1977) reflects on the
rules of author and reader as considered by the text. Barthes’
principal argument is that the author does not have complete
authority over his own words, images, sounds or other features in
the text, rather they belong to the reader who interprets them. The
author’s intention is insignificant because the genuineness about
the author’s intentions cannot be ascertained.
Moreover, there is no guarantee that the author has
revealed his intentions successfully, and the supposed failure
might give room for diverse interpretations. What matters is the
message conveyed by the words. Texts make use of symbols,
which are decoded by readers, and since function of the text is to
be studied, both the author and the process of writing are
immaterial or unimportant.
According to Barthes, meaning is not something to be
recovered or unearthed because it has been there always, but
something that has to be spontaneously generated in the process
of reading a text and the reader plays an active role. This does not
imply that the reader could interpret in any way, but he could
invest in writing or rewriting the meaning of the text. Barthes
points out that the text is open to interpretation, and more flexible
in meaning.

Barthes is disinterested in the “true meaning” of the text

because according to him there is no such thing. The
preconceived knowledge and ideas of the reader and the author
affect their reading of the text. Just as there are a number of
readers there are innumerable ways of reading and interpreting a
text. He is more interested in the “birth of the reader” than the
“death of the author” and ends the essay with the statement, “the
birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author”
(148).
Transition from Work to Text
In the essay “From Work to Text” also included in Image-
Music-Text (1977), Barthes points out that the growing
importance of interdisciplinary studies in literary and cultural
analyses has transformed the conception of language and the
conventional view of a literary work. Barthes is of the opinion
that ‘work’ has been replaced by ‘Text’.
‘Text’ is “that social space which leaves no language safe,
outside, nor any subject of the enunciation in a position as judge,
master, analyst, confessor, decoder” (164). He distinguishes
‘Text’ from ‘work’ on the basis of seven propositions: method,
genre, signs, plurality, filiation, reading, and pleasure.
● Method: Work, which is a concrete object, is definite and
complete. It is “a fragment occupying a part of the space of
books,” and is carried in hand, whereas the text is the
composition or the meaning the reader takes from the
‘work’ and it is not a definite object. Text means “the series
of linguistic processes that are decoded by the reader” and
“the ‘structure’ of narrative negotiations between the
language (of the text) and the reader” (Nayar,
Contemporary 38).

● Genre: ‘Text’ cannot be compartmentalised into a genre or

placed in a hierarchical system, but these are applicable to
‘work’.
● Signs: While the work is complete and comprehensive with
no arbitrariness either to comprehend or interpret it, and
functions as a symbolic sign to the subject it signifies, the
text is incomplete and metonymic. This means words and
phrases can have diverse or similar meanings or
associations. It becomes symbolic and the signifiers are
arbitrary because of the ambiguities, overlapping ideas and
associations it makes.
The text is open-ended, it has a multitude of associations and
accordingly, possesses plurality of meaning. The text is like a
‘woven fabric’ that comes with known codes that are assembled
differently and maybe be woven with ‘citations,’ ‘references,’
and ‘echoes”; it is intertextual in that it is “the text between
another text.”
● Plurality: The state of denoting, comprising, or
consisting of multiple, plural meanings.
● Filiation: ‘Work’ is affiliated and identified with its
author. A text is not limited and confined to a genre and
the reader does not expect it to fit into a category or type
since it is part of a grid and free to be interpreted beyond
the author’s signification.
● Reading: The ‘work’ is an object of consumption, a
commodity because the reader is passive and is expected
to be fed and entertained when reading. If the reader
approaches a text as writing and not as a ‘work,’ then the
reading experience becomes interactive.

● Pleasure: The pleasure of reading classic literary works

is similar to consumption since the reader cannot rewrite
those texts and thus a distance is created between the
reader and the ‘work.’ A text arouses feelings of pleasure
because there is no feeling of separation between the
reader and the writer and the text transcends any language
or social barriers.
A few examples could be seen to show the difference between
‘work’ and ‘text’ as mentioned by Barthes. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning’s poem “How Do I Love Thee?” is an example of
traditional ‘work’ because its meaning is confined to a specific
genre, author, and linear progression of thoughts. The reader is
passive in the production of this text and the act of reading is
reduced to consumption and the work is a commodity. T.S. Eliot’s
“The Waste Land” is an example of ‘Text’ because the reader is
not restricted by linearity and hierarchy, and hence actively
engages in the production of the text.
Pleasure Offered by the Text

In The Pleasure of the Text (1973), Barthes distinguishes
between two different reading experiences provided by texts,
namely pleasure and bliss or jouissance. Both pleasure and bliss
are only related to writerly texts. These two entirely different
kinds of reading experiences are provided by the text of pleasure
and the text of bliss or jouissance.
Barthes mentions that the text of pleasure is “the text that
contents, fills, grants euphoria; the text that comes from culture
and does not break with it; it is linked to a comfortable practice
of reading.” Pleasure offers a comfortable delight in reading that
derives mainly from texts, which belong to a cultural heritage.
Pleasure is part of a shared cultural experience. The works of
Balzac, Flaubert and Proust fall into this category. Balzac’s
“Sarrasine” offers pleasure because it is a partially reversible text.
The text of bliss or jouissance “imposes a state of loss,

the text that discomforts, unsettles the reader’s historical, cultural,
psychological assumptions…and brings to a crisis, his relation
with language.” Bliss is associated with the modern, avant-garde
texts as written by Philippe Sollers. Bliss in reading is
revolutionary. During reading, both the reader as the subject and
the author as object unite into the realm of textuality. At this
moment, the reader’s self gets immersed and dissolved into
language, into textuality.
Bliss is a kind of experience that is similar to sexual
climax, the state of “ecstasy” or “coming”. This sexual, bodily
metaphor of “jouissance” or “coming” leads to the condition of
loss and not the assertion of self. Such a text does not offer a
pleasure that is demanded by the commercial market. The
moment of bliss is when the reader confronts writing, which does
not lead to the reproduction of the stereotype.
The text of bliss presents the reader with the radically
new, something which is not clichéd or repetitive. There are times
when the reader, out of free-will, would resist the state of ecstatic
collapse in the modernist text, and then this bliss gets transformed
into boredom.
The Contribution of Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault (1926-1984), the French philosopher
who began his career in psychopathology later became a lecturer
in philosophy and psychology. However, he turned towards
history and engaged with archaeology and moved on to
genealogy, which marked his transition from the structuralist
perspective to the poststructuralist one. His ideas are the outcome
of living in post-war France, especially the 1960s and the 1970s
that witnessed the emergence of existential phenomenology and
Marxism as the two principal intellectual guiding principles.

His Mental Illness and Psychology (1954) is related to

mental illness, human behaviour and personality. His principal
works include Madness and Civilisation (1961), The Archaeology
of Knowledge (1969), Discipline and Punish (1975) and The
History of Sexuality (1976).
Foucault’s works are set against a backdrop where there
was widespread resentment against America’s neo-imperial
policy overseas, discontentment against racist factions in Europe
and America and America’s intrusion into Vietnam. Most of his
works reflect his radical views on thinking and behavioural
changes that question power and its structures. More explicit is
his disagreement with Marxism as the framework to explore the
social structures in France, where a reconceptualisation of
thought related to power would be the most appropriate stand.
He disagrees with Jean Paul Sartre’s notion of
Existentialism that relates personal experiences and sense of
responsibility in a rather meaningless world. He proposes the
“philosophy of concept” to object to Sartre's “philosophy of
consciousness”. While Sartre is engaged with the analysis of
meaning, Foucault focuses on the analysis of a system.
He establishes and elaborates “archaeology of the human
sciences”, which is the study of the forms of knowledge, the
mechanisms that categorise knowledge and the rules that help
formulate knowledge gathered, documented, and circulated. He
believes that in every field of knowledge, the thinking process
rests on certain underlying structures and his concern is to
uncover them. The structures shape up and regulate knowledge
that is gathered, the material collected and the way it is imparted.
During the structuralist phase of his career, he associated
with Roland Barthes, Derrida, Althusser and Julia Kristeva
among others and together they became part of the Tel Quel
Group. Tel Quel, a journal that was published between 1960 and
1970 concentrated on structuralist and poststructuralist notions of

language and writing that opposed capitalist values of

consumption and stable meaning, and celebrated plurality of
expression.
In The History of Sexuality, Foucault contends that power
has to be enacted or performed continuously rather than be
achieved. He disagrees with Louis Althusser’s model of ISA and
RSA, the structures where power is invested in. Foucault delves
into the way power intrudes all relations in society. He believes
that power is manifested in society that spreads throughout the
society and cannot be considered a set of relations that operate
between the oppressor and the oppressed.
Power is neither an institution nor a structure but “a
complex strategical situation” or “multiplicity of force relations.”
Rather than viewing power as a repressive strategy, Foucault sees
the productive side of power. He believes that where power is
enforced, there is resistance that is manifested in different forms.
In “Truth and Power”, Foucault denies that revolution
guarantees freedom from oppression or poses a challenge to
bourgeois power. He notices how the state codifies several power
relations in such a way that it constructs several relations that
position people and grant the authority to make the political
system work. The French Revolution is a classic example that
changed the system of government, but enforced conformity
through its political agenda. Seeking liberation from oppression
through revolution should be cautiously approached.
In The History of Sexuality (1976), Foucault says that
power operates through discourse, and every knowledge system
is caught in the struggle for power, thereby the subject under the
system is kept under control. Discourses of patriarchy, for
instance, include internalisation of gender roles, gender politics,
and gender disparity form part of the method of
institutionalisation through structures of power such as marriage,
education, religion, history and law and so on.

He observes the role of power in scientific enquiry that

was controlled by a certain authority. He defines discourse as the
construction, organisation, and dissemination of knowledge
through specific forms of speech, writing and language.
Characterised by the circumstance under which it is produced,
discourse defines what is said, studied and the process of doing
so. Discourse “is the context in which meaning is produced”
(Nayar, Contemporary 35). Discourse is therefore a particular
form of language that is shaped and determined by situational
rules and the context in which it is produced.
Foucault outlines several discourses in the context of
religion, sickness and rationality that dissuaded particular groups
of people from doing or saying certain things because they were
considered inappropriate and hence kept under surveillance, and
observed by specific authorities. This surveillance is inferred
from a discourse, characterised by a specific kind of thinking, a
system of knowledge or language. Hence, discourse governs
people’s lives and informs their thought processes.
The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) elaborates how
people think and live the way they do, being governed by social
institutions and explores the history of social practices that
explain the working of things. He coined the term episteme that
refers to the body or unit of knowledge and ways of
understanding, which is in circulation at a particular moment.
Foucault notices breaks in thinking patterns or
discontinuities or conjectures that occur at specific historical
moments. An episteme is therefore the “underground” grid or
network which allows thought to organise itself. Each historical
period has its own episteme that limits the totality of experience
and truth, and governs every contribution to science in the period.
Science becomes normal when scientists agree that their
work has identified and solved scientific problems. This agreed
upon achievement model is called paradigm or an exemplar.

Language, for Foucault is not the sovereign means to organise or

represent knowledge. It is an object of knowledge to be
investigated just as living things, wealth, value or history are
investigated.
Marxist ideology focuses on the clash between bourgeois
tendencies and the working class, and psychoanalytic theorists
concentrate on the notion of the fractured self. Foucault
developed a way of explaining and interpreting events without
referring to the individual or subject. He analyses that discourse,
which operate under unique systems of rules that are not under
the control of human beings. This observation marks his break
from the notion of a stable centre.
Archaeology analyses the unconscious rules of formation
that regulate the emergence of discourses of the human sciences.
Genealogy reveals the conditions under which these human
sciences exist and how they are intimately linked with particular
technologies of power that are evident in social practices.
Foucault engaged in a “genealogical” study of discourses that
mapped their initial stages and their formulations.
Genealogy is the tracking down of discourses and
institutions that have created notions of sexuality, sickness,
criminality, morality, madness or improvement and reveals the
disputable and contradictory powers that have formulated these
conceptual opinions and standards (Nayar, Contemporary 37).
Discipline and Punish (1975) explicitly studies non-
discursive practices and their link with minor events. He prefers
discontinuous, discredited and illegitimate knowledge that have
been deprived of space and visibility in history to great and
spectacular events in history. In his approach to literature, he
dismisses the status of the “classic” accorded to literary works
because they do not circulate values and ideals. Literature, for
him, works through the stages of “selection, sacralisation, and
institutional validation” (Mills 45).

The essay “What is an Author?” reveals Foucault’s ideas

about writing and authorship. He argues that authorship is a
complex issue and, like Barthes, rejects the idea of the author as
the originator of a literary discourse. In his opinion, the author
should neither express himself nor render a definite meaning to
his writing.
The Yale School /American Deconstruction
In the 1970’s, critics such as Paul de Man, Hillis Miller,
Geoffrey Hartman and Harold Bloom of the Department of
English at Yale University in America embraced the principles of
Derrida in their attempt to do away with New Criticism, Myth
criticism of Northrop Frye, Hegelian Marxism of Lukacs,
phenomenology of Poulet and French structuralism that gained
ground in the early and mid- 20th century. In 1986, Derrida
joined the University of California and was also associated as
visiting professor with several universities in America and
Europe.
Paul de Man (1919-83) was interested in analysing the
conflicts operating between codes or rules of language and
rhetoric within texts. He finds an impasse, where there is the
assertion and simultaneous negation of opposing systems of logic
or rhetoric. His interest in the performative function of language
influenced the speech-act theory of John Austin.
Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of
Contemporary Criticism (1971) centres on the paradox that critics
achieve insight through a certain blindness. He notices that critics
seem to adopt a method that is apparently different from what
they intend to say, especially the American New Critics.
In Allegories of Reading (1979), he engages in tropes or
figures of speech that destabilise logic and deny the possibility of
a literal or referential use of language. For de Man, reading is
always a misreading because tropes continually interfere between
critical and literary texts. Though texts of several disciplines
employ metaphors, the visibility of irony and ambiguity is

obvious in literature.
J. Hillis Miller (1928- 2021) is known for applying
deconstruction to fiction, especially in Fiction and Repetition:
Seven English Novels (1982). He believes that fiction abounds in
repetition and difference. His analyses of Thomas Hardy and
Charles Dickens explores how a single figure that recurs in a text
expresses itself differently.
His intention is to show how presence is based on
difference and repetition. He considers signs as rhetorical figures
and language, fictive. He shows how a reader moves from one
figure to another and engages in a ceaseless “lateral dance” and
considers repetition and difference are favourite figures in fiction.
In Ariadne's Thread: Case Studies in the Therapeutic
Relationship (2013), Miller uses the trope of lines, whereby the
narrative is read line-by-line. These lines trace the genealogies in
the text and progresses towards a series of deconstructive
readings. Miller shows how a literary text is a play of
contradictory meanings and asserts that the text is indeterminable
and undecidable, and therefore all reading is essentially
misreading.
Geoffrey Hartman (1929-2016) puts forth his
deconstructive strategy in Beyond Formalism (1970), The Fate of
Reading (1975) and Criticism in the Wilderness (1980). He points
out that critical reading should not seek meaning but reveal the
inconsistencies and contradictions in a text. While interpreting a
poem, the language of criticism should be figurative, allusive and
elusive. However, he disagrees with the notion of the death of the
subject, free-play and the notion of the completely undecidable in
a text. He championed a self-reflective and self-conscious style in
his works.
Harold Bloom (1930- 2019) combines his theory of
tropes with the psychology of Freud and Jewish mysticism. He is

known for the coinage misprision, a misreading of the past

masters to produce a new interpretation. English poets after
Milton, aware that they have arrived late in poetic history after
many poetical fathers, experience a kind of Oedipal hatred of their
father and want to deny their paternity. They fear that their poetic
fathers have exhausted all inspiration left, and their poems should
be seen as written against the poetic father, which is misprision.
The purposeful act of misreading gives them the space to
convey their own genuine inspiration. Bloom’s psychopoetics has
three stages: limitation-taking a new look; substitution-
replacing one form with another, and representation- restoring
meaning. The poet passes through these three stages when he tries
to write something against the earlier poet. This anxiety of
influence is overcome through a psychic defensive strategy.
The Essay: “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of

Human Sciences”
The essay has been divided into sections with sub-divisions to
help students understand the pivotal arguments of Derrida.
Section 1
Derrida notices that traditional philosophical texts and
thinking are centred on fundamentals, principles and the notion
of the ultimate reality. The underlying principles are grounded on
centres like essence, existence, substance, subject, consciousness,
conscience, god, man and so on. Derrida suggests a break or a
rupture with such centers, origins and names, since he considers
these notions, unintelligible and self-contradictory.
Derrida begins the essay by referring to an event, which
has perhaps occurred in the history of the concept of structure.
The event mentioned in the essay is that of a definitive
epistemological break with structuralist thought; the
announcement of poststructuralism as a movement critically

engaged with structuralism, traditional humanism and
empiricism. He questions the basic metaphysical assumption of
Western philosophy since Plato, which essentially positions itself
within a fixed, immutable centre or perhaps a static presence.
The Centre
Derrida mentions that the notion of structure in
structuralist theory has always presupposed a centre of sorts.
Derrida terms this desire for a centre as logocentrism in his
seminal work Of Grammatology (1966). Logos is a Greek word
for ‘word’, which carries the greatest possible concentration of
presence. Logocentrism is the belief in the absoluteness of the
word, the divine essence and the realisation of God. In
philosophy, logos relates to rationality that rules the world and in
theology, it refers to Christ.
Word is regarded as the origin of everything. A word that
is spoken is nearer to the original thought than a word that is
written. When speech is privileged over writing, it is
phonocentrism. Both logocentrism and phonocentrism are
controlled by the human desire to locate a central presence at the
start and at the end. The longing for a centre creates hierarchical
relationships.
Presence or logos is considered the superior term in
contrast to writing which is a contaminated form of speech.
Western philosophy maintains this hierarchy to preserve the
concept of the presence. The binary opposition of such
conventions has permeated literature, art and culture as a whole.

Derrida Deconstructs Speech/Writing Binary

Derrida mentions that speech and writing share similar
properties such as the features of writing. Both are processes that
signify and both lack presence. The meaning of the word writing
is not to be taken in the literal meaning of a graphic representation
or notation. Writing refers to a structure that is occupied by the
trace. Therefore, writing is speech and speech is one form of
writing. Moreover, both writing and speech are built on the same
principle. The reversal of conventional hierarchy is the first step
of the principle of deconstruction.
Presence/Absence
The fact or condition of being present, is that of being at
hand or before one of actually existing. In postmodern contexts,
presence is caught up in the discussion of determinacy, in the
sense that there must be something lurking behind a sign in order
to guarantee that it will signify. In this way, a determinist would
believe in some sort of presence, metaphorically. In contrast,
deconstruction would argue that there is no such metaphysical
guarantee. Absence is an instant in which uncertainty about
meaning prevails over the metaphysics of presence.
Metaphysics of Presence
Presence indicates the hypothetical guarantor.
Metaphysics of presence is the false belief that words are objects
that have stable meaning instead of the absence and
indeterminacy recognised by deconstruction or the unstable
social relations studied by Marxism and feminism.
Deconstruction argues that certainty about determinate meaning
is an impossibility founded upon the verifiable notion that there
is some sort of absolute ground of signification.

Function of the Centre

Derrida mentions that the centre gives coherence to the
system. The function of the centre is not only to orient, balance
and organise structure but also to simultaneously restrict free play
or the movement of the elements within the structure. A structure
assumes a centre, which orders the structure and gives meaning
to its components, and the permissible interactions between them
limits play.
Derrida looks at structures both diachronically, that is
historically and synchronically, which means at a particular
juncture. Synchronically, the centre cannot be substituted. As
Derrida mentions: “It is the point at which substitution of
contends, elements and terms is no longer possible.” But
historically one centre gets substituted for another to form an
epistemological shift, “…the entire history of the concept of
structure must be thought of as a series of substitution of centre
for centre.” Thus, at a given point of time the centre of the
structure cannot be substituted by other elements. However,
historically the point that defines play within a structure has
changed.
The entire history of metaphysics is a linked chain of
determination of the centre. Successively and in a regulated
fashion the centre receives different forms and names. The
history of metaphysics can be looked upon as a history of these
histories and metonymies. For instance, the period from the early
Christian era to the 18th century had a single God placed at the
centre and believed to be the cause of all things.
From the age of enlightenment to the 18th century and
moving on to the late 19th century, this central position was taken
up by rationality. The centrality of rationality in the 19th century
was replaced by the unconscious or irrationality or desire. Thus,
the centre was thought of as a being-present, as a natural, fixed
locus.

However, the history of human sciences has been

undergoing a process of substitution, replacement and
transformation of this centre through which all meaning is to be
sought. God, the Idea, the World Spirit, the Renaissance Man,
the Self, substance, matter, family and so on. Since each of these
concepts is to be found in the whole system of language and
thought, it must itself be beyond that system untainted by its play
of linguistic differences. It cannot be implicated in the very
languages and system it attends to order and anchor; it must be
somehow anterior to these discourses.
The problem of centres for Derrida is thereby the attempt
to exclude, ignore, represse or marginalise others (which become
the Other). This longing for a centre sets up or conceives binary
opposites with one term of the opposition central and the other
marginal. Terry Eagleton calls this binary opposition with which
classical structuralism tends to function as a way of seeing typical
of ideology which thereby becomes exclusionary. To quote him,
“ideologies like to draw rigid boundaries between what is
acceptable and what is not”.
Derrida Deconstructs the Centre

Derrida insists that with the rupture, it has become
necessary to think that there was no centre … that the centre had
no natural locus… a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number
of sign substitutions came into play.” During the 20th century
through a complex process of various historical, political and
technological shifts these centres were either destroyed or eroded.
At the centre, the substitution of elements or terms or
contents is not possible, and permutation or the transformation of
elements is forbidden. Thus at the centre only the unit that is the
centre can be there. None of the other units of the system can take
the place of the centre. An example would be the Puritan system
of belief where God was the centre of everything. Nothing in the
Puritan system of thought was equivalent to God and hence

nothing could replace God as the centre.
The centre is the cause and ultimate referent for
everything. It has no equivalent value; nothing can replace it or
be substituted for it. This way, the centre becomes unique. The
concept of a centred structure is opposite to the concept of free
play. The centre is immobile, it is a reassuring certitude and is
beyond the reach of free play. Hence, the centre is a part of the
structure but not part of it because it is the governing unit. The
centre constitutes everything within a structure, governs the
structure but escapes structurality.
In the Puritan example, God creates the world and rules it
and is responsible for it, but God is not a part of the creation. The
centre is thus paradoxically both within the structure and outside
it. The centre is at the centre of totality and yet since it does not
belong to the totality, the totality has its centre elsewhere. Hence,
Derrida argues, “the centre is not the centre.” He deconstructs
the notion of a centre.
Derrida therefore primarily attacks structuralism. He
views that the concept of centre does work, but it is not essential;
hence the centre is under erasure. Centre is needed to form a
structure but immediately it escapes from the so-called centrality.
Derrida in fact does not suggest the abandonment of the idea of
centre, but rather he acknowledges that the centre is illusory and
constructed.
Section 2
Decentering or the Notion of Structurality
Derrida’s logic decentres Western philosophy that gives
importance to the centre. There are several perspectives to view
the world and each viewpoint employs a unique language, which
is called discourse. Derrida insists that with the rupture it has
become necessary to begin to think that the centre does not exist.
This decentering of structure, of the transcendental signified and

the sovereign subject is pivotal to deconstruction.
He suggests that the naming of his sources of inspiration
can be found in the Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics where
Nietzsche had substituted the concepts of being and truth with the
concepts of play, interpretation and sign (in the absence of truth);
Freud’s critique of self-presence(consciousness/subject/self-
identity); Heidegger’s destruction of metaphysics, which is called
ontotheology, and the determination of being as presence.
These destructive discourses have made it possible to
think about the structurality of the structure. It was now possible
to view every system, language, philosophy and the others as
unique centred structures. Derrida argues that these systems
favoured a centre because it helped the structure to project itself
as the absolute truth.
Criticism engages in deciphering meaning actively and
not in a passive manner, which means the meaning of a work
cannot be restricted to a single interpretation. Hence, multiple
interpretations of a work are possible that entail the absence of
the authorial intention in literary works. Meaning that arises out
of the set of rules of different signifying systems. It is polysemic.
Restrictive or personal meanings and intentions have no
role to play. This is known as decentering of the subject, which
Derrida works on elaborately in Of Grammatology. In the absence
of the author, the critic’s task is to produce meaning, which is just
one possibility out of the many in the text. A work is ‘eternal’
because it suggests different meanings to the same person.
Derrida’s Attack of Structuralism

Derrida argues that language is not the product of
experience and it is not the medium for conveying thoughts, but
it is that framework, which produces experience. Structuralists
observed that the world is created by language and language is
created by the stable and innate structures of human

consciousness. Poststructuralism rejects the idea of a stable or an
ordered notion of language as well as human experience.
Language is the ground of being and the world is the text that
comprises a large number of signifiers that are always at play.
Derrida discusses the binaries of structuralism which are
in hierarchical order, in which the first term is privileged over the
other. These binaries are not true representations of the external
reality, rather they are simply constructions. Any signified is also
not fixed. Signified also seeks meaning. When signified seeks
meaning, it becomes a signifier.
So there is a chain of signifiers but there is no constant
existence of the signified. It means there is no centre, no margin
and no totality. As a result, meaning is not determined in the text.
There is no single stable meaning. Since signifiers do not refer to
a thing but themselves, a text does not give any fixed meaning.
In such a situation, multiple meanings are possible. Hence, a sign
is only a chain of signifiers.
Saussure states that meaning in language is understood
through difference without fixed terms. Saussurean differences
operate at two levels-signifier (form or expression) and signified
(concept). Derrida is not against the term signified; however, he
puts it under erasure, which is a device used to show that it exists
but needs close or critical examination. Since the word is put
under scrutiny, it is crossed out. Since the word exists it remains
legible but it is crossed. Derrida argues that difference will mean
presence; both entities are present, but not everything is present
in the language system. Moreover, what is present is elusive.
In an attempt to capture the signified (the concept or
meaning of word) one keeps moving from one signifier (word or
form) to another signifier; one never gets to the signified; the
signified gets lost in the search and one keeps going in a circular
manner. One can mark the circularity of signifiers and how the

signified or meaning slips beneath the circularity of signifiers.

One may try defining simple words, but the definition would lead
to another sign.
This clearly shows that a sign is a sign of another sign with
no fixed meaning or signified. One cannot escape the process of
interpretation. While Saussure sees language as a closed system
where every word has its place and consequently its meaning,
Derrida wants to argue for language as an open system. There is
no place outside of language from where meaning can be
generated.
Derrida maintains that language is non-referential because
it does not refer to things in the world or the concepts of things,
but only to the play of signifiers that makes up language. Human
mind is made up of unstable and changing concepts and the
continual play of signifiers. Though these signifiers appear to be
stable, in fact they are unstable.
Every signifier produces other signifiers in a continuous
deferral or postponement of meaning. Though there is
continuous effort to find a stable meaning, it becomes impossible.
Moreover, it is not possible to go beyond the play of signifiers,
which is language
Derrida states that each signifier leaves only a mental
trace, which could be taken to be the meaning. The trace is made
up of differences by which a word is made. A word gets meaning
only because it is associated with a particular meaning. A cat is
different from a dog or any other animal; the colour red is
different from yellow or any other colour, the meaning of a word
is understood only from its difference from other words.
Therefore, a word would carry a trace of all signifiers it is not.
Trace is the mark of the absence of a presence, which is
“always already absent present.” Language is a play of signifiers
that continually defers meaning. If a word seems to acquire
meaning, it is the result of the differences among signifiers. The

meaning of a sign is always absent from it. Meaning cannot be

fixed and there is a constant shift between absence and presence
that takes place simultaneously. Derrida employs the term
differance to suggest the meaning that language seems to convey.
Derrida’s Concept of Differance
Derrida points out that instead of “-ence” in the term
difference, he uses “-ance” to indicate the fusion of two senses
of the French verb differer-to be different and to defer-
postponement and coins the term differance to express not only
difference but also the endless postponement; the endless
deferral. Derrida has no use for differences that are cut out once
and for all in a closed or static structure.
According to Derrida, language is structured as an endless
deferral (postponement) of meaning and any search for the
essential, absolute stable meaning, which is called
transcendental signified, must therefore be considered
metaphysical. There is no fixed element, no fundamental units,
no transcendental signified that is meaningful in itself, which
escapes the ceaseless interplay of linguistic deferral and
difference.
Transcendental Signified
Derrida uses the term to mean a reality which is
independent of language. Transcendental signified refers to an
essential, absolute, stable meaning which is beyond the play of
language and according to Derrida, the transcendental signified
does not exist. The double sense of differance, which is to be
different and to postpone points to two aspects. On the one hand,
a text provides the ‘effect’ of having a significance, which is the
outcome of its difference. On the other hand, this extended
significance can never come to rest in an actual presence.

This means that there is no transcendental signified. Hence, one

can never, in any instance of speech or writing, have a
demonstrably fixed or desirable present meaning.
Section 3
Derrida’s Criticism of Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss is a French anthropologist and
ethnologist whose work is significant for the development of
structuralism and structural anthropology. Derrida takes up for
discussion Lévi-Strauss’ structural study of myths. Being a
structuralist, Strauss looks at all the aspects of culture in terms of
binary oppositions, that is pairs of ideas, which are opposites. In
Lévi-Strauss’ works, there is a constant opposition between
nature and culture. Nature stands for something inborn as
opposed to culture, which is law, education, art, society and so
on.
In Lévi-Strauss’ book The Elementary Structure of
Kinship he defines nature as universal and spontaneous that is not
dependent on any particular culture, rule or norm. Culture
depends on a system of norms regulating society and is capable
of varying from one social structure to another. He soon
encounters a problem, a scandal, that is something that no longer
tolerates the nature or culture opposition. This scandal is the
incest prohibition.
The incest prohibition is universal; one can call it natural
but at the same time it is also a system of norms and rules
(prohibition) and in this sense it could be called cultural also.
This example reveals that language bears within itself the
necessity of its own critique.
Lévi-Strauss’ central concept is flawed because the binary
opposition itself is proven to be unstable. The opposition between
nature and culture, which is presumed to be self-evident, becomes
obliterated or disputed. There is no scandal except in the interior

of a system of concepts sanctioning the difference between nature

and culture.
Lévi-Strauss speaks of bricolage in his essay “The
Savage Mind”. The bricoleur is the one who uses the means at
hand, that is the instruments he finds at his disposition around
him, those which are already there, which had not been conceived
with an eye to the operation for which they are to be used and to
which one tries by trial and error to adapt them and does not
hesitate to change them whenever it appears necessary or try
several of them at once.
Bricolage is therefore a critical language itself. Gerard
Genette states that bricolage could be applied almost word for
word to criticism and especially to literary criticism. The
Bricoleur uses the tools at hand through intricate mechanisms and
networks of subversion.
For instance, although Lévi-Strauss discovered the
scandal, he sometimes continued to use the binary opposition of
nature and culture as a methodological tool and to preserve as an
instrument that the truth value he criticises. Lévi- Strauss
discusses bricolage not only as an intellectual exercise but also
as “mythopoetical activity”, which relates to the making of a myth
or myths.
Section 4
Engineer/ Bricoleur Binary
Lévi-Strauss contrasts the bricoleur with the engineer.
The engineer designs buildings which have to be stable. So
structures which have little or no play are built. The engineer sees
himself as the centre of his own discourse. He is in fact the
originator of his own discourse. The liberal humanist may also
be viewed as an engineer in this respect, for the humanist
discourse is essentially a centered discourse.

According to Derrida, the engineer is only a myth

produced by the bricoleur and points out the drawback in Lévi-
Strauss’ definition of an engineer. He argues that it is impossible
to have a pure discourse, which would break with all the received
historical discourses. If bricolage is the necessity of borrowing
one’s concepts from the text of heritage, which may be coherent
or otherwise then it must be said that every discourse is a
bricolage.
When it is admitted that every discourse is bound by a
certain bricolage, the very idea of bricolage is menaced. One
realises that both the engineer and the scientist are also species of
the bricoleur. Thus the binary opposition engineer/bricoleur
undermines itself and the difference from which the terms have
taken their meaning decomposes itself.
Lévi-Strauss abandons all references to a centre, a subject,
a privilege reference or an origin. The theme of decentering could
be followed throughout the book The Raw and the Cooked that
Derrida criticises what Lévi-Strauss mentions of his
mythologicals. In the book, Lévi-Strauss mentions two important
points:
a) The Bororo myth, which he employs in the book as
“reference myth” is only a forced transformation of other
myths originating either in the same society or in societies
more or less far removed. So, the reference myth does not
depend on its typical character but on its irregular position in
the midst of a group.
b) There is no unity or absolute source of the myth. There can
be no source of myth. It cannot have an absolute subject or
an absolute centre. Lévi-Strauss says that myths themselves
rest on second order codes. The first order codes being those
which language consists of. His book on myths is of a third
order code. So it can be called the myth of mythology. The
absence of a centre is here the absence of a subject and the
absence of an author. Therefore, Lévi-Strauss insists that

totalisation is useless and impossible. Derrida concludes by
saying that language itself excludes totalisation, therefore the
field of language is the field of free play.
Section 5
Mythical Thought and Bricolage
Mythical thought or the thinking that creates myths
expresses itself within a heterogeneous but limited repertoire of
the odd man’s left over from a variety of human endeavours. Its
themes are a subset of a wider culture and already have their own
meaning, but they can be rearranged in newer combinations and
contexts.
Mythical thought uses them because it has nothing else to
hand and cobbles them together to create new myths and stories
through a process of intellectual bricolage. Bricolage is not a
primitive form of thought that has transcended through evolution,
but a fundamental aspect of human intellectual activity and all
societies use it to create myths.
Lévi-Strauss’ argument is that his discourse on myth
assumes a mythopoetic function and not an empirical one. His
mythologicals are opposed to philosophic or epistemic
discourses, which are founded on a basic principle or argument
and which are tested by proof or evidence. His mythologicals that
are acentric discourses could be considered ethonographic
bricolage.
Mythopoetical Activity
Lévi-Strauss discusses bricolage not only as an
intellectual exercise but also as mythopoetic activity. He attempts
to work out a structured study of myths, but realises this is not
possible and instead creates what he calls his own myth of the
mythologies – a third order code.

Derrida points out that Lévi-Strauss’ reference myth of

the Bororo myth does not hold in terms of its functionality as a
reference because this choice becomes arbitrary and instead of
being dependent on typical character, it derives from irregularity.
Hence Derrida concludes that “violence which consists in
centring a language, which is describing an acentric structure,
must be avoided”.
According to Derrida, in traditional conceptualisation,
totalisation cannot happen as there is always too much one can
say and even more that exist which needs to be talked or written
about. However, Derrida argues that non-totalisation needs to be
conceptualised not on the basis of finitude of discourse incapable
of mastering an infinite richness, but along the concept of free
play.
It is finite language which excludes totalisation because
language is actually made up of infinite signifiers and signifieds
functioning interchangeably and arbitrarily, thereby opening up
possibilities for infinite play and substitution. Though the field
of language is limiting, there cannot be a finite discourse limiting
that field.
Free-play
Derrida extends Saussure’s insights to show that
language, words and science are meaningful through a network
of oppositions that relate science to each other. A sign is neither
constituted by reference to some substantive independent thing
nor by identity to some signified.
A sign is constituted by its difference from other signs.
Therefore, in language systems, the sign is relational and not
substantive. There is no extra-linguistic world to which language
refers to attain meaning because its meaningfulness is differential
and relational. Language can be described as a system of

functions, relations and differences and not as referential or

representational of some “other”, which exists outside language.
The phonemes in speech are not atoms or substantive
identities or identifiable essences. They are only relations of
differences and oppositions and hence a sign becomes meaningful
only in relation to other signs surrounding it and situating it. Signs
are meaningful neither because they carry a fixed substandard
meaning nor because they refer to an external object.
The signs signify because they are involved in a system
of patterns and relations established by conventions and
constitute language as a fabric of difference. Signs exist only
within a system and do not pre-exists outside the system as
discrete elements.
The world, the self and consciousness are constructed by
language. In rhetorical, figurative language, the self and world
are consequently understood as results of language. Paul de Man
has compared such a differential conception of the system of
language with music. He argues that signs in music exist in a
system of relations.
Music, like language, is a play of relationships. The signs
of music are not grounded in any substance. The signs have no
assurance of existence outside music. They only exist in
difference from other signs. In language, there is only the play of
differences because the sign operates as a trace and not as a self-
present sign.
Free-play is the disruption of presence. The presence of
an element is always a signifying and substitutive reference
inscribed in a system of differences and the movement of a chain.
Free-play is always an interplay of absence and presence, but if it
is to be radically conceived, free-play must be conceived before
the alternative of presence and absence. Being must be conceived
of as presence or absence beginning with the possibility of free
play and not the other way round.

Section 6
Supplementarity
Derrida explains the possibility of this free play through
the concept of supplementarity. He says: “This movement of the
free play permitted by the lack, the absence of the centre or
origin, is the movement of supplementarity. One cannot
determine the centre, the sign which supplements it, which takes
its place in its absence because this sign adds itself, occurs in
addition over and above, comes as a supplement.”
Supplementarity thus involves infinite substitutions of the
centre, which is an absence that leads to the movement of play.
This becomes possible because of the lack in the signified. There
is always an overabundance of the signifier to the signified. So a
supplement would be an addition to what the signified already
means. Derrida also introduces the notion of how this meaning is
always deffered, and how the signifier and the signified are
interchangeable in a complex network of free play.
Supplement
Derrida discusses Lévi-Strauss’ use of “ration
supplementaire” (supplementarity) in his texts. Derrida
elaborates the notion of supplement in Of Grammatology, in
which he discusses the works of the French novelist and
philosopher Rousseau. Derrrida points out Rousseau’s use of the
term supplement in relation to writing.
According to Rousseau, languages are made to be spoken,
and writing serves only as a supplement to speech. Rousseau
condemns writing as “the destruction of presence and as disease
of speech”. Derrida points out that both Lévi-Strauss and
Rousseau employ the term supplement to mean “that which adds
to or enriches something”.
To Derrida, supplement in French, has a different
connotation and this second interpretation better describes the

nature of signification. Derrida defines supplement “as

something which is added on as further enrichment” and also
“that which makes up for something that is missing”. In the
chapter “That Dangerous Supplement”, Derrida proves that the
supplement is both a surplus-a plenitude enriching another
plenitude, and also that which makes up for something missing;
that which fills a void or lack.
In the second reading, supplement is not simply added to
the possibility of presence, “its place is assigned in the structure
by the mark of an emptiness.” This means, there is no meaning
present in the language system. What is present is elusive and
hence the significance mentioned can never come to rest in an
actual presence, in the transcendental signified.
Meaning is the result of a self-effacing trace, which is the
trace of all the non-present differences from other signs. Each
sign is only the post print or trace of what is absent. No sign is
complete in itself; it depends on another and thus the chain of
signification is extended infinitely.
Derrida explores the strange but necessary cohabitation of
the two meanings of the term supplement, which entails a crazy
logic for it means both addition and substitution. It is neither
inside nor outside and yet both inside and outside at the same
time. It forms a part, without being apart and belongs to without
belonging.
Derrida says, “the supplement is maddening because it is
neither presence or absence.” The supplement cannot be thought
of under the rubric of ontology, the philosophy that focuses on
the concept of being. In Spectres of Marx, Derrida says that
supplement is a matter of ‘hauntology’ that is the supplement
“haunts”. It leaves a trace, without itself being present or absent
and it transforms the terrain. He argues that the effects of
supplement are almost inconceivable to reason.

Aporia
Derrida notices the contradictions that are found in the
way Rousseau uses the words “culture” and “nature” by
mentioning that when Rousseau uses the word nature to denote
the innocence of the self it is already corrupted by concept of
culture and existence and similarly culture is also corrupted by
nature.
He employs the term aporia to elaborate the paradoxes
and contradictions found in such words, where “a point of
undecidability, which locates the site at which the text most
obviously undermines its own rhetorical structure, dismantles, or
deconstructs itself” is seen.
Derrida elaborates qualities such as giving, hospitality,
forgiving and mourning, which suggest the condition of their
possibility simultaneously points to the state of their
impossibility. He uses the word aporia to denote “an impasse” or
a contradiction that is found in a text, an unbeatable deadlock or
“double bind” of conflicting and contradictory meanings that are
“undecidable”.
Totalisation and Supplementarity

Derrida mentions that totalisation becomes impossible not
only because the infinitive of a field cannot be covered by a finite
glance or a finite discourse as Lévi-Strauss argues, but because
the field itself is characterised by free-play, that is it is a field of
infinite substitutions within a finite framework. The field permits
infinite substitutions because it is finite and something is missing
from it. That missing unit is the centre. Therefore, the movement
of free- play is permitted by the lack – the absence of a centre or
origin.
The movement of free-play also becomes the movement
of supplementarity that includes both addition and substitution.
The centre or origin being absent, another sign supplements

it(addition); another sign takes its place in its absence

(substitution). It also supplements a lack on the part of the
signified. In this sense, the sign becomes an addition. It adds
something to the chain of signification.
Derrida points out that Lévi-Strauss uses the word ration
supplementaire in his Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss
and does not employ the term supplementary in the sense
Derrida does. Further, Lévi- Strauss does not explain or
emphasise the double sense of the word, but merely points to the
symbolic content of the signs. He speaks about the “super
abundance of signifier.” The super-abundance is the result of a
lack, which must be supplemented.
The Two interpretations of Interpretation of Structure and

Sign and Free-Play.
Derrida observes that there are two interpretations of
interpretation of structure and sign and free-play. The first is that
which seeks to decipher a truth or an origin that is free from free-
play and from the order of the sign. The second is that which is
no longer turned towards the origin that affirms free-play and tries
to pass beyond man and humanism. Man is the name of that being
who, throughout the history of metaphysics and history has
dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin
and the end of the game.
These two interpretations of interpretation are absolutely
irreconcilable. Together, they share the field called the human
sciences. Today, there is no question of choosing between them.
Choice is trivial; one has to conceive the common ground and the
difference of this irreducible difference. The concept of free-
play, Derrida believes, also stands in tension with history.
Although history was thought to be a critique of
philosophy of presence, as a kind of shift, it has paradoxically
become complicit “with a teleological and eschatological

metaphysic.” Free-play is always the interplay of presence and
absence. However, Derrida argues that a radical approach would
not be the taking of presence or absence as ground for play.
Instead the possibility of play should be the premise for presence
or absence.
Derrida concludes this seminal work with the hope that
one proceeds towards an interpretation of interpretations, where
“one is no longer turned towards the origin, affirms free play and
tries to pass beyond man and humanism.” He says that one needs
to borrow Nietzsche’s idea of affirmation to stop seeing play as
limiting and negative. Nietzsche’s pronouncement “God is dead”
need not be read as a destruction of a cohesive structure but can
be seen as a chance that opens up the possibility of diverse
plurality and multiplicity.
Language, Meaning and Deconstruction

Derrida mentions that human beings also form a part of
language. Human beings are produced by the language they
speak. Language is unstable just as human beings are. The notion
of a stable image is the illusion provided by culture. Culture is
also unstable because it is written in language. Human beings
have no stable identity and they are selves that are divided
because they consist of oppositions and conflicts, and remain
fragmented by fear, anxieties, and illusions.
Through language, the contradictions and conflicts of
culture are internalised. In fact, human beings are a product of
the fragmented and divided language that constitutes every
individual. Human identity is invented, which is determined by
culture.
Language is dynamic and slippery. Therefore, meaning is
not fixed. There is no central agency that controls human actions
and human identity is invented or constructed. Therefore,
literature, which is created by language, is unstable. meaning is

not found in the text so that the reader could consume or discover
it.
The reader creates meaning through the process of reading
but the meanings created are unstable. Meanings generated
constantly play with other meanings created and there arises
endless possibilities of meaning that overlap each other. Every
reading is the product of the culture of the reader and the system
of beliefs inherent within each culture.
Deconstruction helps us realise the undecidability of the
text, which points out to the complexities and uncertainties as
well as contradictions inherent in the text. The reader and the text
are both caught within language, which is slippery and the notion
of a fixed meaning is just impossible.
All literary and non-literary texts are constituted of
language. Meanings interfere in multiple ways to generate infinite
possibilities of understanding a text and realise the conflicting
ideologies of the text. A deconstructive strategy of reading a text
looks out for conflicting and contradictory meanings to what is
regarded to be the main theme in conventional readings or
interpretations.
The text itself does not recognise the contradictions
inherent in it. Deconstruction does not resolve the tensions in the
text or tend to harmonise them. Instead it encourages such
tensions because the nature of language is such that it does not
allow resolutions. Language is made up of such contradictions
and instabilities. Deconstruction enhances modes of thinking and
the text deconstructs itself. Meanings lie dispersed and a
deconstructive reading of a text only momentarily catches hold of
the scattered meanings.

Literature and Deconstruction

The conventional idea about the specificity, purity,
originality and decisiveness of literature is challenged when the
principles of deconstruction are applied to it. Literature neither
conveys any message nor is it written with a particular intention.
A literary work only reconstructs or rearranges words that already
exist and have been used earlier.
A literary work is not inspired by anything outside itself,
and it does not have any particular meaning. The hierarchy
between the literary and the non-literary depends on the extent to
which it is creatively used. Derrida is of the opinion that if all
kinds of language reverse the hierarchy to disturb understanding,
then the notion of literature as a creative and communicative
discipline would be futile.
In the traditional sense, a literary work is a unified entity
with a finite meaning, but a deconstructive analysis of the text
reveals an underlying reversible order. A text, in this sense is
devoid of literariness, which disagrees with the notion that the
meaning of a literary work rests in the form of the work as argued
by Roman Jakobson, the Russian formalist critic. Meaning in a
text is provisional and it can never be realised completely. The
literary critic has to find out how a literary text disrupts the
apparent hierarchy and suggests multiple viewpoints.

Differences between Structuralism and Poststructuralism
Poststructuraliam
Structuralism
1.Gives importance to 1.Rules are not important. It

rules of a system. Its is analytical and persuasive
principal objective is to in approach. Since it is not
find out the basic codes, conclusive, it does not have
rules and structures that a particular objective.
are common in cultural Poststructuralism does not
practices. In literature, it believe in any ultimate,
seeks to find out the set stable and universal set of
of codes that characterise rules. It is interested in the
literature and help actual processes that
understand its meaning. underlie cultural practices
and not their meaning.
2. Anti-humanist and 2. Its approach is also anti-

anti-empiricist in humanist and anti-
approach, it refutes that empiricist and it completely
the author owns the rejects the role of the author
meaning of the literary as the sole contributor of the
text. It challenges the meaning of the text. The
notion that reality exists notion of reality is also
prior to its expression questioned.
and that literature
reflects reality.
3. Literature is a system 3. It exposes the

of signs. It tries to find indeterminacies, gaps and
out the rules or codes discontinuities in the sign
that unite and control system and within literary

literary texts. It opposes theories. It does not accept

the view that literature is the differences between
the distinctive literary and non-literary.
conception of language.
4. Language is a system 4. The structuralist view of

of signs. Language is not language is disregarded.
referential but relational Language is not a stable
and differential. Mental system but an endless play
concepts are referred. It of signs. It refers neither to
notices the differences objects in the material
between signs and world nor mental concepts
relates the signifier to the but to other signs only.
signified. Language is self-referential.
5. A signifier is linked to 5. The signifier and the

a particular signified signified cannot be related.
because of social The signified as the ultimate
convention. Users of the meaning is rejected.
language associate a Signifiers relate to other
certain word with a signifiers and not to any
certain object or signified. Poststructuralism
meaning that is due to engages in the continuous
convention formed out play of signification and not
of common consent. in discovering meaning.
6. Meaning is derived 6. The meaning of a text

from the arbitrary use of cannot be deciphered
signs and the differential because a text does not
position of the signs contain a fixed or ultimate
within a system. meaning. Hierarchies are
reversed and signs
continually postpone and
differentiate meaning.
Meaning is transitional and

this leads to several other
meanings.
7. It does not consider 7.Poststructuralism

the intrinsic features of employs differance and the
the literary text such as philosophy of
plot, character, theme, deconstruction, and
setting, tone and the postulates that the text is
other related elements, unstable without a
but examines the literary determinable meaning.
text as a system based on
several patterns that
reveal its meaning.
8. Gives importance to 8. A stable system with a

the notion of a stable determinable meaning does
structure that is made up not exist because a stable
of codes or rules that are centre that regulates the
interrelated and they system is non-existent. The
work together. The critic literary text therefore is not
tries to discover these a structured unit, which
structures in a scientific contains meaning.
manner. The structure is
stable because of the
presence of the centre
that controls the entire
system and makes it
meaningful.
9. The world is 9. Binary oppositions rest

understood through on an unequal and a
binary oppositions and privileged classification.
literature is also studied One element of the pair in
through the systematic the binary is considered

observation of binary superior to the other.
oppositions which rest Conversely, both these
on a hierarchical elements are not entirely
arrangement of the opposite because they share
elements of the binary. certain qualities that blur
the boundaries between
them. This breaking down
of boundaries is evident in
literary texts and in all
discourses.
10. Unity, integrity, and 10. Ambiguities and

completeness in a text disruptions are found in
are discovered by the every text that is open-
governing rules and ended with multiple
codes within the meanings to be uncovered.
structure.
Conclusion
Deconstruction enables the reader to think beyond what is
considered absolute knowledge and move into the realm of the
unheard or something not thought about previously. To
deconstruct is to engage in the activities of ‘to do’ and ‘to undo’
endlessly. ‘To undo’ does not mean to destroy, but to decentre
and constantly destabilise the structure in order to demystify what
has been received as knowledge.
To deconstruct is to examine closely in order to dismantle
conventional hierarchies in the given system and arrive at an
exactly opposite proposition. The concept of endless ‘free-play’
does not mean that serious reading is not required or that
deconstruction is a sort of hermeneutic(interpretive) jubilant
activity free from the conventions of critical reading and

understanding. Deconstruction is a meticulous activity of
realising and stripping off of the possibility of the power of the
text. The text, which is projected as giving rise to multiple
meanings remains disunited with shifts and breaks,
contradictions, silences, “aporias” and “fault-lines”. The text
reads against itself because meanings contrary to the surface
meanings emerge.
References
● Abrams, M.H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary
of Literary Terms. 11th ed. Cengage Learning, 2015.
● Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to
Literary and Cultural Theory. 3rd ed. Viva Books, 2014.
● Barthes, Roland. Mytholgies, translated by A. Lavers. Hill
and Wang,1967.
● ---. Elements of Semiology, translated by A. Lavers and C.
Smith, Hill and Wang, 1967.
● ---. S/Z, translated by R. Howard. Blackwell, 1974.
● ---. The Pleasure of the Text, translated by R. Howard.
1973, Hill and Wang. 1975.
● ---. “The Death of the Author.” Image-Music-Text,
translated by Stephen Heath. Fontana P, 1977, pp.142-
48.
● ---. “From Work to Text.” Image-Music-Text, translated by
Stephen Heath. Fontana P, 1977, pp.155-64.

● Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. Introduction to

Literature, Criticism and Theory.3rd ed. Pearson
Education Inc., 2013.
● Buchanan, Ian. Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory.
Oxford UP, 2018.
● Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and
Criticism after Structuralism. Routledge and Paul Kegan,
1982.
● Daiches, David. Critical Approaches to Literature.2nd ed.,
Orient Longman,1993.
● Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign and Play in the
Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Critical Theory and
Practice since 1965, edited by Hazard Adams and Leroy
Searle. U of Florida P, 1986.
● Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 3rd
ed. U of Minnesota P, 2008.
Publishing, 2005.
● Harmon, William, and Hugh Holman. A Handbook to
Literature. 10th ed. Pearson Education Inc., 2009.
Trinity P, 2008.
● Kulkarni, Anand B., and Ashok G. Chaskar. An
Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism. Orient
Blackswan, 2015.

● Lechte, John. Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From

Structuralism to Post-humanism. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2017.
● Malik, R.S., and Jagdish Batra. A New Approach to
Literary Theory and Criticism. Atlantic Publishers, 2014.
● Mills. Sara. Michel Foucault. Routledge, 2003.
● Nayar, Pramod K. From Text to Theory: A Handbook of
Literary and Cultural Theory. Viva Books, 2017.
● ---. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From
Structuralism to Ecocriticism. Dorling Kindersley, 2010.
● Norris, Christopher. Derrida. Fontana, 1987.
● ---. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. 2nd ed.
Routledge, 1991.
● Royle, Nicholas, editor. Deconstruction: A User’s Guide.
Macmillan, 2000.
Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 5th ed.
Pearson Education, 2005.
Web Links
● https://www.jstor.org/stable/4546152?seq=1
● https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-476-
00406-2_8
● https://www.academia.edu/7743060/Key_Concepts_of_P
ost-structuralism_and_Deconstruction
Questions
I. Answer the following in a paragraph of 100 words
1. Derrida’s notion of ‘supplement’
2. The concept of ‘trace’in Poststructuralism
3. Comment on the concept of ‘free play’
4. Transcendental signified
5. Engineer/ Bricoleur binary
II. Answer the following questions as an essay of 300
words
6. Discuss Derrida’s notions of ‘Difference’, ‘aporia’,
‘supplement’ and ‘free play’.
7. Discuss the main ideas in the essay “Structure, Sign and
Play in the Discourse of Social Sciences”.
8. How does Derrida critique the foundations of western
metaphysics in his essay “Structure, Sign and Play in the
Discourse of Social Sciences”?

The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I

as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience
Jacques Lacan
Objectives:
● Frame the main principles of psychoanalysis.
● Outline the contribution of the major theorists Sigmund
Freud and Jacques Lacan.
● Comprehend the concepts Id, Ego, Superego, dream
mechanism, Oedipus Complex, Unconscious, Mirror
Stage, Imaginary, Symbolic and Real psychic realms, Ego
formation and constructions of selfhood, Jouissance, and
unconscious is structured like a language.
● Elaborate the essay “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the
Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Experience”
● Understand the significance of Jacques Lacan in literary
criticism.
Introduction
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) is a psychoanalyst who is at
times referred to as “French Freud”. He practised psychiatry and
psychoanalysis throughout his career, and received acclaim as the
original interpreter of the work of the Austrian neurologist
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He introduced Freud to the France
academia in 1930. Lacan’s collection of seminal essays and
lectures is published in Écrits (1966). The essay “The Mirror

Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in
Psychoanalytic Experience” is included in this collection.
Some of the other important essays included are “Logical
Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty: A New
Sophism” (1945); “Presentation on Psychical Causality” (1946);
and “Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis” (1948). He established
the organisation The Freudian School of Paris (1964-1980), but
later he dispersed it because he could not follow the principles of
Freud rigorously.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Lacan became acquainted
with the structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure, and later
connected with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roman Jakobson. The
Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), written by Lévi-Strauss
introduced structuralism in France, and its principles questioned
the theoretical foundations of existentialism in France.
While Lévi-Strauss “structuralised” anthropology,
Ronald Barthes did the same for literary-cultural studies and
Louis Althusser for Marxism. In a similar manner, it could be
deciphered that Lacan structuralised Freudian psychoanalysis,
which he undertook as “return to Freud” and announced that “the
unconscious is structured like a language,” which he establishes
in his essay “The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious.”
Lacan stresses the importance of language as forming part
of the unconscious, and he tried to introduce the study of language
into psychoanalytic theory. His teachings and writings examine
the significance of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious both in
theory and analysis, and the connections that the discipline makes
with several disciplines initiates new dimensions into the study.
Psychoanalysis
A psychological approach to literature is evident in the
psychological processes behind poetic creation as formulated by
Sir Philip Sidney, the role of imagination by Coleridge and

Wordsworth and I.A.Richards’ study of poetry that involves
psychological communication.
Psychoanalysis as a disciple was initiated by the Austrian-
German psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who
examined the psychology of human sexuality and interpreted
dreams. Psychoanalyis is different from traditional psychology
and psychiatry. Psychology examines human behaviour under
several circumstances. Psychiatry is a clinical or therapeutic
approach to severe mental illness.
Psychoanalysis delves into the unconscious realm of the
human mind and tries to understand and discover the unknown
disturbances. Psychoanalytic criticism locates texts as sites of
‘desires’ that are hidden, the ‘drives’ that the characters possess
and the ‘unconscious’ in these texts.
A psychoanalytic study or critical approach delves into
the nature of the human psyche that is manifested through the
exploration into the text and the characters where the deeper,
concealed, and suppressed meanings lie. The language of the
unconscious, the suppressed sexuality and the hidden desires in
literary or cultural texts, in art as well as fiction is explored.
Psychoanalytic criticism reveals the ‘subject’ of the
author, which gets manifested in the form of images, language
and the codes in the author’s work. It relates to the authors’
intention of hiding their desires and drives, and the “cultural
codes” that compel them to do so (Nayar 64).
As a discipline, psychoanalysis developed due to the
followers of Freud namely, Dr. Alfred Adler (1870-1937), Dr.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) and Otto Rank (1884-1939). Along with
these followers, Freud developed the Viennese Psychoanalytic
Society. Alfred Adler is recognised for the notion of inferiority
complex.

Freud contends that self-assertion and struggle to acquire

power are predominant traits of human behaviour and everybody
in the world suffers from an inferiority complex. Adler disagreed
with Freud’s theory of sexuality and the notion of Oedipus
complex and left the group.
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist applied the principles of
psychoanalysis to study the condition of schizophrenia. He too
departed from this group because he disagreed with Freud on the
view of sexuality, the libidio. He argues that libido is not entirely
based on sexuality. He coined the term collective unconscious
replacing Freud’s notion of individual unconscious. He states that
collective unconscious works as a racial memory wherein
archetypes in the form of images, rituals and beliefs of a society
are transmitted to successive generations. Later, he formed
Analytical Psychology.
Freud’s ideas on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and
Shakespeare’s Hamlet are noteworthy. He made a psychoanalytic
study of the novella Gradiva by the German writer Wilhelm
Jensen. Freud’s paper on the novels of Dostoevsky titled
“Dostoevsky and Parricide” (1928) examines Dostoevsky’s
inclination for violence and murder in his novels as the outcome
his own disposition.
The paper “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” (1907)
elaborates his views on literature and literary criticism through
the perspective of psychoanalysis. He argues that literary creation
is the writers’ realisation of unsatisfied sexual desires. When the
repressed desires of the writers are not satisfied by any means,
they move away from reality and get involved in “phantasy”,
which is creative writing.
Freud’s radical ideas promoted fresh insights to interpret
literary works. The connection between psychoanalysis and
literary criticism was emphasised by the British psychologist and
Freud’s biographer Ernest Alfred Jones (1879-1958). He

applied psychoanalysis to interpret several literary works in the

light of Freud’s ideas. He wrote monographs on Keats’ poems
and the psychoanalytic piece “The Oedipus-Complex as an
Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive” based on
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which was later expanded into the book
Hamlet and Oedipus (1949).
Sigmund Freud and the Psychoanalytic Focus

Freud initiates the discipline of psychoanalysis wherein
language plays a decisive role in obscuring, disclosing, or altering
hidden anxieties, desires and fears. Since culture disallows the
open expression of desires, these are often expressed through
gestures, sounds, facial expressions, and writing.
The unconscious finds an opening in language to express
the undisclosed desires and fears. Freud emphasises sexual
desires that are always controlled or inhibited by society and
culture that are important so far as the making of the unconscious
is concerned.
According to Freud, the human psyche is divided into
three constituents:
1. the ego: This is the conscious mind, which is the seat of
rationality, logical thinking and decision-making. It
negotiates between the unconscious id and the superego.
2. the superego: This is the human conscience, which is
derived from social milieu and cultural codes. It controls
the working of the conscious mind.
3. the id: This is the unconscious, the space where basic
instincts, desires, dreams, fantasies, emotions and all other
aspects that do not get revealed by the conscious mind get
pushed into and lie dormant.

Freud mentions that the unconscious is the area in the human

psyche, where all the inexpressible desires, dreams and fantasies
go into. The process by which desires, sexual in particular, get
pushed into the unconscious so that they do not affect day-to-day
activities and the conscious mind is known as repression. Desires
that are prohibited or inhibited and whose expression can lead to
guilt are buried deep down in the unconscious through the process
of repression.
However, these hidden aspects do not remain repressed
for long. The unconscious surfaces occasionally at specific
moments in the form of images, jokes or dreams and even as a
form of art (Nayar 65). Therefore, art becomes the vehicle
through which the unconscious is exposed through its themes and
images and work of the psychoanalyst is to uncover these hidden
images and desires.
Pleasure Principle and Reality Principle

Freud states that the tension between two fundamental
principles affect human life. When the acts of a person are driven
or controlled by the need to obtain pleasure it is called the
pleasure principle. The reality principle realises that pleasures
cannot be fulfilled in the way it is desired, hence the search for
alternative ways to attain pleasure is the only way out.
Freud states that human subjectivity regards sexuality as
the primary drive, which he calls libido. Sex drive is the main
desire that gets repressed. The sexual identity of a person is
formed from the combination of expression of desires and their
suppression. This is best revealed by the Oedipus complex.
Oedipus Complex
Freud explains that for the male child, the problem with
sexual desires begins with the child’s dependence on the mother.
The child’s love for its mother is predominant in its psyche during
these early stages. It soon realises that the father is its opponent
for the mother’s love.
The child imagines that the father obstructs its expression
of love through a threat, which he terms castration. The child
imagines that the female child lacks the penis because it is already
castrated for the excessive love of the mother. The male child
develops thoughts of killing its father so that there will be nobody
to obstruct the love for the mother. This fantasy is called the
Oedipus Complex
The child observes that since the father can castrate the
child for excessive desire, the father exercises greater control and
authority in the relationship among the child, the mother and the
father. So, it begins to look up to the father as the source of
complete power, authority and desire and shifts its attention to the
father. The desire for the mother is sealed away in the
unconscious when the child accepts the law that he shall not make
love to his mother.
This rule becomes the starting point of the division
between the conscious and the unconscious. The Oedipus
complex is the origin of all desires that are suppressed. Every
desire, repression and anxiety is based on the condition called
taboo. The child is unable to overcome the complex, and closes
it away.
The expression of the repressed in art is manifested in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and in the fiction of Dostoevsky; the essay
“Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious” is read as the
expression of the repressed in jokes; and The Interpretaion of
Dreams in dreams.
Freud on Dreams
Freud mentions that analysis of dreams helps understand
the repressed desires in an individual. The unconscious does
function when the conscious mind is awake. So, it arises only

when the conscious is asleep. The unconscious desires reach a
certain level of attainment when they express themselves as
dreams, but they are inactive, which means, physically these
repressed desires are not executed. The suppressed desires are not
directly expressed by dreams. The condition where tension is
created between the power of the force of desire and the power of
the force of suppression is a dream (Nayar 67).
Dreams are codes that express themselves as complex
images to avoid the force of repression. The analyst has to
“decode” or translate the unclear expressions to understand what
desires and forbidden issues lie hidden in the person’s
unconscious.
Dreams therefore are the gateway to a person’s
unconscious, and they reveal the repressed desires. Dreams are a
form of language because they express repressed desires and the
unconscious. This language is called “dream work” by Freud, and
“is the mechanism of dreams” (Nayar 67).
The Two Main Elements of “Dream Work”

The dream work comprises two principal aspects: latent
dream content and manifest dream content. Latent dream
content refers to “the actual content of the unconscious” that tries
to find a way of expression and manifest dream content refers
to the expression of the content in the form of images or events in
a person’s dream (Nayar 67). It is seen that latent dream content
remains unclear within the manifest dream content because it is
hidden within complex structures and codes. Therefore, a
complete analysis of the manifest dream content has to be done
to bring out the latent dream content.

The Four Stages of Latent Dream Content

Freud mentions that the latent dream content goes through
four stages before it reveals itself in the manifest dream content:
Condensation, Displacement, Representation and
Representability and Secondary Revision.
1.Condensation: The latent content gets condensed in the
manifest dream. A situation may be expressed as a symbol in the
dream. Several events may be represented in the dream as one
particular symbol. The analyst has to search each element in order
to reveal the entire latent dream clearly.
2.Displacement: The latent dream content works through
associations formed between the person or thing or event that
express themselves as complex images and something else that
these images would get displaced for. This means Displacement
works through association. The quality of one gets displaced on
to another in the process of Displacement.
For example, in the poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, the
image of the Nazi officer appears. As the poem progresses, the
poet reveals that the Nazi soldier is actually a representation of
her father. The poet associates her authoritarian father with the
authoritarian Nazi officer. Therefore, the qualities of the
authoritarian father are displaced on to the Nazi soldier. In the
poem, the Nazi officer stands as a metaphor for her father.
3. Representation and Representability: The complex images

that appear in dreams are not grounded on reality in any way. So,
the latent dream content employs a certain type of language or
images that do not have any logical connection whatsoever.
Dreams obtain and make use of a language to represent several
elements that could also be opposed to it; yet, they exist together.

Phallic symbols like towers or poles that appear in dreams

represent the male organ. Here, there is no logical connection
between the image of the tower and the male organ. This is
because language that is formed between the image and what it
represents is not logically related, but the dream unifies them into
one (Nayar 68).
4. Secondary Revision: Though the dream is interpreted by the
dreamer, it undergoes a process of revision by the dreamer.
During this process, the conscious mind arranges the elements of
the dream into familiar themes or images, and ignores or “forgets”
the other elements. It could be established that in this stage, the
dreamer discards certain disturbing elements of the dream.
Freud explains that desires are expressed through art and
dreams, where suppression is avoided and the consciousness is
evaded when the repressed gets expressed. One of the major
attacks against psychoanalytic critics is that they analyse only the
carnal and the sexual aspects.
Jouissance
The French equivalent for enjoyment. This term has
frequently been used by Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva and
Jacques Lacan. Jouissance is used in contrast to pleasure in
critical theory as pleasure comes to an end but jouissance is
considered limitless.The meaning of jouissance rises to a loftier
plane than merely physical. “It is an orgasm of the mind or spirit
not just the body” (Buchanan274).
This difference is based on G.W.F.Hegel’s proposal of the
difference between Lust (pleasure) and Genuss (enjoyment) as
elaborated by Alexandre Kojève. In psychoanalysis, jouissance is
seen to go beyond pleasure that “risks death and courts disaster,”
(Buchanan 274) which means that jouissance cannot be
completely attained.
Lacan’s Theory of Subject

The idea of a unified subject has occupied the Western
thought system for some time. Lacan deconstructs the notion of a
unique selfhood and the idea of the subject as a stable
combination of consciousness. To know anything is to suppose a
unified consciousness that does the knowing. The medium
through which the unified subject recognises objects and truth in
syntax (Selden et al 166).
It is generally believed that an orderly syntax results in an
orderly mind. However, indulging in pleasure of diverse types
disrupts reason as mentioned by Plato. Taken together they are
called “desire.” New subject positions are created by social
discourses, and poetic language shows how these positions are
subverted. Therefore, “the subject is “in process” and is capable
of being other than it is” (166).
Lacan proposes the idea of the subject from “materialist
analysis of the ‘speaking subject’” (166), which is more
acceptable than the earlier notions from Romanticism, Marxism,
Formalism and Structuralism. According to the French structural
linguist and semiotician Émile Benveniste (1902-1976), ‘I’, ‘he’,
‘she’ and others are subject positions proposed by language.
When I speak, I refer to myself as ‘I’ and to the person to
whom I speak as ‘you’. When you reply, the persons are reversed
and ‘I’ becomes ‘you’. Communication takes place only through
this “strange reversibility of persons.” Hence, the ego which uses
the word ‘I’ is not the same as this ‘I’. When I mention,
“Tomorrow I leave for Canada”, the I in the statement is called
the “subject of the enunciation”, and the ego, which makes the
statement is the “subject of the enunciating.”
Lacan believes that human subjects enter a pre-existing
system of signifiers that retain meanings only within a language
system. The entry into language helps to find a subject position
only within a system of relations like male/female, father/mother

and others. This process and the stage which goes before it are
controlled by the unconscious.
Freud claims that during the earliest phases of infancy, the
drives do not aim at a particular object, but occupy the erotogenic
zones of the body: oral, anal and phallic zones. Before gender or
identity are recognised, only the “pleasure principle” remains.
The “reality principle” interrupts in the form of the father, who
threatens the male child’s desire for the mother, which is Oedipus
complex with a form of punishment called “castration”.
It is this repression of the male desire that makes the male
child recognise or identify both the position of the father and a
masculine role. In the case of the female child, the patriarchal law
develops the superego in the child. The repressed desires remain
in the unconscious and produce a completely split subject. This
force of desire is the unconscious.
The Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic States According

to Lacan
Similar to the three stages in infants: the oral, anal and
phallic stages that Freud discusses in relation to drives, Lacan
traces the path from infancy to adulthood by bringing in the three
concepts: need, demand and desire that almost relate to the three
stages of human development, namely the Real, the Imaginary,
and the Symbolic States respectively.
Lacan states that the infant begins as something attached
to its mother. So, the baby does not perceive any distinction
between self and other, itself and mother. The baby is a mere
“blob” that does not have the sense of self or possessing distinct
identity, and no sense of its body as a coherent, unified whole.
This blob is driven by the need for food, comfort, safety and so
on.
These needs are fulfilled by an object, and the baby in this
stage does not recognise any difference between it and anything
else. It does not recognise any part of the body because it does not
have any concept of a “whole person.” All are things that only
satisfy its needs.
This is the state of “nature” the baby is and it has to come
out of this stage so that culture can be formed. Both Freud and
Lacan mention that the infant must separate from its mother if it
has to enter into the civilised world. The moment of separation
necessitates some kind of loss.
When the child begins to realise its difference from its
mother, it forms a distinct entity and loses the primordial sense of
unity it earlier had. This is the element of the tragic built into
psychoanalytic theory by both Freud and Lacan. In order to
develop into a civilised adult, the loss of an original identity, “a
non-differentiation, an unselfhood” (Klages77) is intensely
needed.
According to Lacan, at this stage, when the infant has not
yet separated from its mother, it depends on objects for the
satisfaction of its needs only. It does not differentiate between
itself and the objects that satisfy its needs and exists in the sphere
of the Real.
The Real is the psychic realm where the original unity
exists. Hence, there is no lack, absence or loss. “The Real is all
fullness and completeness” (Klages 77) and in this realm all needs
of the infant are satisfied. Since absence or loss or lack does not
exist in the Real, language too is absent in this sphere. There are
only needs and satisfaction of the needs in this realm.
Lacan is of the opinion that language is needed only when
the object that is needed is absent. If the world is complete,
without any absence or emptiness, then language is not required.
Therefore, the Real is always beyond language and it cannot be
represented in language and therefore it gets lost forever when
one enters into language.

When the infant is somewhere between 06 and 18 months,

it begins to distinguish its body from everything else around it.
The baby’s requirements shift from needs to demands. Demands
do not require satisfaction with objects, but recognition or
attention or love from another.
The baby realises that it is separate from its mother when
she is not available at all times. It realises that there are things
outside that are not part of it. This way, the idea of other is
created. The infant does not possess the sense of the binary
opposition self/other as yet, because it has not formed a coherent
sense of self.
However, the child experiences separation and chances of
others around it, which makes it anxious, and the child
experiences a sense of loss. This is when the child demands a
reunion with the original state of completeness, and attachment
that it had in the Real. The child knows that it is impossible to
return to the Real because of the concept of the other.
Though the child does not want the other, but wants
return to the original sense of unity, it cannot do anything. The
child demands for fullness of the other that will prevent the lack
it experiences at this stage. This demand cannot be satisfied
because the lack, or absence, the sense of “other”ness is required
for the child if it has to become a self, “a subject in language, a
functioning cultural being” (Klages 79).
During the period from 06 to 18 months, the child cries to
meet its demands. It has neither understood its body nor knows
how to control its movements. The child experiences its body as
fragments or in parts. Sometimes it sucks its thumb and slowly
realises the different parts of its body. It looks at other people
around, observes their movements and this gives it the experience
of the complete. Through sight or vision, the child perceives the
fragments and places them together to form one complete whole.
This is the beginning of the mirror stage.

Sometimes, during this stage, the child will see itself in

the mirror. The child sees its reflection, turns back to its mother
or anybody else, then again at the mirror image. The repetition of
this activity and the constant prompting that the image is “you”
by others, gives the baby the sense that it is a unified whole.
Though the child has already perceived the wholeness
earlier, it now anticipates being whole. This anticipation gives it
the sense of self, the identity as a unified and separate, complete
entity or being. It realises the image of the child in the mirror is
its “self.” This identification is called misrecognition, or in
Lacan’s terms méconnaissance.
What the child sees in the mirror is only its image. When
the others address the child as “you”, this linguistic name, which
is the signifier gets along with the image of the child. This way,
the ““reality” of the connection between the child and its image,
between the signifier ‘I’ (or ‘you’) and the image, and between
the picture of the whole body in the mirror and the child’s sense
of itself as a whole integrated being” becomes certain. The child
considers the image in the mirror as the whole of its own entire
being, that is its “self”. This way by which the child
misrecognises its self in the image in the mirror creates the ego,
the thing that speaks out ‘I’.
The significance of this misrecognition is that it creates an
“armor” of the subject, which is only an illusion or misperception
of wholeness, integration, and totality that envelops and guards
the fragmented body. Lacan suggests that the ego, self, or ‘I’ is
only an imaginary
“identification with an external image, and not an internal sense
of separate wholeness.” Therefore, this phase of demand, which
is the mirror stage is called the Imaginary realm.
In this Imaginary realm, the child creates the idea of a self
through an imaginary identification with the mirror image. In this
realm, both conscious and unconscious images are found. Lacan

mentions that the images in this stage, which are prelinguistic and
pre-Oedipal in nature, are based in visual perception, which is
called specular imaging.
The mirror image is the “ideal ego”, which the child
mistakes for itself. The sense of “self” is formed with this
“‘I’dentity by (mis)identifying with this ideal ego.” Lacan
observes that by this process of “(mis)identifying with this ideal
ego,” a self that has no lack, no notion of absence and
incompleteness is imagined.
This false idea of a stable, completely unified self that is
seen in the mirror is compensated for the loss of the original
oneness with the mother’s body. Lacan concludes that in the Real
phase, the unity with the mother’s body is lost, and loss is the
entry to culture and language, but “we protect ourselves” from is
realisation by misrecognising ourselves as not lacking anything
or being incomplete (Klages 81). The idea of the self is based on
an image, an other. The concept of self depends on a person’s
misidentification with the other.
Lacan uses the term ‘other’ to mean ‘not-me’ (Klages 82),
as understood when self/other is mentioned, but in the mirror
stage ‘other’ becomes ‘me’. The notion of ‘Other’ (with capital
O) suggests the differences between the concept of the ‘other’ and
actual others. The image in the mirror is ‘other’, and the things
that are not itself, but designate other people are also the ‘Other’.
When the child formulates the idea of Otherness in the
Mirror stage and identifies with its “own other,” which is the
mirror image, then he starts to enter the Symbolic sphere. Hence
he says that “the Symbolic realm is the structure of language
itself.”
According to Lacan, both the Imaginary order and the
Symbolic order overlap or co-exist because the basis for
developing or having of a self lies in the Imaginary order, where
the child projects its self onto the specular image, the other it sees

in the mirror, and possesses the self in saying “I”, which can
happen only in the Symbolic Stage.
The notion of other and Other, of lack and absence and
‘I’dentity and the (mis) identification of self with both other and
Other take place at the individual level for the child and these
form the fundamental structures of the Symbolic Order that
contains language and which the child must enter to become an
adult within a culture.
The ‘Other’ is a position within the structure of the
Symbolic Order, which everybody tries to attain to get rid of the
separation between the ‘self’ and ‘other’. The ‘Other’ functions
like the “centre” of a system, of the Symbolic Order, or the centre
of language itself as structure.
According to Lacan, all elements within the structure
relate to the Other and nothing can take its position. Therefore,
the position of the Other creates and maintains a never-ending
lack, which Lacan terms desire. This desire is the desire to be the
Other, to be the centre of the Symbolic Order and not anything
else. The Other is also known as Phallus.
Lacan says that the child’s demand is that the self or other
be erased and the mother’s desire be fulfilled. The mother, who
already has a language by making use of the adult “Self” in the
Symbolic Order, should not have a Lack.
The mother desires to be the Other, the place where
nothing is lacking. This desire would be fulfilled by the child.
Lacan says that the threat of castration is a metaphor because the
entire idea of Lack is a structural concept. So, it is not the father
who threatens castration because the father is only a function of
the linguistic structure. The Father is the central, structuring unit
of the Symbolic.
In order to enter the Symbolic Structure, and become a
speaking subject it is important to follow the rules of the
language, which is the Law of the Father. The Law of the Father

is also called Other, the centre of the Symbolic, which controls

the entire structure and decides how the elements within the
system can move about and form relationships. This centre is the
Phallus.
The Phallus, which is at the centre, limits the endless play
of the signifiers and makes the centre stable. The Phallus also
fixes the chain of signifiers which float in the unconscious. Since
the Phallus stops play, the signifiers can be connected to the
signifieds. The presence of the Phallus at the centre of language
as “I” indicates the idea of the self and guarantees every word a
relatively stable meaning.
The Phallus and the penis are different. While the penis
belongs to persons, the Phallus is a part of language. It is the
centre that governs the entire structure. No element of the system
can take its position and this is what Lacan terms desire, which
can never be satisfied. This means that it is impossible to be the
center of the system and to control it.
Lacan is of the opinion that since boys have the penis, they
believe they can be the Phallus and hence take up the centre. Girls
misunderstand that they can be the Phallus because they think that
they are composed by and as a lack. In the Western thought, the
binary oppositions relate boys with penis, presence and order,
while girls are connected with lack of penis, absence and disorder.
Since there is no lack in the Phallus, girls find it difficult to
suppose that they can be the Phallus.
Lacan affirms that nobody can be the Phallus. All
individuals who enter the Symbolic order and occupy the position
of the speaking subject is “constituted by and as lack” (Klages
85). The union with the material body, the lack, or loss guarantees
language. Only if everyone is defined by absence, loss and lack,
can they have language.
Since Western systems of thought give importance to
presence, civilisation pretends not to depend upon lack. It is easier

for boys to enter the Symbolic sphere than girls because of gender
differences. However, nobody can attain the Phallus, which is at
the centre. The signifiers do not move about or slide continuously
in the Symbolic because the Phallus controls play.
Structuralist Psychoanalysis and Jacques Lacan
Lacan’s psychoanalysis, which is a combination of the
principles of Freud and the linguistic analysis of Saussure and
Émile Benveniste delves into the understanding of the psyche
(Nayar 75). In relation to language and the unconscious, Lacan
proposes a model of identity-formation that undergoes a process
in three stages that Lacan terms ‘orders’.
1.The Imaginary: This order is the mirror stage when the child
identifies with its reflection in the mirror. It is able to make a
sense of the self, that is its own self when it associates itself with
the limbs and the movements it sees in the mirror. At this stage,
the sense of self is like its understanding of the connection
between itself and the mother. The child does not see any
difference between itself and the mother. Similarly, the child does
not notice any difference between itself and its reflection in the
mirror. The child imagines that seeing itself in the mirror is
similar to seeing itself and his mother.
Lacan says that the mirror stage is “a homologue for the
Mother/Child symbolic relation” (qtd. in Nayar 76). The child is
the signifier and the mirror image is the signified. When the child
looks at itself in the mirror, it recognises itself and ascribes itself
some meaning. It thinks that it can replace itself with the mirror
image. So, the child operates with a misrecognition that the
image in the mirror is itself.
2. The Symbolic: In this order, the child acquires language and
establishes social relations. It realises that ‘father’, ‘mother’ and
‘child’ are called by different names. ‘Mother’ is different from
‘Father’ or ‘Mother’ is not the same as ‘I’ in language.

There is a continuous chain of signifiers: ‘I’, ‘mother’,

‘father’ in the social relations formed. So, the child moves along
“a chain of signifiers in a metonymic displacement from one to
the other” (Nayar 76). This is when the child realises the first sign
of difference. The child recognises that it is different from others
and it cannot desire the mother.
The child realises the Symbolic Order that does not lie
within itself, and Lacan calls it ‘Other.’ The ‘desire for Mother’
is now forbidden by the order of the father and the law of the
father is absolute or dominant. The child notices the presence of
the father even though the father is absent because reference to
the father’s name is made. Both the mother and the father are
absent. The desire for the absent mother and “the threat of the
father, in the very name ‘father’” are the two absences.
Lacan notices that in “the language of the Symbolic
order…Mother represents the desire for the absent mother and
‘Father’ stands for the threat of the absent” (qtd. in Nayar 76).
Hence, both language and absence function together.
3.The Real: The Imaginary and the Symbolic orders try to
control this order. The psyche is caught between the lack, which
is the desire for the absent mother that is realised during the
Symbolic stage and the need to achieve this lack. The child’s
fantasies of being one with the mother that is evident in the
Imaginary stage is in conflict with the realisation of otherness that
is manifested in the Symbolic stage.
Lacan mentions that desire is connected to a lack. “The
lack is desire.” All signifiers point out the lack. It is impossible
to fill the lack because there are several signifiers that are
connected endlessly in a chain and hence the “end-signified”
cannot be attained. Desire continues to stay as a lack, and forms
the unconscious or repressed.
It is important to note that the child gets language from
the loss of the object of desire, which is the Mother. Language is

therefore associated with the loss of the object and the desire.
Since signifiers do not lead to the ultimate meaning but more
signifiers, language is about lack (qtd. in Nayar 77).
Unconscious
The thought processes that are invisible form the
unconscious. Freud used the term unconscious to mean a part of
the psyche, which is composed of the preconscious, the conscious
and the unconscious mind. The unconscious is dynamic because
it is the reservoir of libidinal energy that is active.
Freud proposes the dream work as the royal road to
discover the unconscious. He mentions that as a system, the
unconscious has four principal features: 1. The presence of
primary processes and the flexibility and mobility of desire. 2.
Absence of any kind of negation. 3. An indifference to reality and
4. Subordination to the pleasure principle (Buchanan 492). Lacan
developed the notion that the unconscious is structured like a
language.
The Unconscious Structured Like Language

Lacan’s primary argument is relation to Freud and his
emphasis on the unconscious is that the unconscious is to be
understood as bearing close relations with roles and undercurrents
of language. The cardinal statement made by Lacan is that “the
unconscious is structured like a language,” which is elaborated in
his essay “The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious.”
(originally delivered as a lecture in 1957).
Lacan insists that meaning arises out of differences. He
explains that there is always an obstruction between the signifier
and the signified that could be elaborated by showing how one
signified could have several signifiers and the connection
between the signifiers establishes the meanings. Therefore, there
is a perpetual “sliding of the signified under the signifier.”

He also mentions that in the Latent Dream Content

mentioned by Freud, the two states, namely condensation and
displacement correspond to metaphor and metonymy as
recognised and proposed by the linguist Roman Jacobson.
Metonymy is the figure of speech where one thing is represented
by another related thing. For instance, a pen designates a written
word or the crown represents the King.
In Freud’s interpretation, in the process of displacement,
an element in a dream might stand for anything else. So, a person
might be characterised by one of their qualities. For example, “a
lover who is Italian might be represented by an Alpha Romeo car”
(Barry 112). This is similar to metonymy, where one part stands
for the whole.
In the process of condensation, according to Freud,
several things could be compressed into one symbol, which is
similar to a metaphor. For example, the sentence “the ship
ploughed the waves,” could be compressed into a single item of
two dissimilar images first, the ship cutting into the sea and
second, the plough cutting through the soil (Barry 112). The use
of such modes of self-expression by the unconscious is part of
Lacan’s proof of the statement that “the unconscious is structured
like a language.”
Lacan considers the unconscious as “the kernel of our
being.” He reverses the Cartesian statement “I think, therefore, I
am” as “I am, where I think not”, which means that true selfhood
lies in the unconscious, and thereby challenges the foundations of
western philosophical consciousness.
This said, Lacan traces the mechanism whereby an
individual emerges into consciousness. In the Imaginary stage,
the child does not distinguish between the self and the other, and
there is an idealised identification with the mother. In this stage,
the child experiences itself called innenwelt and its environment
called umwelt as a shapeless mass.

Lacan mentions that language is connected to desire and

the unconscious. Desire is structured like language in the
unconscious. The name or signifier ‘Mother’ is opposed to the
signified, the object Mother, which the child can never attain.
Here, “Mother is the name or signifier that the unconscious gives
to the absence and to the desire. Mother is also the object or body
(signified) that child seeks but never acquires.”
This way, “the unconscious develops a language of/for
desire; Mother” (Nayar 77). This language is the language of the
Other, which comes from outside. The language of the Other
negotiates between the signifier and the signified. Since “the
name of the father pushes the desire for the mother to the
unconscious…the unconscious with its desire is the discourse of
the Other” (77). Hence, Lacan concludes that “the unconscious is
structured like a language.”
Lacan’s interpretation of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The
Purloined Letter,” which was published as “The Purloined Poe”
discusses the unconscious, the psychoanalytic process and the
nature of language. Poe’s narrative that does not intimately
analyse the characters that are suggestive of the chess pieces,
named as King, Queen, Minister, Chief of Police and Dupin, the
detective are archetypes that are interpreted psychoanalytically.
Differences between Lacan and Freud

Lacan differentiates the ego from the subject and
explains that subjectivity is divided or“alienated”. He disagrees
with Freud who relates ego with consciousness. While Freud
believes that the unconscious is chaotic, Lacan considers the
unconscious to be ordered and structured like a language.

The Essay: The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function

of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience
In this essay, Lacan tries to comprehend how a child
develops the concept of “self” by looking in the mirror when its
sees its image, and this experience is crucial in its gradual
progression into the Symbolic Order. This experience gradually
progresses to understand the construction of the self, the ‘I’.
A child between six and eighteen months involves in an
experience that would develop the notion of self by looking at its
image in the mirror. The child observes its movements and
notices that the image in the mirror is its own reflection. This
experience helps the child to understand the impression about
itself and the world around it. This stage is called the Mirror
Stage.
This stage is important so far as the psychological growth
of the child is concerned because it is through the image that the
child tries to make sense of the world. This sense is the “paranoic
knowledge” that includes the drive to create a logical view of the
world, which is not easily ordered. The image is a way of seeing
oneself as a picture. This image is important because at this stage,
the child has not yet acquired language, and the experience is
truly unique. All other images of the self, appear only after
language is learned and then interaction with others begins. So,
the construction of Other is relevant.
The ‘I’ that is experienced is known as the “Ideal I” by
Freud. The ‘I’ that is formed in the mirror is only an unreal image
that appears real. The ego that is formed is only an illusion. It is
an identification that the imaginary offers. The construction of the
real or authentic being is found in the absent world of signifiers,
which comprises the Other. Since the Other cannot be controlled,
individuals live in a fictitious world.
It is to be understood that individuals struggle to complete
the image of self, but this can only be partially realised. Hence, it

would remain a fantasy. The irony is that the desire or rational

order will forever remain incomplete or broken. The child’s
movements are still awkward, jerky and untrained and only after
years of careful parenting does the child become independent to
move around. In contrast, animals walk and run within hours of
birth. Human beings are therefore premature when they come
from the womb, which is not the case with animals.
The idea of self is formed at the premature stage, and
hence the awkwardness inherent at this stage is also adopted into
the sense of ‘I’. Dreams that involve “disjointed limbs”, and
“growing wings” arise from this awkwardness, which frames the
notion that the human body is also in a sense broken or
“fragmented”.
The ‘I’ in dreams are represented through images of
strength and security that are also considered futile images. While
the ‘I’ always searches for the perfect self, which is a possibility
only in the future, and not the present reality, it knows that this
self is actually imperfect. The understanding of the mirror image
helps diagnose patients, which is coming out of the mirror stage
and discarding external images (social ‘I’) onto the previously
formed ‘I’(the specular ‘I’).
Human desire not only relies on things of the self, but also
for ideas from other people. Social practices that go against
individual desires are dangerous for the self. An example would
be Oedipus complex, that creates the “[t]he prohibition of incest
[…]. Here, the ‘I’ struggles, and this power struggle between the
“libido and the sexual libido” is the struggle to grow and improve
against the desire towards self-gratification. Ideals of the
“Samaritan” that seem to be humane and self-sacrificing are
appearances that people put on to satisfy their vision of
identifying themselves as “saintly or self-sacrificing.”
This view is similar to Nietzsche’s notion that altruism is
only a pretence that functions to gain power or control over

others. However, Lacan considers the gesture a response to

influence others. The image of the speaking subject is decentred
from an ideal ego, and the child wishes that the unattainable
image of perfection be reflected by others, the mother in
particular.
This creates the existential image that individuals are
identified by others and not self. Hence, it is easy to fall into the
trap that Lacan observes as the trap of existential philosophy. This
in turn results in the problem that the consciousness must be “self-
aware”, but Lacan resorts to the formation of ‘I’ from
misunderstandings that create an image of self, which is only an
illusion and nobody knows the real us because of this false belief.
The mirror image helps psychoanalysis and aids to figure
out what went wrong with the patient, help to uncover his
subconscious desires by probing, but the final discovery, the
paradigm shift to realise and identify the true nature of the self
has to be made by the patient himself, and this is exactly the
unfortunate limit of psychology.
Conclusion
Jacques Lacan is regarded as one of the most dominant
theorists of the later twentieth century. He initiated the study of
language into psychoanalytic theory. He considers language
important because it is the mirror of the unconscious mind. His
remarkable contribution is the reinterpretation of Freud’s work in
relation to structural linguistics. He is known for his divergent
psychoanalytic practices.
Several theorists and critics have been profoundly
influenced by both Freud and Lacan’s understanding of human
psychology, self, sexuality and the unconscious. French feminist
critics Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray were influenced by
Lacan’s works on female sexuality. They reject several theories
of Freud and Lacan that have patriarchal undertones.
The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek (b.1949) is a

highly influential psychoanalytic critic in the poststructural strain
after Lacan. He applies the principles of psychoanalysis to social
and cultural spheres of thinking. The Sublime Object of Ideology
(1989) is a study of the theories of Marx and Hegel within the
Lacanian framework. Looking Awry (1991) is a Lacanian
interpretation of popular culture that includes the films of Alfred
Hitchcock.
French philosophers Guilles Deleuz (1925-1995) and
Felix Guattari (1930-1992) come up with the concept of
schizoanalysis in Anti-Oedipus (1977) that rejects the notion of
repression and points out that the effort to create an ego in a
schizoid could lead to sickness because the unconscious is already
filled with its own reservoir of images. This is opposed to Lacan’s
formulation that the unconscious relates to lack. In A Thousand
Plateaus (1987), they present the unconscious in the “rhizome”
model represented by grass type growth with multiple beginnings
and endings.
References
● Braunstein, Nestor A. “Desire and Jouissance in the
Teachings of Lacan.” The Cambridge Companion to Lacan,
edited by Rabate, Jean- Michel. Cambridge UP, 2003.
● Buchanan, Ian. Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory. 2nd
ed. Oxford UP, 2018.


Publishing, 2005.
● Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan. Routledge, 2005.
Trinity P, 2008.
● Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the
Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Experience.” Ecrits, translated by Bruce Fink. W.W.
Norton and Company, 2006. pp.93-100. pdf.
Kindersley, 2010.
● Ryan, Michael. Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction.
Blackwell, 1999.
● Sarup, Madan. Jacques Lacan. Hemel Hempstead, 1992.
Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory.
5th ed. Pearson Education, 2005.
Web Links
● https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lacan/

● https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-
library/Lacan%20Mirror%20Stage.pdf
Questions
I. Paragraph questions
1. What is psychoanalysis?
2. What are the three components of the human psyche,
according to Freud.
3. The two main elements of “Dream Work”
4. Pleasure Principle and Reality Principle
5. Oedipus complex
6. méconnaissance
7. Phallus
8. Differentiate between other/Other as proposed by Lacan
9. Lacan’s theory of the Subject
II. Essay Questions
1. Explain the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic States
proposed by Lacan.
2. Explain the statement: “The Unconscious desire is
structured like a language.”

Towards a Feminist Poetics

Elaine Showalter
Objectives
● Comprehend the dimensions of feminism and feminist
theory.
● Examine the three waves of feminism.
● Analyse the contribution of Virginia Woolf, Kate Millet,
Elaine Showalter, Helene Cixous, and Adrienne Rich.
● Elaborate the central concepts such as Gynocriticism,
Eccriture Feminine, Womanism, the language problem in
Feminism, Marxist Feminism, French Feminism, Lesbian
Feminism, Black Feminism, Dalit Feminism, Post-
feminism.
● Apply feminist theory to literary works.
Introduction
The American literary critic Elaine Showalter (b.1941)
introduces the concept of gynocriticism that advocates woman as
the writer or producer and not a passive consumer of textual
meaning in the essay “Towards a Feminist Poetics” (1979).
Gynocriticism expresses “woman as writer…with the history,
themes, genres, and structures of literature by women.”
The essay “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness” (1981)
is a critical analysis of the state of feminist criticism. Showalter
says that factors such as class, race, nationality and history are
“literary determinants” that are as important as gender. Women’s
culture, which is a “collective experience” within the entire
matrix of culture, connects women writers of all times and across

countries.
The Double Critical Standard: Criticism of Women
Writers in England, 1845-1880 (1969) is a seminal work that
critically analyses literature by women from 1845-1880, which is
her doctoral thesis that she later published as a book titled A
Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to
Lessing (1977).
The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English
Culture, 1830-1980 (1985) traces the history of women in relation
to the practice of psychiatry, where hysteria was earlier
considered “female malady.” Her works include Sexual Anarchy:
Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (1990); Sister’s Choice:
Tradition and Change in American Women’s Writing (1991);
Hystories: Historical Epidemics and Modern Culture (1997)
delves into the history of mass hysteria.
Some of her principal works are Inventing Herself:
Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage (2001), which traces
the progression of a feminist intellectual from the 18th to the 21st
century; Teaching Literature (2003); Faculty Towers: The
Academic Novel and Its Discontents (2005) that examines the
academic novel and its connection with institutions of higher
education based on real- life experiences; and A Jury of Her Peers
(2009), which is a review of women’s writing in the USA from
the early stages until the 1990’s.
Showalter also edited several volumes, including The New
Feminist Criticism (1985) and Daughters of Decadence: Women
Writers of the Fin de Siècle (1993). The Civil Wars of Julia Ward
Howe (2016) is a biography of the American author Julia Ward
Howe.

Feminisms
Feminism is an amalgam of diverse approaches that adopt
various strategies to assuage forms of social, economic, political
and cultural discrimination that women are subjected to. The use
of plural feminisms is appropriate because diverse positions are
taken and various strategies are adopted to bring out the inherent
intricacy, multiplicity, dissonance and conflict with the categories
of feminism. Feminist theory is the theoretical and rational
approach that takes up the political position to study the
representation of women in art, literature and forms of culture.
The representation of women in the diverse cultural
frameworks has always been unfair to women who are depicted
as passive, weak, emotional, the object of sexual gratification, and
other attributes considered negative, while men are considered
active, strong, rational and virile among others and hold positive
qualities.
The inequalities are reinforced by ‘structures’ such as
religion, education and other systems of knowledge that
naturalise the domination of men and privileges being granted to
them, and subjugate women to deprive them of an equitable social
status.
Though power plays a crucial role in the construction of
such a skewed relationship between the genders, women are often
complicit in their subordination. Feminist theory recognises the
uneven gender relations as the product of social construction and
comprehends that the experiences of the women are not
homogeneous. Hence, feminisms address women’s concerns
from all over the world and the heterogeneity projected,
showcases the innate complicated issues that feminisms engage
in.
The foci of feminist theory have been to engage in
producing knowledge, which has been generated and dominated
by men only; retrieve texts, experiences and re-evaluate

contemporary philosophical, methodological and cultural

practices, and advance more democratic and radical opinions of
gender roles and culture than express liberal feminist views
(Nayar 84).
The concerns have been prioritised among Western
feminist studies, believes Mary Maynard (qtd. in Nayar 84), and
the postcolonial feminist shift has delved into issues of health,
domestic issues, caste and class distinctions as well as gender
identities in Asia and Africa. Womanism, Race studies and Dalit
feminism have opened new trajectories in literary circles.
Academics has categorised feminist thought of the
twentieth century into three waves, with the fourth wave in the
twenty-first century. The period from 1830-1920: First-wave –
suffragette movement and civil rights movement; 1960-1980:
Second wave- formation of women’s groups and engaging in
political debates; late1980’s onward- Third wave- postfeminism,
postcolonialism, ecofeminism and cyberfeminism; 2012 onward
-Fourth-wave- sexual harassment, body shaming, and rape
culture, among other issues. Women’s studies as a discipline
began in USA in the late 1960’s and emerged in other nations of
the First World in the 1970’s.
First- wave Feminism

In reply to Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry
(1757) that stated the sublime to be strength, masculinity, and
pain and the attributes such as an English writer and an ardent
promoter of educational and social equality for women, Mary
Wollstonecraft’s (1977-1959) A Vindication of the Rights of
Women (1792) argues that women’s inferior position in society is
because of lack of education. “I plead for my sex- not for
myself…” she writes in the dedication of the book. She rejects
Rousseau’s claim that women need not be educated. She is one of
the first thinkers to point out that gender is socially constructed.
The biological view gender and gender roles are

considered the result of social values, regulations and practises
that are enmeshed with culture. Left without a choice, women are,
to a large extent, responsible for their own subordination;
however, women should continue with their domestic chores.
Wollstonecraft’s radical ideas were carried forward by John
Stuart Mill (1806-1873), who promoted the cause of liberation of
women from the clutches of patriarchy and granted them
intellectual and social rights. He argued that women should be
seen as an equal partner in marriage in The Subjection of Women
(1869).
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), the American critic,
journalist, editor and advocate of women’s rights disapproved of
conventional gender roles. In Woman in the Nineteenth Century
(1845), she talks about education, employment opportunities and
political rights for women. A radical thinker, she observes that
either gender shares some traits of the opposite gender. She
realises the importance of upliftment of the Black community and
rejects racial prejudice.
The notion of androgyny is carried forward by the
modernist English writer and daughter of Leslie Stephen,
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), member of the Bloomsbury group,
who developed the stream-of-consciousness method. She talks
about the highly creative androgynous mind in the extended essay
A Room of One’s Own which she would later develop in her novel
Orlando (1928) and makes the move to disrupt the male/female
binary. She contends that women’s texts are rejected by male
critics as insignificant with domestic themes that women,
unfortunately, comply with.
In A Room of One’s Own, she maintains that “a woman
must have money and room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
Woolf is against the patriarchal education system and mentions
that authorship is gendered. Women are left with a language that

is patriarchal and sexist. This points out that women’s

experiences are not adequately or appropriately captured and the
works are rejected if they do not adhere to the norms prescribed
by men. Three Guineas (1938), the sequel to A Room of One’s
Own insists on the emancipation of women.
The first wave of feminism is political in its efforts and
highlights women’s suffrage (the right to vote). After Woolf and
the announcement of the Women’s Movement in the 1960’s, the
second wave of feminism emerged.
Second-wave Feminism
This probably marks the period when sex and gender,
centred on politics are primarily discussed and analysed. The
slogan “the personal is political” became popular during this
period when the American feminist Carol Hanisch (b.1942)
published a book of a similar title and argued that personal
experiences of women are inherent in their political situation and
gender inequality. Hence, several personal experiences of women
are rooted in a system of power relationships.
The French social theorist, feminist, and existential
philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) discusses the
mystification and stereotyping of women in The Second Sex
(1948, English trans.). She reiterates that woman is always
projected as the negative of man, who is the epitome of the ideal
or norm. So, she is not unique, but the defective version of the
male, the deviant, or the Other, who tries to attain perfection by
imitating man. Woman is the Other and man is the Subject in the
Subject-Other dichotomy, and this notion grants her an inferior
status in society and in this manner, gender inequality is
continually effected.
De Beauvoir’s major argument, “One is not born a woman
but becomes one” (267) means that women are constructed by
men and society, and there is no “essence” of a woman. Patriarchy
exploits sexual difference to maintain the inequality between

either gender, which is unjust. Women must be in charge of their
choice if they have to become Subject in their own right.
She carries forward the cause of women shifting from a
biological stratum to a social dimension. She establishes that
social structures and conditioning specify gender roles framed on
biological differences, but these roles are naturalised and
internalised.
De Beauvoir’s radical views about femininity is reflected
in writings by several American feminist critics. Radical
feminism is a sub-category of second-wave feminism that
examines women’s oppression as the outcome of male supremacy
that is presumed by patriarchal notions. Betty Friedan’s (1921-
2006), The Feminine Mystique (1963) expresses her distress at
the subjugation and subordination of middle-class American
women. The text is regarded as a landmark in the history of
feminism.
The work discusses “the problem that has no name”
whereby there is general unhappiness among American women
in the 1960s and 70s. Friedan delineates how patriarchy limits
women to the domestic sphere and denies entry into the public
domain. She urges women to ponder over their requirements
beyond a stable marriage, children, financial security and sexual
gratification.
The American writer and critic Mary Ellman’s (1921-
1989) Thinking about Women (1968) and the American feminist
and activist Kate Millet’s (1934- 2017) Sexual Politics (1969) are
influential books. In Sexual Politics, Millett observes that sexual
oppression is both political and cultural.
She observes the domination- subordination framework as
responsible for unequal power relations between the sexes. She
points out the anti-feminist stand, gender stereotyping and the use

of sexist language by male writers that include Freud,

D.H.Lawrence, Henry Miller , Norman Mailer and Jean Genet.
Millet claims a radical change on the domestic front that
includes personal and family ways of life and advocates undoing
the conventional family set-up. Hence, she opens the path towards
sexual revolution. Millet elaborates the role of both sexism and
heterosexism in modern novels and notices the disparaged
portrayal of lesbian women.
She affirms that women who face sexual, physical and
emotional abuse have to wrestle with power dynamics. She states
that “patriarchy’s greatest psychological weapon is…its
universality and longevity,” which reinvents itself in successive
generations. As newer forms of repression emerge, each wave of
feminism necessitates breaking down barriers of women’s
emancipation.
Germaine Greer (b.1939) the Australian theorist, in The
Female Eunuch (1970) criticises the way women are represented
and female sexuality is expressed by Henry Miller, Norman
Mailer, Jean Genet and D.H.Lawrence. She mentions that
“women will [only] be free when they have a positive definition
of female sexuality.”
She links gender to politics and power dynamics and
realises that literature is the domain where such politics are
explicitly visible, therefore is absolutely necessary to analyse
literary works. Greer believes that feminist analyses of literary
works would alleviate women from their subordinated status in
society. She distinguishes gender from sex contending that while
sex is purely a social construct, gender is a cultural aspect.
Virginia Woolf pioneered the British version of
feminism that is more inclined towards a Marxist approach. For
instance, Juliet Mitchell (b.1940) opposed patriarchy in Marxist
terms of production and private property in Women’s Estate
(1971). She identifies four factors, “production, reproduction,

sexuality and the socialisation of children” that contribute to the

subjugation of women (Mukhopadhyay 38).
Similarly, in Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974), she
combines Marxist and psychoanalytic ideas in her arguments
against patriarchy. She considers the women’s movement radical
because it is essentially the struggle of the oppressed. The social
theorist Michèle Barrett employs the Marxist method of class
analysis to study the representation of women in literary texts in
Women’s Oppression Today (1980).
Shulamith Firestone (1945-2012), the Canadian-
American radical feminist, writer and activist, in The Dialectic of
Sex (1970) analyses class struggle and the base-superstructure
interaction along Marxist lines to entail a feminist model to the
growth of history. She maintains that cultural superstructure is
built on sexuality that is the structural basis of society.
Women’s subordination occurs when those who are
capable of biological reproduction (base) are controlled by the
means of production (superstructure). Only a complete alteration
of these structures can eliminate disparities in sexual roles of
either sex.
The American literary critic, feminist and writer Elaine
Showalter (b.1941), in A Literature of Their Own (1977) uncovers
a plethora of neglected and ignored women writers in the hope of
framing the female literary tradition. She proposes three phases
of women’s literary development- feminine, feminist and female
that traces the progression from the imitative phase to the phase
of opposition and freedom and ultimately self-discovery.
Her significant contribution to the feminist literary
criticism is her model of ‘gynocriticism’ that secures an
independent and self-referencing female tradition. This model
advocates the shift from the study of androtexts (male-authored
texts) to gynotexts (female-authored texts). In this turn or shift of
focus, the related aspects of production, inspiration and

interpretation of literary works that also include letters and

journals, when taken together contribute to form a female literary
tradition
The Objectives of Gynocritics
Abrams and Harpham outline three main concerns of
gynocritics:
1. To locate particular or specific feminine matters discussed
in literature written by women, for instance domestic
chores, gestation, giving birth, nurturing, and different
relationships formed among women, and these
relationships are exclusively personal without any
political interests.
2. To unearth women writers that have received support
from earlier women writers and have in turn been the
source of inspiration to their readers and descendants.
3. To reveal that there is a unique mode of experience or
“subjectivity” in the ability to feel, think, value and
recognise oneself and the world outside. In this direction,
specific qualities of the language of women or a unique
feminine style of writing, discourse, rhetorical language
and imagery have been denigrated as emotional and
sentimental pieces of little worth (127).
Patrick Meyer Spacks’ The Female Imagination (1975) based
on the contribution of British and American fiction of the
previous three centuries; Ellen Moers’ Literary Women (1976),
which is about several British, American and French women
novelists and poets; Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own:
British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing (1977); and
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic
(1979) are works in this direction.

The American critics and writers Sandra M.Gilbert (b.

1936) and Susan Gubar (b. 1944), in The Madwoman in the Attic
(1979) elaborately examine women’s works of the nineteenth
century and examine women writers’ struggle against patriarchy,
which is recognised as the move towards self- assertion. The
authors mention that women writers are affected by “anxiety of
authorship” that arises from the common belief that literary
creativity is predominantly the privilege of male authors.
The anxiety and rage experienced by women writers is a
psychological deceit that is exemplified through the character
Bertha Rochester, who is the mad woman in Charlotte Bronte’s
Jane Eyre. This character is recognised to be the “author’s
double, an image of her own anxiety and rage” (Abrams 127).
The French Feminist Theorists

While the British and the American critics have been
preoccupied with practical and thematic notions in the writings
by and about women, the French critics are involved in theoretical
propositions of gender within the poststructural framework with
particular emphasis on Jacques Lacan’s reworking of Freudian
psychoanalysis based on the linguistic theory of Saussure,
Derrida’s Deconstruction, Barthes’ semiology, and Foucault’s
concept of power.
The French theorists argue that all the aspects of Western
language are founded, produced, governed and established by
male writers. Therefore, Western discourse is dominantly
phallogocentric, a term coined by Jacques Lacan. This suggests
that discourse is centered and controlled by the phallus, which is
used symbolically to refer to both the assumed ““logos” or ground
and as its principal signifier and the source of power” (Abrams
128).
Phallogocentrism is evident in all the domains of
Western discourse, that is from the use of words to the rules that
govern a system and the realms of knowledge. Women’s

contribution is reproduced to adhere to the phallogocentric
discourse or rather appropriated to suit phallogocentric language,
thereby they are marginalised and unrecognised and their
language becomes non-existent.
To address this issue, Hélène Cixous (b. 1937), the
Algerian born French theorist and writer, from her phenomenal
essay “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975) through to The Three
Steps on the Ladder of Writing (1990) criticises patriarchy that
creates binaries. Using Derrida’s philosophy of deconstruction,
she deconstructs the operating hierarchies and contends that
writers should write to transcend these binary oppositions.
The essay “The Laugh of the Medusa” begins with an
appeal to women “to write herself”. She asserts that it is important
for women to write and announce their unique contribution to art.
It is time to recognise that their new desires are just as
aesthetically superior to any work of art by men. She reiterates
that writing is not just the priority of men, and women need not
feel guilty about entering the space of writing that has always
been dominated by men.
She proposes “feminine writing” or ecriture writing as an
alternate model of writing that opposes the dominant phallic
model of writing and expresses the feminine consciousness. The
origin of this language is the mother, and this develops before the
child learns to speak, which is the male-constructed language.
The ability that is formed at a stage before the child acquires the
male-dominated language is free from suppression. It destabilises
and challenges phallogocentrism, and opens up “free play of
meanings” (Abrams 128), where new possibilities of making
meaning arise.
The Bulgarian-French feminist theorist and
psychoanalytic critic Julia Kristeva (b. 1941) takes interest in
Marxism, structuralism, formulations of Roland Barthes and

Jacques Lacan. In Revolution of Poetic Language (1984), she

construes language as a signifying process that is fluid and
generates symbolic meanings.
She proposes the theory of “the semiotic and the
symbolic” by combining both linguistic and psychoanalytic
analyses, and suggests a “chora,” which is “the prelinguistic, pre-
Oedipal, and unsystematised signifying process” that focuses on
the mother, which she calls “semiotic” (Abrams 129). This
process gets suppressed when the “symbolic” is acquired. The
“symbolic’ is the ordered and logical language that is represented
as and controlled by the father- the “law of the Father” (129).
The semiotic aspect is pre-Oedipal, pre- verbal and
rhythmic in nature when compared to the symbolic, which is
social, cultural and regulated by rules. From the feminist
perspective, the semiotic aspect is the expression that centres on
the mother and the symbolic aspect, which is the set of social and
cultural attributes is the rule of the father.
Kristeva mentions that this semiotic process has the
potential to interrupt or dislocate the “subject” that is
authoritarian and break free from the oppressive order and
rationality of the discourse. The “law of the Father” entrusts a
negative and subordinate status to women’s writing.
Luce Irigaray (b.1930) is a Belgian-born French feminist,
philosopher, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist
who is famous for her works Speculum of the Other Woman
(trans. 1985) and This Sex Which Is Not One (trans. 1985).
Irigaray suggests the possibility of a “woman’s writing” that
avoids control by the male and disregards appropriation, and
creates diverse, fluid and multiple opportunities that are part of
the sexual experiences of women.
Irigaray calls for acceptance of sexual differences among
men and women and denounces the negativity associated with
female experiences. She advocates freedom for women from the

excluding or enclosing activity of the male tradition, which

allows women a subordinate position and role.
The Contribution of Toril Moi

The feminist theorist and critic Toril Moi (b. 1953), in
Sexual/Textual Politics (1985) demarcates the two strands of
feminist theory, namely The Anglo-American group of theorists
namely Kate Millet, Ellen Moers and Elaine Showalter and the
French theorists such as Helen Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia
Kristeva.
Toril Moi argues that literary texts serve the dual function
of providing aesthetic pleasure and contributing to ideological
conflicts that is evident in the contributions of theorists and
critics. These divergences analyse gender representation and
power hierarchy in society. Moi outlines the gradual shift in
feminist perception from Kate Millet’s essentialist representation
of women in literature to Elaine Showalter’s model of women as
the producer of literature. She also elaborates the revolutionary
ideas of the French Theorists.
Moi locates the dialectics of power between sexual and
textual politics and urges people to think beyond binaries of
masculinity/femininity, heterosexuality/homosexuality. She
asserts the need to identify and deconstruct textual politics, which
subtly essentialises the category ‘woman’ and simultaneously
exposes the politics of sexuality. This approach would be more
revolutionary so far as production of a text from the feminist
viewpoint is considered. However, her work was criticised for
excluding Black feminism and lesbian feminism.

Black Feminism
At the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio in
1851 the American abolitionist and women's rights activist
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) used the phrase “Ain’t I a Woman?”
four times to emphasise the need to fight for equal rights for
African American women. This speech put forward the ideas of
womanhood in America, which disregards the black woman’s
experience. The American educator and Black liberation activist
Anna Julia Haywood Cooper’s (1858-1964) book A Voice from
the South: By a Black Woman of the South (1892) is considered
the first work of literature that voices the plight of black women.
Black female activists namely Sojourner Truth, Anna
Julia Cooper, Ida B Wells, Mary Church Terrell and Frances
Harper initiated Black feminism. Cooper contends that since
women play a decisive role in “the regeneration and progress of
a race,” they should be provided education. She considers
women’s suffrage important and reiterates the significance of
education for practical purposes that would help in day-to-day
living. She also emphasises the importance of humanities in the
education scenario.
Given impetus by the Civil Rights Movement, the second-
wave American feminism, which is a predominantly white
movement, the Black Power and the Black Arts movements that
comprise of black men only, the black feminist critics try to
discover black women writers of the past and form a new literary
canon that exclusively deals with the issues of black women. The
black feminist movement emerged in America in the late 1960s
and early 1970s to look into the inadequacies or loopholes of all
movements that exclude concerns of black women within the
framework of race, gender and class.
In 1970, Black Women’s Manifesto was published to
reveal the discrete nature of oppression faced by black women,
bring down conventional stereotyping of black women and

recognise their distinct identity. The NBFO (National Black

Feminist Organisation) was established in 1973, and the
Combahee River Collective, a black, lesbian, socialist, feminist
group was inaugurated by Barbara Smith in 1974. The principle
behind the black feminist movement is to ameliorate the living
conditions of black women who go through racist, sexist and
classist discrimination, and oppose victimisation due to race,
class and gender oppression.
Though many definitions for the Black Feminist
Movement have been provided by scholars, the most appropriate
one is by Alice Walker (b.1944) who points out to the focus of
the movement and introduces the term “Womanism” in her
collection of essays entitled In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
(1983). At the beginning of the collection she gives a definition
of a womanist as a “feminist, Afrocentric, healing, embodied, and
spiritual” (Razak 100). She uses the term womanism to
encompass the cooperative of black feminists or other feminists
of colour who are obliged to ensure the welfare of all women and
of humanity.
Women of all races are seen as differently coloured
flowers in a garden. The metaphor of garden represents the
universal outlook of womanism. This also points to the notion of
sisterhood of all women, which is the essential principle of
womanism. Womanism celebrates the culture of black women,
which is intersectional in nature. Hence, womanism is different
from feminism or from those feminist schools that do not
advocate or observe intersectionality.
According to Alice Walker, a womanist is someone who
is audacious, courageous and responsible to stand up for the
welfare and rights of all women. A woman who loves other
women sexually or non-sexually regardless of colour is a
feminist, and can be identified as a womanist. Hence, she says,
“Womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender” (Walker xi-xii).

She defines “womanist” by referring to the relationships women

can enter into among other women, and identifying with their
specific female culture, emotional life and strength.
Walker approves of lesbian relationships but does not hate
heterosexual relationships. This is the main difference between
womanism and white feminism. Walker advocates that women
love themselves because they are female, but she does not favour
hostility towards men. The use of the plural feminisms
acknowledges the cultural and racial differences among women
and recognises multiple factors that contribute to the
subordination and oppression of black women that are informed
through their writings.
At a later phase, several black feminists applied the term
womanism to refer to specific and unique ideas. For instance, the
Nigerian critic Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi (b.1939) put
forward her own concept of womanism. Similarly, the academic
and writer Clenora Hudson-Weems (b.1945) put forth a new form
of womanism called Africana Womanism, that believes that the
struggle for liberation of black women should originate and
develop from African ancestry and not serve serve as a model of
white feminism. Other scholars like Paula J. Giddings (b.1947)
the African-American historian and Angela Yvonne Davis
(b.1944) the American political activist carried forward womanist
tenets.
The American lesbian feminist and socialist Barbara
Smith (b.1946), whose essay “Towards a Black Feminist
Criticism” (1978) is considered the foremost statement on black
feminist criticism recognises that the politics of race and the
politics of sex are intertwined in the works of black women
writes. She emphasises that black feminist criticism and black
feminist political movement work together to address issues of
black women. Stephen Heath’s “Difference” (1978) recognises
cultural differences and stresses the need for new and relevant

theoretical insights and approaches to understand black

experience.
Barbara Christian (b.1943), in Black Women Novelists:
The Development of a Tradition (1980) traces the Afro-American
women’s literary tradition. In All the Women Are White, All the
Blacks are men but Some of Us Are Brave (1982), Gloria Hull,
Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith trace the intersectionality
of black women in the discourse of the Civil Rights Movement
and the contemporary feminist movement. While the Civil Rights
movement addressed the issues of black men only, the feminist
movement focussed on the specific problems of white women.
The American lawyer and scholar of critical race theory
Kimberlé Crenshaw (b.1957) develops the concept of
intersectionality in the paper “Demarginalizing the Intersection
of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-
Discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist
Politics” (1989) is a more complex model of the ways in which
black women operate as a nexus among several forms of
discrimination that work together to discriminate them.
Intersectionality is a theoretical framework that studies
the ways in which gender, race, class, religion, and physical
appearance among other factors come together and create diverse
modes of discrimination and privileges in the life of an individual.
In the case of black women, the intersection of these facets
negatively influences their lives.
Crenshaw argues about the invisibility of violence faced
by black women, and approves the need for its representation. She
demarcates domestic violence and rape to be the two forms of
violence against women that needs immediate attention. She
explores the subcategories of political intersectionality, structural
intersectionality and representative intersectionality that
propagate violence among women of colour. The #Black Lives

Matter is an anti-racist, social movement that is based on the

principles of intersectionality initiated to address police brutality.
The author, activist and cultural critic Bell Hooks (born
Gloria Jean Watkins, 1952) articulates how feminism prioritises
the struggles of white women, and projects a rather general
statement of suppression and suffering. Her works Ain't I a
Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981), Feminist Theory:
From Margin to Centre (1984) and Talking Back: Thinking
Feminist, Thinking Black (1989) examine and dispute the ways in
which media, culture and society preserve dominant structures of
oppression.
Bell Hooks rejects the claim of the second wave of
feminism that oppression is born from patriarchy. She points out
that the different forms of oppression are interconnected and
power, which is relational depends on the individual’s position in
the framework of class, sex, race and gender.
This view is unlike the proposition of intersectional
feminism. hooks coins the term “imperialist white supremacist
capitalist patriarchy” to stress the varied dimensions of the power
relations. She claims that the notion of “sisterhood” would
become complicated and take on an oppressive stand if the unique
experiences of each woman within the social strata and
circumstances of living are not considered.
Hooks derides Laura Mulvey’s theory of the “male gaze”
of the 70s in relation to cinema culture that “attempts to repress
our/black people’s right to gaze had produced in us an
overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an
oppositional gaze.” She considers film to be the most appropriate
vehicle of ideological propaganda and uses the term “oppositional
gaze” in relation to black viewership to suggest that the act of
looking has always been political.
From the perspective of power relations, the looks of the
subordinates can be “confrontational, gestures of resistance”

which undermine authority. However, death could be the

probable punishment if a black slave gazes at a white person.
Hence, she states: “By courageously looking, we defiantly
declared: ‘Not only will I stare. I want my look to change
reality.’”
Hooks criticises how the “violent erasure of black
womanhood” is part of the culture of the screen that idolises white
female stars as the object of desire and renders it impossible to
identify with any other subject. She notices the crisis of modern
feminism that has not yet looked into egalitarianism on the
domestic front. She believes in “self-interrogation” within
feminist movements to discuss several pressing issues, and
charter new directions of action.
Patricia Hill Collins (b.1948), in Black Feminist Thought:
Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment
(1990) stresses that experience is important in order to
comprehend and critique the lives of the “raced women”. The
everyday lives of Afro-American women are crucial to frame a
black feminist project. Frances M. Beale’s (b.1940) notion of
“double jeopardy” from the article “Double Jeopardy: To Be
Black and Female” (2008) analyses interrelated effects of racial
and gender discrimination. Black feminist critics continue to
articulate the layered consequences of racism and sexism inherent
in the society.
The concerted efforts of Afro-American critics, lesbian
writers, poets, novelists and dramatists, that include Toni
Morrison, Alice walker, Maya Angelou, Toni Cade and Barbara
Christian are noteworthy. Economic empowerment of black
women, racist and sexist cruelties, resistance, and the fight for
representation, self-expression and self-recovery are some of the
important distinguishing features of black feminist criticism.

Lesbian Feminism
The origin of lesbian and gay theories is the Gay
Liberation Movement that began as a result of the Stonewall Riot
in New York in 1969, when the people of a gay bar resisted a
police raid. The two main goals of Gay Liberation of the 1970s is
to resist torture and discrimination of the sexual minorities and to
instil a sense of pride in their sexual identities. The two main
strategies employed to achieve these goals are: “consciousness-
raising” among groups and “coming-out,” which means publicly
affirming gay identity because it is unique among gay
communities that realise that their oppression is the result of their
social invisibility.
Heterosexism refers to the existing social structuring of
sexuality, which privileges heterosexuality over homosexual
relationships and suppresses homosexuality. Homophobia is the
fear or hatred of same-sex love that is considered an individual
and medical condition. Heterosexism recognises unequal social
and political power relations in the society. The two main
influences on gay theory are Freud and Michel Foucault.
Betty Friedan accused the lesbians of being a “lavender
menace” because they refused to identify themselves in relation
to men. Lesbian feminists claim lesbianism to be the ideal
feminism. They claim that men’s dominant role forces women to
be submissive and this perpetuates patriarchy. It excludes and
denies the role of men by identifying sexual and emotional desire
only among women.
Disappointed with second-wave feminism, lesbian
feminism challenges heteronormativity as the norm and asserts
that lesbianism is a form of emancipative sexuality because it
excludes men and hence in a way rejects patriarchy. This way, it
offers a strategy to liberate women from the grip of patriarchy and
find meaning and purpose of feminism it really envisions.

Lesbian feminism recognises identity, sexuality and community

to be integral in discourses related to queer theory.
The American cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin
(b.1949) introduces the concept of “compulsory heterosexuality”
and challenges the common view that heterosexuality is natural
and requires no explanation, which contrasts with lesbian and gay
sexuality. This argument is carried forward by Adrienne Rich.
The American feminist Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
argues that heterosexuality is a social convention that is supported
by several powerful institutions. She claims that in order to
subvert heterosexist literary culture, old texts should be radically
reinterpreted.
In the essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian
Existence,” published in Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected
Prose 1979-1985 (1986), she asserts that heterosexuality imposes
patriarchy upon women to control the female mind and body;
however, lesbianism, provides the possibility of a female identity
beyond patriarchy. She introduces the notion of “lesbian
continuum” to describe the nature of “women-identified
experience” in each women’s life throughout history.
Some distinctive features of lesbian theory include a
critique of “compulsory heterosexuality,” “importance to women
identification,” and the formulation of an alternative women’s
community. The manifesto “The Woman-Identified Woman”
(1970) published by the Radicalesbians group relentlessly
criticised the stereotypes imposed on women and considered the
sexual liberty of women from heterosexual norms absolutely
necessary.
Monique Wittig (1935-2003) is a French feminist theorist
who believes that heterosexuality is an ideological construct that
is taken for granted. The discourses of heterosexuality suppress
all those who consider themselves different, especially the
lesbians. She rejects the notion of “woman identification” saying

that is lies with the framework of the duality of gender. She

asserts that lesbians are not women because being a woman is a
particular social relation in relation to a man.
The Chicana writer Cherrie Moraga (b.1952) and the
Black lesbian critic Gloria Anzaldua (1942-2004) opposed the
concept of “women-identification” because it concealed power
relations among women. Anzaldua proposed the concept of
“mestiza” that includes the relations between women of diverse
cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Moraga produced lyrical
writings that brought together theory, politics and poetry.
The American gender theorist Judith Butler (b. 1956)
employs the term “heterosexual matrix” that shows how bodies,
genders, and desires are naturalised.” Later on, she would argue
for the subversion of gender identities and for a distinction
between sex, sexuality and gender through “gender
performances.”
The Italian author Teresa de Lauretis (b.1938) affirms the
role of gender binaries in perpetrating patriarchy in diverse
cultures in her essay “Sexual Indifference and Lesbian
Representation” (1998). She declares that identifying lesbian
identities as heterogenous, and fluid without fixed definitions can
transform the stereotypes of sex, gender and sexuality.
The American scholar Bonnie Zimmerman (b. 1947)
raises important questions regarding the contribution of lesbians
in building, accepting and elucidating literature. She remarks the
uniqueness of lesbian relationships that is based on a separate
identity of love between women. Professions of Desire, and
Lesbian and Gay Studies in Literature (1995) and The New
Lesbian Studies: Into the 21st Century (1996), are among the
canonical texts of LGBT literary studies.
Lesbian feminists consider themselves doubly oppressed
because as women they already occupy a marginal status in
society; moreover, they are doubly marginalised in their minority

position as lesbians in comparison to heterosexual females.

Lesbian feminism stresses the need for lesbians to attain historical
visibility, create a positive sense of identity and spread awareness
of a sense of community.
Third-wave Feminism
Third wave of feminism that emerged in the mid-1990s is
informed by media and technology and economic reforms around
the world. It is piloted by scholars and activists of Generation-X,
that is those who are born between the 1960’s and 70’s and wield
greater economic and professional power. The movement is the
outcome of the opportunities provided to women by the second
wave of feminism.
The Third Wave Direct Action Corporation, organised in
1992 that became Third Wave Foundation in 1997 supports
“groups and individuals working towards gender, racial,
economic, and social justice.” These movements are established
by the American writer and activist Rebecca Walker (b.1969), the
daughter of the novelist and second-wave feminist Alice Walker
along with other activists.
Rebecca Walker coined the term “thirdwave” in a 1992
essay for Ms. Magazine, titled “Becoming the Third Wave.” After
witnessing the misogyny during the hearing of the Anita Hill case,
she co-founded the Third Wave Fund in the attempt to “fill a void
in young women’s leadership and to mobilize young people to
become more involved socially and politically in their
communities.”
Rebecca Walker’s edited anthology on modern feminism
is To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of
Feminism (1995). He memoir Black, White, and Jewish (2000)
is a poignant narration of the confusion she experiences while
growing up as a Jewish biracial woman in America.

What Makes a Man (2004) is an anthology that explores

modern masculinity. Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a
Lifetime of Ambivalence (2007) is a memoir in which she details
her pregnancy and struggles to reconcile her desire to be a mother
with the contradictions put forward by second-wave feminism.
Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future
(2000) by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards questions
issues of sexual division of labour in households and advocates
the need to raise independent and empowered daughters. The
women of this wave of feminism recognise the limitations of sex,
gender, race and class and choose to oppose and fight patriarchy,
combat the restrictions imposed on them and reconstruct the
inherent power structures.
Informed by postmodern thoughts within academia, the
third-wave feminists question, recover and reconceptualise
notions of womanhood, gender, beauty, sexuality, femininity, and
masculinity among others. The recognition of gender continuum
is the outcome of understanding gender fluidity.
The third wave of feminists give importance to individual
consciousness of gender identity and sexuality that is constructed
by the society and then purposefully construct and freely express
their genuine gender identity. The language employed irony,
derogatory slang, humour and horror to redefine women and girls
as assertive, powerful and in control of their own sexuality. The
writers exploit the internet to raise issues and exchange
information on the publication of essays and videos to impact
larger audiences.
Postfeminism
Stéphanie Genz and Benjamin Brabon suggest that within
academic circles, postfeminism is defined as the consequence of
the coming together of several “anti-foundationalist” movements
whereby the “‘post-ing’” particularly refers to a change in
feminist thought regarding the way “‘woman’ as the subject of

feminism” is theorised (17).
Genz and Brabon mention that postfeminism is used as a
theoretical or philosophical term that is concerned with the
“problematic search for a unifying cause of” and a common
solution for women’s subordinated position and the denial of the
supposition that “feminism is based on a unified subjectivity, a
universal sisterhood” (17). Postfeminism denounces the notion of
a unified subject position and a universal feeling of sisterhood
among women all over the world that unite for a single cause and
search for a common cause of their subordinate position in the
society.
Postfeminism is a stand taken to find out whether
feminism has achieved all its goals through years of struggle and
won its cause. Several feminist critics use the term postfeminism
in a negative manner when renewed interest in activities and
positions of various generations of feminists, either earlier or later
are considered either sexist or suppressive. Hence, the term
postfeminism has wide implications.
In the essay “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a
Sensibility” (2007), the British sociologist and feminist cultural
theorist Rosalind Gill (b.1963) notes that the term “postfeminist”
can be used as an accusation against feminist scholars whose
work is seen as insufficiently feminist” (148).
In the essay “The Myth of Postfeminism” (2003), Elaine
J. Hall and Marnie Salupo Rodriguez comment that postfeminism
began in the 1990s. The authors outline five claims made by
postfeminism;
1.Feminism received less support in the 1980s and 1990s,
2.several women have turned anti-feminist
3. Many young women feel that since feminism had already
achieved its goals through the diverse movements over the years,
therefore feminism is neither relevant nor required for women

4. Women have adopted a “no, but…” version of feminism,

whereby they refuse to be recognised as feminists, but they would
continue to support feminist demands of pay for work done at par
with men and economic self-reliance.
5.Feminism could be considered “anti-male,” which is set against
“anti-patriarchy, anti-oppression, or anti-sexism.”
Considering all these points, it could be inferred that
postfeminism takes an ambivalent stand whereby it advocates
gender equality and female empowerment, but does not provide
a stringent feminist critique of the prevalent patriarchal notions.
In her book Postfeminisms (1997), Ann Brooks mentions
that postfeminism is a theoretical stand that relates with
deconstructive challenges to identity politics: “Postfeminism
expresses the intersection of feminism with postmodernism,
poststructuralism and post-colonialism, and as such represents a
dynamic movement capable of challenging modernist, patriarchal
and imperialist frameworks” (qtd. in Genz and Brabon 27).
One of the features of postfeminism is backlash, a term
coined by the American feminist and author Susan Faludi
(b.1959) to suggest the pessimistic notion that considers
postfeminism essentially anti-feminist that opts to reject feminist
objectives and turn to the early feminist periods. Hence,
feminism becomes “women’s own worst enemy” and since
women cannot aspire everything, they must decide on private and
public life, and home and career (Faludi 2).
Postfeminism provides a new form of feminism that
portrays an optimistic and triumphant portrayal of young women
who have accomplished and are highly successful in both private
and public domains (Genz and Brabon 64). A feature of
postfeminism is “Girl Power” that rejects the principles of
second-wave feminists related to women being less powerful or
facing suppression in society dominated by males. In popular

culture, “chick lit” is a type of fiction that rejoices “feminine

adornment and heterosexual romance” (76).
“Girl power” is the “articulation of young femininity and
represents ‘a feminist ideal of a new, robust, young woman with
agency and a strong sense of self’” that gives them the power to
discuss their gender role and this brings in greater independence
and liberation raised by the feminist movement (qtd. in Genz and
Brabon 76). The so-called ‘do-me feminism’, views sexual
freedom important to female independence and emancipation
(Genz and Brabon 91).
Postfeminism embraces pluralism of feminist thought and
the inherent diversities. It agrees with the postmodern claim of
anti-essentialism and includes discussions on “race, ethnicity,
class, sexuality and age.” Hence, postfeminism encompasses “a
complexity of vision and gives vent to the multivalent,
inharmonious and conflicting voices of contemporary women,
including the ‘other’ voices of feminism” (Genz and Brabon 30).
Backlash
Fundamentally an anti-feminist movement, backlash does
not approve of feminist notions of equality and liberation.
Several people believe that differences between either sex is
ordained by God or nature, hence they disregard any attempts to
subvert this order. Therefore, anti-feminist ideas are as old as the
origin of feminism. Suspicion and hatred among endorse
backlash. In the United States, backlash dates back to the suffrage
movement and criticises feminist movements of creating conflicts
and dividing the society.
Antifeminist movements gained momentum with the
spread of radical feminism of the second and third wave and black
feminism. Anti-feminists consider feminism the means to subvert
the foundations of the family and victimise masculinity.
Feminists are charged with contempt for moral values.
Antifeminists devalue crimes against women, consider such

charges baseless and denigrate gender awareness campaigns by
feminists. Excesses of data and fabrication of evidences are
scorned by the backlash movement.
An instance of backlash against feminism is the American
attorney Phyllis Schlafly’s (1924-2016) successful campaign
against the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) Bill in 1972. This
movement influenced the society against the ERA Bill on the
grounds of granting women the right to divorce, abortion and
same-sex marriage. They strongly advocated that differences
among men and women and discrimination are ascertained
biologically and not constructed as feminists claim.
Postcolonial Feminism
Women in the East are considered victims of superstitious
and backward religious as well as rigid patriarchal structures that
not only render women helpless but also ignorant about their
plight for several reasons believe the Europeans and the
Americans. Such women need to be indoctrinated into the aspects
related to civilisation such as “equality,” “rights,” and
“secularism” that are flaunted by the liberal cultures in Europe
and America.
Postcolonial feminism challenges colonial and imperial
emphasis on sisterhood, which is considered the route to enforce
imperil values into native cultures by imperial powers.
Postcolonial feminism opposes the tendency to universalise and
homogenise women’s oppression because women’s experiences
of gender differ considerably across nations and among cultural
backgrounds and diverse ethnicities. Therefore, postcolonial
feminism is the offshoot of intersectional feminist notions.
Moreover, postcolonial feminist critics make their analyses in an
interdisciplinary and a comprehensive manner.
Postcolonial feminism also looks into the damaging
influence of imperialism and
global capitalism in the Eastern countries. It ridicules the

European sentiment of assuming the role of the saviour, that is
the result of a natural feeling of superiority, and the right to
govern under the pretext of civilising the “barbaric” culture of the
East.
The French West Indian social philosopher Frantz
Fanon’s (1925-1961) The Wretched of the Earth (1961), the
Palestinian-American professor Edward Said’s (1935-2003)
Orientalism (1978) and the Indian English scholar Homi
Bhabha’s (1949) The Location of Culture (1994), the
poststructural theories of Jacques Derrida, the notion of power by
Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis have
opened the avenues for postcolonial feminist critics to delve into
the complexities and conflicts within the matrix of postcolonial
feminism.
The Indian scholar, theorist and feminist critic Gayatri
Chakraborty Spivak (b.1942), in her formidable essay “Can the
Subaltern Speak?” (1988) mentions that the subalterns are those
who belong to the third world nations. She discusses the
impossibility of the subaltern women’s inability to stand up in
unity and voice their concerns within the postcolonial discourse
because of divisions of caste, class, gender, religion and
geography among other factors.
In the essay, she attempts to blur the distinctions between
subject and object, self and other, Occident and Orient, and centre
and margin. She analyses the practice of Sati to deconstruct the
notion of truth. The British prohibited this barbaric practice;
therefore, the truth that spreads is “white men saved brown
women from brown men” and the Indians are barbarians, while
the British are civilised and hence, and the British rule over the
Indians is justified. This way, identities are constructed and truth
is provisional.

In A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History

of the Vanishing Present (1999), Spivak discusses a range of
colonial and postcolonial issues through the lenses of Marxism,
deconstruction and feminism. Spivak rejects the totalisation and
universalisation of Western feminist theories that exclude the
discourses of the women of the Third World countries that also
bear the burden of colonial excesses.
The Vietnamese literary theorist and film-maker Trinh T.
Minh-ha (b. 1952), in Woman, Native, Other: Writing
Postcoloniality and Feminism (1989) critiques the coloured
relationship between the First-World feminists and their marginal
counterparts in the Third-World. She is critical of Western
feminist critics that disregard the debilitating effects of patriarchy
within local cultures of Third World Women, which she
expresses in her work When the Moon Waxes Red:
Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics (1991). She also
comments on the fact that Western gaze objectifies these women
as Other due to their ethnic identity.
The Zimbabwean writer and feminist scholar Anne
McClintock (b.1954) provides a cultural critique of the workings
of gender, sex and class that together influence patriarchy and
colonial interests to the extent that their roles are redefined to suit
oppressive strategies. In Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and
Sexuality in the Gender Context (1995), she develops the notion
that the imperial powers thrive on gender, sex and class
differences, inequalities and discriminative practices that not only
consolidate their position in the colonies but also act as deterrents
to unify the natives.
Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha in Women Writing in India
(1993) reiterate that the fact that women in the early nineteenth
century produced texts is evidence of their interaction with their
circumstances and the world they lived in. They especially relate

the texts with class and gender conflicts and the colonial
interferences that are reflected in the works.
Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (1991)
the joint effort by Chandra Talpade Mohanty(b.1955), Ann Russo
and Lourdes Torres points out how Western feminists depict
women of the Third World as victims of male domination and
cultural practices. She contends that women of the Third World
are as much historically and culturally produced subjects as
Western women are and they too have a voice to express their
concerns as Western women do. However, she believes that the
situation of the Third Women needs to be understood within
historical and cultural backgrounds.
Recasting Women: Essays in the Indian Colonial History
(1989) edited by Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, published
by Kali for Women in India and by the Rutgers University Press
in the United States is a historic compilation of feminist theorists
and scholars who delineate the way historical processes along
with the structures of law, religion and economy inform
patriarchy and situation the condition of women during the
colonial period. The study exposes the diverse reforms along the
parameters of class and gender that examines how patriarchy
works to influence the lives of women.
The Egyptian-born American scholar of Islam, Leila
Ahmed (b.1940) in Women and Gender in Islam, Historical Roots
of a Modern Debate (1992) documents the contribution of
indigenous feminisms in the colonised world to discussions on
religion and gender. Colonial versions of modernism identify
Muslim cultures to be impediments to progress. The West
considers the custom of the veil as an oppressive sign of Islam
and Islamic feminists argue against the claim by staking their
claim for equality that includes certain ritualistic notions
In A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the
Middle East to America (2011), Ahmed explores another

controversial issue, the use of the hijab or the veil, perceived as a

vital issue and debates regarding its significance and symbolism
would later ensue. The hijab is perceived not only as oppressive
and discriminatory by the West but also a symbol of the
degradation of women and backwardness of a religion in the
West. Taslima Nasrin (b.1962), the Bangladeshi poet and
novelist’s Lajja (1993) and her autobiography Amar Meyebala
(2002) recognise her as a radical secular feminist.
Dalit Feminism
Dalit feminism focuses on the construction of categories
of caste and gender that are not only distinct categories but also
not only interconnected and influenced by each other. Dalit
feminism criticises Indian feminism that totalises and
unversalises marginalisation and subordination by not taking into
account caste-based discrimination. Like black women, Dalit
women challenge the feminist notion of projecting ‘woman’ to be
a homogeneous category without considering differences of
caste, class, race and sexuality.
Gopal Guru sees Dalit feminism as a “politics of
difference” (80) because women on the one hand suffer
Brahminical patriarchy that perpetrates caste discrimination and
on the other hand, they face patriarchal exploitation by Dalit men.
The NFDW (National Federation for Dalit Women) is an
organisation formed in 1995 by Ruth Manorama to trace crimes
against Dalit women and address caste-based discriminatory
practices globally.
Dalit feminists have identified the three ways in which
Dalit women are repressed: (1) As the subject of caste oppression
by the upper castes; (2) as labour workforce subjected to class-
based oppression by the upper and middle castes, and (3)
patriarchal oppression by all men, including men of their own
caste. Dalit feminism is a distinct category of feminism that is
particular tom the Indian context and takes into its ambit of study
the condition of Dalit women only.
Dalit feminism includes identity politics as one its chief
concerns that undermines or subverts dominant discourse of the
Brahminical caste-based patriarchy and the Dalit patriarchal
system. Dalit feminist writers do not acknowledge the efforts of
women writers who are insensitive to the boundaries of caste and
gender in their writing and decline offers made by these writers
to represent Dalit sufferings in their writings.
The Phule-Ambeder movement traces the unrepresented,
unheard and unarticulated experiences of the section of people
who have been historically marginalised. We Also Made History:
Women in the Ambedkarite Movement (2008) by Urmila Pawar
and Meenakshi Moon makes a historical analysis of the
participation and role of women in the Ambedkar movement and
records the previous struggles of Dalits in the twentieth century.
The book also comprises interviews and biographies of forty-five
Dalit women.
Writings by Dalit women explore the discriminatory
practices that provide testimony to the trauma faced by
generations of Dalit women as the consequences of years of
suppression. The Indian sociologist and feminist scholar
Sharmila Rege (1964-2013), in Writing Caste, Writing Gender:
Reading Dalit Women’s Testimonios (2006) mentions that Dalit
women’s’ testimonies function as counter-narratives to challenge
“selective memory and univocal history” of both the Dalit and the
women’s movements (75). The political agenda of Dalit women
writers is evident in their writings.
Fourth-wave Feminism
It is believed that the fourth wave of criticism focuses on
a range of issues from sexual harassment, body shaming and rape
culture though the use of social media to project, spread and raise
awareness of these concerns. The wave of criticism originates in

India in December 2012 that witnessed the gang-rape of a young
woman.
This incident attracted adequate media coverage that
sparked a series of protests and international rage and disgrace.
Moreover, President Donald Trump’s derogatory remarks on
women raised the social call for gender equality. The Women’s
March held protests throughout America and the world on
January 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration as the
President of USA.
The Me Too Movement that was initiated in 2006 in the
USA to support survivors of sexual violence, especially women
of colour. This movement gained momentum in 2017 when
Harvey Weinstein was exposed of sexually harassing and
assaulting women in the industry. Since then, women from all
over the world, irrespective of any group share their stories of
sexual harassment using the #MeToo to condemn and publicly
disgrace the wrongdoers, the powerful men in politics, business,
entertainment and the media.
The Essay: “Towards a Feminist Poetics”

Showalter remarks that in the approach to studies in
English in the 1970s, feminist criticism is “the most isolated and
the least understood.” She is concerned that that stereotypes of
feminism view feminist critics as being either “obsessed with the
phallus” or “obsessed with destroying male artists”. She quotes
Robert Boyers, who considers a single work by Joan Mellen,
Women and Their Sexuality in the New Film (1973) an example
of a feminist work that lacks “intellectual honesty” and “rigor.”
Showalter considers this observation as intimidating and
unacceptable because it forces women to comply with the
academy. She speculates that feminist criticism is susceptible to
such attacks because it lacks a well-defined or completely
articulated theory of feminism. Moreover, feminist critics do not

know whether they have to agree with the accusation or defend
their stand.
Showalter points out that literary concepts that claim to be
“universal,” centre around the experiences and perceptions of the
male and expose fabricated social and personal contexts in
relation to women’s experiences in the literature that is produced
by men. Feminists turn away from theory because some male
academicians consider theory their property.
By convention, women have always been relegated as the
supporter of literary scholarship because of “penis-envy” and
they end up as translators, editors or hostesses at academic
conferences, while their male counterparts occupy the centre-
stage and involve themselves in open debates with other writers.
At this juncture, out of necessity it would be appropriate to
introduce a body of work, both to reveal the major contribution
of women writers to English studies, and as “part of an
interdisciplinary effort” to “reconstruct the social, political and
cultural experiences of women.” Showalter decides to categorise
feminism, which is an independent and separate model of
feminist theory that rejects the unavoidable male models and
theories and takes into account the entire history of women’s
writing to the present.
Showalter differentiates two categories of feminist criticism:
1.Feminist Critique, or woman as reader: In this category,
woman is a reader who passively consumes literature produced
by male writers. The subject of discussions includes images and
stereotypical representations of women, mistaken notions and
omissions of women’s experiences in criticism, and gaps in the
literary history constructed by male writers.
It also includes the ways in which the female audience is
exploited and manipulated, particularly in popular culture and
films, and how women are viewed as signs in the semiotic
systems. It is essentially driven by politics of gender and hence

the writings are highly critical and often express views that reveal
Marxist thoughts or aesthetics.
2.Gynocriticism, or woman as writer: This type of feminist
criticism is related to woman as writer, where woman is the
producer of textual meaning that discusses the “history, themes,
genres and structures of literature by women.” For its subject
matter, it takes in the emotional and mental forces or processes
(psychodynamics) of female creativity, linguistics and the
necessity of an exclusive female language, the course of discrete
or shared female literary career, literary history and studies of
specific writers and their works. The term la gynocritique or
gynocriticism could be used to designate this focussed discourse.
Gynocritics is autonomous or independent and experimental in
nature, which is interrelated to other modes of research on
feminism.
Feminist Critique of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of
Casterbridge
Showalter moves on to provide an example of feminist
critique of Thomas Hardy’s to demonstrate that one of the major
issues of feminist critique is that it is essentially male-oriented.
She mentions the comment made by Irving Howe, who praises
Hardy’s descriptive power of the scene where Michael Henchard
sells his wife and daughter for five guineas. Showalter points out
that Hardy does not mention anything about the relationship of
Henchard and his wife except that she waits passively throughout
and adapts to her conditions.
Showalter analyses the scene and suggests that patriarchal
societies would never sell the sons in the family. By selling his
wife and daughter, Henchard is dissociating himself with love and
loyalty, preferring the male community and maintain
relationships based on the “male code of paternity, money,
and legal contract”, which he later realises as a mistake.
Henchard appreciates the dignity of and strength of

character of his wife’s daughter, Elizabeth-Jane. Showalter
mentions that though the female characters in the novel are
guided by their passions and emotions. they appear “somewhat
idealized and melancholy projections of a repressed male self.”
Though feminist critique criticises patriarchy, it is
primarily male-centered. Women’s role in literary history is
limited and their experiences are not given importance, but men’s
notions of how a “woman should be” is best expressed. Hence,
the critique tends to “naturalize women’s victimization by
making it the inevitable and obsessive topic of discussion.” Such
a tendency is also revealed in Elizabeth Hardwick’s Seduction
and Betrayal or Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter who emerges
a heroine out of betrayal.
The Uniqueness of Gynocriticism

In contrast to feminist criticism, gynocriticism constructs
a female framework for analysing women’s literature and
developing new models based on the study of female experience
instead of adapting male models or theories. There is a purposeful
neglect of male literary history and refusal to adhere to male
tradition and focus on female culture only.
Gynocriticism is connected to research in the fields of
history, anthropology, psychology, and sociology all of which
have hypothesised on a female subculture that incorporates the
status of women, the internalization of femininity, interactions,
occupations and consciousness of women.
Showalter notes excerpts from feminist historians and
sociologists to trace the revolutionary theory centered on female
experience. She then moves on to discuss the experiences of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and other female authors to highlight
the need for discussing the “completeness” in the works by
women authors, and it is necessary to discuss among other things,
those that have been influenced by conditions that have no

relation with art whatsoever.
It is also seen that women writers are so vulnerable to
aesthetic standards and values of the male tradition that they seek
the approval and validation of male writers. However, the
consequences of the association often lead to conflicts and
destruction for women writers.
The Three Stages of Women’s Writing

From the experiences of several women writers,
Showalter outlines some elements that have been characteristic of
their such as awakening, suffering, unhappiness, and matrophobia
among others. In order to realise the special nature of literature
by women, it is important “to reconstruct its past, to rediscover
the scores of women novelists, poets, and dramatists whose work
has been obscured by time.”
To establish that there is a continuity of the female
tradition in every decade, she has classified women’s writing into
Feminine, Feminist and Female stages and elaborated them in her
book A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from
Brontë to Lessing (1977):
Feminine phase (1840-1880): The first phase is the phase of
imitation, where “women [writing] in an effort to equal the
intellectual achievements of the male culture” adopt the male
pseudonym. For instance, writers such as Mary Ann Evans,
Currer Bell, Ellis Bell and Acton Bell adopted male pseudonyms.
By adopting the male pseudonym, the writers are subjected to
pressures of the text in all its aspects. This also reveals the
liabilities of female authorship.
Some American women adopt superfeminine pseudonyms
too, for instance Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, and Fanny
Forester to bring out the enthusiasm, economic intentions and
professional skills they possess. The British writer who combines
aspects of both is Harriet Parr who wrote under the pen name
“Holme Lee.” The feminine quality of writing during this period
is “oblique, displaced, ironic, and subversive” and certain aspects
of the text could be lost if the intended meanings are not
discovered by the reader.
Feminist phase (1880-1940): The second phase is the protest
phase, where literature discards the adapting attitudes of
femininity and stages the ideals of womankind that is victimised.
Some of the examples of this phase include “Amazon utopias of
the 1890s, fantasies of perfected female societies set in an
England or an America of the future”, that also witness protests
against male dictated government and laws.
Female phase (1920 onwards): Women reject both the
imitation and the protest phases and concentrate on the female
experience that is the source of a unique art and includes feminist
analysis of cultural forms and techniques of literature. Dorothy
Richardson and Virginia Woolf identify male and female
sentences and split their works into “masculine” journalism and
“feminine” fictions, whereby internal and external experiences
are redefined and sexualised. This way, their works are not only
the source of enrichment but also the celebration of female
consciousness that recognises diversity of women’s experiences.
The Impasse in Feminist Criticism

Showalter recognises theoretical approaches such as
Marxism and Structuralism that have influenced feminist
criticism, whereby ideologies are either undermined or revised.
However, gynocriticism has begun to choose a path of its own,
and as John Stuart Mill mentions about women’s literature, its
endeavour is to “emancipate itself from the influence of accepted
models, and guide itself by its own impulses.” The historical
conditions that were responsible for the production of critical

ideologies explains the reason why feminist adaptations are at a

stalemate.
There is the possibility that experiences of women could
disappear, become silenced, or even unacceptable in structuralist
as well as Marxist frameworks. Experience cannot be equated to
emotion and it is time that considering the feminine aspect,
irrationality is protested. The suppressed stories of women in
history, anthropology, psychology and within every individual
should be located before trying to discover whatever is unsaid by
feminism. This could be done by looking into the gaps evident in
texts by women.
The Future of Women’s Writing
The theoretical stalemate or stagnancy in feminist
criticism does not arise from not finding suitable definitions and
an appropriate terminology, or a theory, but recognising the
“divided consciousness” and the fragmentation in each woman.
Male traditions demand we become rational, marginal; however,
it is important to create the awareness and commitment to do
away with pretence of the success of womanhood and shed off
the ironic masks of academic achievement.
It is easy to follow the literature of the male-dominated
world that claims to be universal but women cannot afford to “go
back to sleep.” The great intellectual challenge posed before
women should be seen as the opportunity to project the “anatomy,
the rhetoric, the poetics, the history” of women’s writing.
Showalter says that “The task of feminist critics is to find
a new language” and to involve in a new way of reading that
would bring together women’s intelligence and experience,
reason and suffering and skepticism and vision that would
incorporate the views of men too.
She concludes the essay on an optimistic note that
“feminist criticism is not visiting. It is here to stay, and we must
make it a permanent home.” Feminist criticism has just begun its
journey and it is yet to develop as an autonomous body of work

that would continue to open up new frontiers of thinking.
References
● Abrams, M.H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of
Literary Terms. 11th ed. Cengage Learning, 2015.
● Arya, Sunaina, and Aakash Singh Rathor, editors. Dalit
Feminist Theory: A Reader. Routledge, 2019.
● Brooks, Ann. Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory
and Cultural Form. Routledge, 1997.
● Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of
Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of
Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and
Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum,
vol.1, no. 8, 1989, pp.139- 67.
● Dicker Rory C. A History of US Feminisms. Seal P, 2008.
● Eagleton, Mary, editor. A Concise Companion to Feminist
Theory. Blackwell, 2003.
● Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War against
Women.Vintage,1992.

● Genz, Stéphanie, and Benjamin A. Brabon Postfeminism:

Cultural Texts and Theories. Edinburgh UP, 2009.
● Hall, Elaine J., and Marnie Salupo Rodriguez. “The Myth
of Postfeminism.” Gender and Society, vol.17, no.6, 2003,
pp. 878- 902. JSTOR.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3594675?seq=1#page_scan_tab_c
ontents
● Humm, Maggie. Practising Feminist Criticism: An
Introduction. Rawat, 2015.
● Klages, Mary. Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed.
Bloomsbury, 2006.
● Mukhopadhyay, Arpita. Feminisms, edited by Sumit
Chakrabarti. Orient Blackswan, 2016.
Kindersley, 2010.
● Pawar, Urmila, and Meenakshi Moon. We Also Made
History: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement. Zubaan,
2008.
● Rege, Sharmila. Writing Caste, Writing Gender: Reading
Dalit Women’s Testimonios. Zubaan, 2006.
● Razak, Arisika. “Response.” Journal of Feminist Studies in
Religion, vol. 22, no.1, 2006, pp.99-107.

● Rooney, Ellen, editor. The Cambridge Companion to

Feminist Literary Theory. Cambridge UP, 2006.
● Showalter, Elaine. “Towards a Feminist Poetics.” Women’s
Writing and Writing about Women. Croom Helm, 1979.
pp.22-41.
● ---. “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness.” Critical
Inquiry, vol. 8. U of Chicago P, 1981.
● Wallace, Elizabeth Kowaleski, editor. Encyclopedia of
Feminist Literary Theory. Routledge, 2009.
● Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens:
Womanist Prose by Alice Walker. Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1984.
Web Links
● https://www.britannica.com/topic/feminism/The-fourth-
wave-of-feminism
● https://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/17/1969/rebecca-walker-
born
● https://genderandsecurity.org/projects-
resources/research/demarginalizing-intersection-race-
and-sex-black-feminist-critique

Questions
1. Feminist criticism and Gynocriticism
2. Dalit feminism
3. Postfeminism
4. Black feminism
5. Postcolonial feminism
II. Essay Questions
6. The three phases of feminist writing, according to Elaine
Showalter
7. French feminism
8. Significance of gynocriticism
9. Elaine Showalter as a Feminist critic

Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics

and Politics of Culture
Louis Montrose
Objectives:
This unit will enable the students to
● Comprehend the precepts of Marxism and its association
with New Historicism/Cultural Materialism.
● Comprehend the tenets of New Historicism/Cultural
Materialism and the critical practices.
● Trace the influences on New Historicism/Cultural
Materialism.
● Analyse the contribution of Raymond Williams, Stephen
Greenblatt, Louis Montrose, Jonathan Dollimore and
Alan Sinfield.
● Analyse the main concepts -Neo-Marxism, Culture: new
definitions, Thin and Thick Descriptions, textuality and
historicity, Texts, Contexts and Co-texts, Rereading the
Renaissance and Shakespeare, the politics of
representation and power.
● Elaborate the principal arguments of the essay
“Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of
Culture”.

Introduction
The American literary theorist and academic scholar
Louis Adrian Montrose has delved into a wide variety of literary,
historical, and theoretical topics and issues, and has
revolutionised the study of Renaissance poetics, English
Renaissance theatre, and Elizabeth I.
Montrose is an early practitioner of New Historicism,
especially as it relates to the study of early Modern English
literature and culture. In order to elaborate the origin and
development of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism it
would be worthwhile to begin from Marxist criticism, and its
contribution to culture.
Marxist Criticism and Culture

Marxist Criticism provides a sociological context and
interpretation of cultural forms within social and economic
conditions that exist in a particular society. Marxism believes that
cultural forms reflect social conditions and media often reveal the
realities about class, class conflict and power relations within a
society.
Marxist criticism hence attempts to probe the links between
literary or cultural artefacts and the social and economic
conditions in which the artefacts are produced and exist. A
Marxist approach would suggest three important things:
1. The cultural form reveals or represents the world that the
writers have observed or experienced.
2. The form and themes presented envision changes to be
implemented in the society.
3. Cultural forms and their themes affect the readers or
viewers because these seem to be convincing, realistic and
appealing.
The “language” or “form” captures the interest of the viewers or

readers is experience, and it is socially relevant though it provides
suggestions to change that experience. The English literary
theorist and critic Terry Eagleton (b. 1943) refers to the social,
cultural and economic aspects of society in traditional Marxist
terms.
The economic aspect is the General Mode of Production
(GMP), and literature and art form the “Literary Mode of
Production” (LMP). “The forces of production of the Literary
Mode of Production (LMP) are naturally provided by the General
Mode of Production (GMP) itself of which the Literary Mode of
Production is a particular substructure.”
The Marxist view of culture hence tries to seek a social
referent, a term used by Stuart Hall in his work on the sociology
of literature in 1979. A social referent elaborates themes and
representations within a work of art that in a way refers to the
contemporary social circumstances, contexts and conflicts. For
instance, the wife-selling scene in Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of
Casterbridge reveals a specific kind of divorce prevalent among
the plebeian communities in Victorian England. Every creative
work exposes the inherent tensions, problems in society and
levels of exploitation. A work of art, which is a product of
imagination helps understand the “real world”
Link of Marxism with New Historicism/Cultural

Materialism
Marxism gives importance to contextual reading of art-
that is, locating art, its author, production and reception within its
social context. This is similar to New Historicism and Cultural
Materialism, the forms of critical thinking that developed
simultaneously in the 20th century. New Historicism and Cultural
Materialism also focus on the social contexts of art.

The American Shakespearean literary historian, and

author Stephen Greenblatt’s (b.1943) essay “The Circulation of
Social Energy in Renaissance England” and others included in
Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in
Renaissance England (1988) reveal the processes of monetary
exchange, the issues of authority and power and dynamics of
institutions. When Greenblatt declares that “this institutional
improvisation frames the local improvisation of individual
playwrights”, he places an individual author or text within
contexts of production.
Marxist Approach to Culture
A Marxist approach to culture focuses on both the
production and consumption of the cultural work of art. It
concentrates on the artist, who is the author as well as the
audience, who is the reader. By focussing on the elements and
processes of production, Marxism seeks a material basis for
abstract entities such as aesthetics or truth. Marxism believes that
concepts and representations of beauty or ideals in literature and
art are connected to material realities of economics, class
relations, power and suffering in some ways.
Marxism asks readers to locate a material base for culture
and denounces the notion of “artist as genius” or “artist as solitary
thinker” and disconnects the artist from the environment in which
the artist’s experiences that help create specific artefacts but the
social position is given importance.
A Marxist approach to culture locates not only the text and
author within a social context but also the reader. Readers
produce specific meaning of texts because of their social position
in respect of caste, class, race and gender affiliations.
Traditional Marxist criticism regards all art forms to be
ideological. It believes that all forms of culture are basically
exercises in the propagation of ideology. Fiction proves that all
art is not ideological and serves the interests of the dominant
classes. Resistance literature in every culture provides ideologies

different from the acceptable ones.
The French Marxist thinker Louis Althusser proposes to
go against the traditional Marxist view that all art is ideological.
He mentions that art maintains a particular relationship with
ideology. Art does not exist within ideology but often distances
itself from it.
Base and Superstructure in Traditional Marxist Thought

In The German Ideology (1845-66), Marx and Engels
mention that there is a direct connection between man’s thoughts
and ideas conceived with material aspects of life. Imagination and
conception are the products of an active mind. As they mention:
“Consciousness does not determine life; life determines
consciousness” (qtd. in Eagleton, Marxism 4). Marx believes that
human beings become involved in certain productive, or
economic, relations that give rise to a kind of social
consciousness.
In the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of political
Economy (1859), Karl Marx asserts that social, political and
intellectual processes in life are governed by the “mode of
production of material life.” The relations of production are
related to a distinct period of development of their material forces
of production. Therefore, “It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that
determines their consciousness.”
Marx believes that history is the history of class struggle
between the bourgeois (the capitalists) and the proletariat
(working class). The economic structure of a society is
determined by the aggregate of all relations of production. The
legal and political superstructure to which definite forms of social
consciousness are related, is built on the relations of production.

Base and superstructure in Marxist thought refer to the

relationship between the economic and the socio-cultural aspects
of the society, where the economic base includes aspects and
relations of production such as industry, labour, market and
commodities. This factor influences the cultural superstructure
that comprises arts, religion and the law.
Class conflicts due to exploitative capitalist strategies lead
to the domination of the bourgeoisie, which is revealed as
political power. When capitalists attain political power, they
impose economic and legal policies that reinforce and expand the
power of the capitalists. This way, the base which provides a
superstructure will in turn be supported by the superstructure.
Dialectical Materialism
Marxists contend that literature, which is a part of
ideology is not an independent entity. It is produced within a
definite and concrete period within history and reflects the culture
of the time and the author or the text works within this extent
only. Marx modifies this proposition and mentions that the
relation between the base and the superstructure is dialectical,
which means that they reciprocally influence each other. This
statement would later be accepted by Marxist critics such as
Raymond Williams.
Marxist philosophy upholds the view that the world is
based on dialectical materialism. The world is constructed out of
objective reality. Ideas, which originate from the interplay of
material forces do not control the material world. The relationship
between ideas and the material world is a dialectical one.
Dialectics takes into consideration the connections, conflicts and
contradictions found in interactions in the society. Therefore,
every aspect of society is subjected to change and this is the
mainspring of human history.

Dialectics observes history as the struggle of the material

forces of contrasting interests to dominate and control. Marxism,
therefore is based on historical and dialectical materialism. In
Marxist theory, historical materialism refers to the Marxist
interpretation of history in relation to the class struggle.
Dialectical materialism argues that political and historical events
are the effects of conflicts of social forces caused by man’s
material requirements.
Culture, Ideology and Hegemony

Cultural forms are essentially modes of representation and
Marxist criticism observes how such representations ponder over,
exhibit or deflect prevalent economic situations to enable the
dominant classes to retain their power in any society. The “twist”
of reality, the real economic conditions in any society is what
Marxist criticism calls ideology, and this is the first key concept
in Marxist theory.
Social structures such as education, culture and religion
make the oppressed classes believe that the order of inequality in
society is “natural” or “pre-ordained” and hence they fail to
recognise the processes by which the oppression takes place. This
system of thought or representation that helps naturalise
economic inequality and oppression is termed ideology.
Writings, speeches, beliefs and opinions, and cultural
practices that emphasise the “naturalness” and necessity of
economic practices is ideology, and it functions as an instrument
of power because it helps reinforce the dominant classes by
naturalising an exploitative relationship and convincing the
working classes, which means how things actually are. Ideology
prevents the recognition of oppression by the oppressed. Thus,
ideology is “a blind, a veil” that prevents the oppressed from
proper understanding. Hence, Karl Marx terms this as false
consciousness.
Ideology is about power because it legitimises the power

and authority of the dominant sections or classes of a society. The
domination and reinforcement of power relations is called
hegemony, a term popularised by the Italian Marxist philosopher
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). Hegemony works more
effectively when the dominant sections accept their domination
and oppressed sections endure their suppressed condition.
Hegemony is the domination of particular sections of
society by the powerful classes not essentially through threats of
violence or the enforcement of law but by winning their consent
to be governed and dominated. Hegemony, similar to ideology
operates through consent rather than persuasion.
Hegemony involves questions of ideology because it
seeks to “naturalise” and legitimate an unequal power relation by
suggesting, that is indicating that the trade agreement is mutually
advantageous. Hegemony is achieved through the circulation of
ideology.
Antonio Gramsci’s Notion of Ideology

Antonio Gramsci mentions that ideology can circulate
through art and cultural forms such as popular culture, folk songs,
legends and social myths. Ideology permeates the fabric of human
life and constitutes the structure of people’s lives and manifests
itself as a material force. Ideology works at an unconscious level.
So far as hegemony is concerned, ideology is made
available to the working classes “not as a visible instrument of
power and hegemony, but more subtly, as a commonplace,
invisible unconscious suggestion.” Ideology is maintained,
reasserted and reproduced through cultural forms such as art.

Louis Althusser and Ideology

The French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser
(1918-1990) argues that ideology is circulated through particular
structures in society. These he terms Ideological State Apparatus
(ISA) and Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). The French
Marxist philosopher Althusser (1918-1990) argues that ideology
is circulated through particular structures in society, which he
terms Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) and Repressive State
Apparatus (RSA). Structures such as the family, religion, the
media, and education systems come under the ISA. This
apparatus influences people of the “correctness” of ideology by
presenting it as a desirable object or an idea. RSA imposes
ideology by offering the threat of violence and operates through
the police, the law and the army.
Ideology constructs the individual as a subject because it
makes the individual understand and accept reality and live within
it. Ideology is the context in which people lead their lives and
hence it is a material reality and not an abstract one. Ideology
operates by naturalising the constructed roles of an individual in
the society. This construction of subjects through ideology is
termed interpellation by Althusser.
Interpellation
The process by which an individual agrees to follow an
ideology by accepting it without, however being aware of it is
called Interpellation. Ideology makes the subject believe that
he/she is an independent entity or being and not a subject that is
controlled by outside forces. Ideology interpellates the individual,
and makes the individual believe that he or she is a free agent.
Ideology goes before the individual and the individual is
inserted into the ideological scheme. A predetermined set of roles
exist and the individual automatically or rather unconsciously
chooses few, all the while assuming that he or she has freely
chosen them. For example, the subject position as a woman is
created in advance of her and she is simply implanted into the

ideology of patriarchy, and the woman never realises this.
Therefore, it can be inferred that ideology is invisible.
Since ideology pervades human life, is remains unaware
of. Ideology is so real that its existence is unrecognised. Ideology
is therefore the lived reality where its characteristic features have
become so familiar that it is invisible. Unequal social relations
and the domination of the capitalist system over the consumer is
perpetrated through ideology.
Traditional Marxist View and Culture
The base and superstructure model seems to argue for a
deterministic view of culture. If all culture is determined and
formed by the economic base, then it would suggest that art is
denied autonomy, which is inappropriate.
All art forms or cultural practices cannot always be drawn
to an economic base. A cultural form cannot be identified as an
expression of an economic structure. Marxist thought in the latter
half of the 20th century found that the base and superstructure
model was inadequate to explain culture.
Althusser and the later Marxists propose that the cultural
realm enjoys a certain degree of independence from the economic
base. Though culture is definitely influenced or determined by the
base, it provides only a general framework wherein cultural forms
and practices figure.
The Contribution of Raymond Williams

Raymond Williams (1921-1988) is a Welsh author,
academic, cultural theorist, literary critic, and a leading figure of
the New Left. Terry Eagleton asserts that Williams is not a
Marxist. Williams’ work with the journal New Left Review, and
the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
(BCCCI) is the foundation for the area of studies known as

Cultural Studies and his elaboration of the concepts of hegemony

and ideology helped Marxist scholars analyse cultural practices.
Influenced by Antonio Gramsci and the concept of
hegemony, he wrote against mechanical reproduction of Marxism
that fails to consider the dynamism of cultural production. Stuart
Hall emphasises the exemplary role of Williams in the
development of cultural studies that is politically oriented. New
Left is a term used mainly the United States and Britain to refer
to activists and educators who, in the 1960’s decided to
implement reforms with regard to issues of gay rights and other
gender issues that had never been brought under the purview of
Marxists.
Williams formulates a fresh outlook at critical analysis
called cultural materialism that observes culture as an active,
dynamic historical process. In Williams’ approach, cultural
practice plays a definite role in critical analysis that gives primacy
to material processes and relations of culture. His approach to
Cultural Studies, which he calls cultural materialism reiterates
that “culture is ordinary”, a statement which attempts a
democratic concept of culture. He approves of the Marxist model
of culture.
His notion of cultural materialism never rejects the
economic and political bases of cultural practices. Williams
defines cultural materialism as “the analysis of all forms of
signification…within the actual means and conditions of their
production.” To explain clearly, he mentions: “Whatever
purposes cultural practice may serve, its means of production are
always unarguably material.”
Cultural materialism is an analytic practice that tends to
locate and interpret a cultural practice or an artefact within
institutional structures like media, intellectual contexts that
include movements and schools of thought, forms and their
necessity and limits, modes of production, organisation and

control mechanisms and reproduction strategies that include sales

adaptations (Nayar 142). However, he notices the restricted role
of technology in cultural materialism.
In Marxism and Literature (1977), Williams elaborates
the term “materialism” that does not strictly refer to the economic
base within the Marxist sense of the mode of production.
According to him, economic base is a process but not a static
condition and includes the materiality of artistic production for
instance printing, production and marketing and other processes.
Williams is of the opinion that Cultural Materialism should make
the move to confront over-determinism in cultural politics, that
is, political, social and cultural factors that determine the nature
and content of cultural practices.
Williams challenges the elitist version of culture called
“high culture” in the post-war era, which is the culture of a
specific elite group. In Culture and Society (1958), he traces
several aspects of working class culture that have been either
ignored or condemned by high culture. He argues for a
democratic definition of culture as the “lived experience” of
“ordinary” men and women that is made in their daily interaction
with the texts and practices of everyday life.
Such an approach undermines the hierarchical mode of
culture proposed by Matthew Arnold and F.R. Leavis, where
culture is “the best that has been thought and said.” Williams also
refutes the traditional idea of popular culture as that which is
instituted, financed and operated by the commercial bourgeoisie
as against working class evolution.
Williams elaborates two branches of cultural forms: the
contingent and the subjunctive (qtd. in O’Brien 738). The
contingent views history to be driven by human action and the
subjunctive searches for moments which ask what alternatives
are possible and how. His theoretical concept of a structure of
feeling is the connection between the “area of interaction between

the official consciousness of an epoch […] and the whole process

of actually living its consequences”. He insists upon viewing
culture as “ordinary,” as every day that is capable of being
democratic, which is constantly made and re-made.
He mentions that cultural practices and art forms may not
always point towards or be influenced by the material (base)
aspect of the society. Every cultural practice is a part of a process
that negotiates with an economic situation. So, cultural forms and
practices maintain a constant dynamic relation with the economic
base where the base may try to influence the cultural form even
though the forms would try to escape the base.
He formulates three forces or tensions within the
expansion of cultural form: the residual (existing earlier and
traditional), the dominant (pivotal and defining), and the
emergent (new and challenging).
Cultural practices often make use of the material
conditions of the past. Some constituents of an earlier age might
survive in the present in some form as “fantasy, the exotic or as
an ideal” (Nayar 141). This continual presence of the cultural past
in the present in some form is called residual culture. The past
serves as an ideal, it is a source of inspiration and creates a
nostalgic feeling for contemporary culture. The remnants of the
past continue to haunt the individual even though the dominant
cultural form is completely different; nevertheless, the residual
and the dominant cultural elements often work together. Forms of
art always announce the arrival of new cultural contexts and
norms. New meanings and values are included in emergent
culture.
Cultural forms cannot be traced down to their immediate
economic concerns or influences. Cultural and rat forms make use
of a set of values, meanings and signs from the preceding age or
might provide insights into a developing trend in society. He
emphasises that social and historical processes inform both

cultural forms and language. Meaning processes in language

manifest social forces, ways of living and economic conditions.
Arts are a part of a social organisation that is influenced
by changes in the economic conditions as well as political
changes. This means that culture is linked with politics. Social
changes are affected by political processes that are always
reflected in cultural practices and artefacts. Therefore, it is
suggested that cultural artefacts and arts reflect social and
political processes and the subsequent changes.
In Culture and Society (1958) and The Long Revolution
(1961), Williams elaborates the reciprocal relationship between
cultural development and industrial capitalism. In Culture and
Society (1958) he analyses how the English society undergoes
changes after the Industrial Revolution that is depicted in the
works of William Blake, William Wordsworth, Edmund Burke
and George Orwell.
In his essay “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural
Theory” (1982), Williams argues that the base and superstructure
model of Marxism is projected as one of exact correspondence,
but there is often a “lag”, a temporal (time-based) one between
the two. He observes that it is important to see the processes that
determine cultural forms, which is the superstructure. The
mechanics of this determination have to be studied.
In the novel Border Country (1960), he theorises the
experiences of class, region, and community during an extended
engagement with questions of form. Towards 2000 (1983)
analyses of “nomad capitalism” and labelled as “Plan X” the
political and economic project of social management, commonly
understood as neoliberalism, which he believes is a new form of
capitalism that would “grasp” and “control” the future. His vision
for the future is a radically new kind of politics that centre around
demilitarisation, environment, and feminist movements.

Raymond Williams and Traditional Marxism

Williams observes that the traditional Marxist notion of
base is too rigid. He argues that the economic base is a process
and not a static condition or object. Base not only includes the
industry that produces goods but also human labour that
reproduces them. Totality is the summation of the base and the
superstructure that includes all social practices. Criticism,
therefore takes into account the social, economic, political and
cultural spheres of influence.
Williams mentions that “determination” is the exertion of
pressures on individuals and cultural forms. Williams mentions
that “Determinations are experienced individually but …are
always social acts…social formations.” Williams suggests that
social factors do not just exist, but they are internalised by
individuals. Cultural practices are influenced by several social
factors. Multiple forces that influence a cultural form is called
overdetermination. Overdetermination helps realise that even
contradictory forces play an immense role in influencing cultural
practices.
Cultural materialism proposes that within institutional,
commercial, ideological and contextual frameworks, an author
writes a literary work. So, the traditional Marxist notions of base
and superstructure cannot define art forms or cultural practices.
An art form may reflect an earlier economic base and a cultural
practice may encompass new forms of economic and material
conditions that are just emerging.
Ideology is often integrated through educational practices
and the family. Only a selective tradition is transferred as “the
tradition” to successive generations. From what is stored of the
past, only selected meanings and images are prioritised and
established as the “standard” or “the tradition”.
All these propositions provide a glance into the relevance
and influence of Williams’ analyses and critique of cultural

changes and transformations that centre on culture, as what

Williams believes to be “a whole way of life,” something made
and lived.
Neo-Marxism
The intellectual endeavours of the New Left initiated Neo-
Marxism that emerged as a reply to several political and social
problems which traditional Marxist thought failed to explain or
address. Neo-Marxists refuse to join the labour movement and
challenge the basic assumptions of Marxism such as class
struggle and the Base/superstructure model. They believe that
orthodox Marxism fails to explain the complexities of culture.
Louis Althusser and the later Marxists hold that the cultural
sphere enjoys a certain degree of autonomy from the economic
base.
The most important school of Neo-Marxism is the
Frankfurt School that arose from the Institute of Social Research
founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt. The Frankfurt
School is hostile to popular culture and disregards capitalist
society. Its first director was Carl Grunberg and later Horkheimer
took charge. The other members of the school wereTheodor W.
Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, Otto
Kirchheimer, Leo Löwenthal, and Franz Leopold Neumann.
Horkheimer encouraged questioning the basic
assumptions of Marxism and approached the issues of Marxism
philosophically. He is also said to have applied the principles of
psychoanalysis for social analysis. He undertook social research
to enquire into the nature of political temperament prevalent at
the time.
Its significant contribution is the importance being given
to interdisciplinary research that could effectively deal with the
complexities of modernity. Hence, philosophy, psychoanalysis,
Marxist theory, sociology and economics were used to analyse

social changes.
Neo-Marxism, which is also called critical theory
considers class divisions under capitalism more important than
gender or sex divisions, and race and ethnic differences. Neo
Marxism encompasses a group of beliefs that reject economic or
class determinism and a belief in at least the partial independent
nature of the social sphere. The Neo-Marxists take into account
the failure of working class revolutions in Western Europe after
World War I. They incorporate ideas from other schools of
thought to fill in the gaps or omissions in Marxism.
Comparison of Marxism and Neo-Marxism
Marxism rests on ideas of capitalism, the economic
structure of the society and dialectical materialism proposed by
Karl Marx. Marxism believes that class inequalities and
exploitation due to economic differences are created by
capitalism. Neo-Marxists reject the monopolistic and oligarchical
nature of capitalism but do not consider its competitive nature.
Marxism focuses on a stateless society, while Neo-Marxism
reiterates the imperialistic and militaristic government to prevent
the accumulation of excess capital in the hands of business elites.
New Historicism/ Cultural Materialism: The Initial Stages

Guided by anthropologists and philosophers of history,
literary critics in the late twentieth century started viewing texts
and contexts as exposing real material conditions of social
struggle for acquiring power. They proposed that power was at
the centre of all social relations. This was evident in the texts of
the period.
Initiated by Marxist thought, critics argued that
interpretation was political because it intended to reveal social
conditions in literary texts. They also considered the need to

incorporate history and social struggle into the text. “A return to
history” (Wilson and Dutton) is necessary to announce the
departure from the structuralist and the poststructuralist
preoccupation with the text.
All writing is regarded as text by the new theorists where
context and history played important roles. Texts related to
diverse disciplines are the outcome of specific social
circumstances and they share similar prejudices, ideologies,
themes and motifs. Therefore, a literary text could be read in the
context or perspective of diverse texts from the same age and the
social circumstances of their production could be traced.
Literary texts are not only a part of diverse fields of study
but also as important as texts belonging to the different
disciplines. This mode of analyses of literary texts developed into
New Historicism in America and Cultural Materialism in Britain.
New Historicism is developed and practiced by critics
such as Louis Montrose, Catherine Gallagher and Alan Liu in the
United States. New Historicists are mainly influenced by the
French philosopher Michel Foucault and the American cultural
anthropologist Clifford Geertz. In Britain, the corresponding
theory of Cultural Materialism is proposed and practiced by
Catherine Belsey, Jonathan Dollimore, Alan Sinfield and Peter
Stalybrass, who are influenced by the cultural theorist Raymond
Williams and Michel Foucault.
New Historicism
The term New Historicism was coined by the American
critic Stephen Greenblatt, in his Introduction to a special issue of
Genre, Vol. 15 (1982). His book Renaissance Self-Fashioning:
From More to Shakespeare (1980) is regarded as the founding
text of this new critical practice.

Works of literature are viewed as historical texts by New

Historicism. Mainly connected to Renaissance studies, it suggests
a subjective approach to literature. New Historicism believes that
identity is fashioned by social institutions.
Literature is a form of social construct, which is produced
by the society and in return remoulds the culture of that society.
Literature is created by culture and constructed by several types
of consciousness. Hence, social, political, religious, and
economic aspects of a given society determine the literature that
is produced.
These elements circulate in society through “social
energy,” which is predetermined in works of art. The “social
energy” intrudes the historicity of a work of art and becomes the
instrument to characterise the ideology of the culture through
indicative texts. New Historicism undertakes this through its
suggestion of historicity of texts and textuality of history.
New Historicism is based on the notion that power
relations are inherent in every text. Power is ever-present and the
critic has to unravel the role of the different forms of power that
operate within the texts from the past. New Historicism depends
on textualisation of history and sees culture and cultural forms in
relation to power that is manifested diversely in society. New
Historicism recognises that all texts are based on a specific
historical context, the social patterns and the role of power in
society.
Catherine Gallagher explains new historicism as “reading
literary and non-literary texts as constituents of historical
discourses that are both inside and outside of texts” (37). Louis
Montrose asserts that the focus of this new vein of literary
criticism is an attempt to refigure “the socio-cultural field within
which canonical Renaissance literary and dramatic works were
originally produced” and to resituate them “not only in
relationship to other genres and modes of discourse but also in

relationship to contemporaneous social institutions and non-

discursive practices” (17).
New Historicism tries to find out how a text could expose
the social interchanges and how the text could contain actual
history within itself. For instance, a New Historicist perspective
of Elizabethan drama would expose validation of monarchy, the
rigid class structure, notions of national identity, naturalisation of
gender roles and exclusion of certain sections from the exercise
of power.
Another example would be Edmund Spenser’s Faerie
Queene, which is an allegory about Elizabethan England. The
work not only creates an image of Queen Elizabeth I but also
emphasises the subject-monarch relationship, even though it is
written in the pastoral form that involves the ordinary lives of
people.
The point is that structures of organisations or the state are
intimately connected to cultural forms, where particular
representations of the government or imperial rule are observed
and accepted by the society. Through such cultural forms and
their representation, structures of power are maintained and
ideologies of the dominant classes are unquestionably accepted.
New Historicism is based on the parallel reading of
literary and non-literary texts that belong to the same historical
period. New Historicism refuses to “privilege” the literary text. It
does not prioritise literary texts over historical background but
envisions a practice of study where both literary and non-literary
texts are given equal importance and highlights how the two
constantly inform or interrogate each other. New Historicism
involves the parallel study of literary and non-literary texts.
The word “parallel” summarises the fundamental
differences between New Historicism and the earlier approaches
to literature that had made use of historical records and data. The
earlier approaches had made a hierarchical separation between

the literary text, which was considered the object of value and the
historical background, which was only the setting, and by
definition of lesser worth.
The English classical and literary scholar E.
M.W.Tillyard’s (1889-1962) The Elizabethan World Picture
(1943) and Shakespeare’s History Plays (1944) are books against
which New Historicism defines itself. In these books, Tillyard
observes and elaborates how the typical Elizabethan traditional
mental attitudes to the society, deity and the universe are
projected through the plays of Shakespeare. The conventional
approach to the study of Shakespeare until the 1970’s was
characterised by the combination of this historical framework
situated within the practice of “close reading” and the analyses of
“patterns of imagery.”
The American critic Louis Montrose defines the “equal
weighting” of the texts as a combined interest in “the textuality
of history, the historicity of texts” in the essay “Professing the
Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture.” Greenblatt
states that New Historicism “involves an intensified willingness
to read all the textual traces of the past with the attention
traditionally conferred only on literary texts.”
A new historical essay would place the literary text within
the frame or setting of a non-literary text. The historical material,
which would throw light on the literary text is called anecdote.
The anecdotes are the foundation to the text that appear in the
form of an eye-witness or direct account that highlights the lived
experiences. Since these historical documents are not
subordinated as contexts, they are called co-texts. The text and
the co-text would be seen as the experiences of the same historical
moment and interpreted accordingly.

Influences on New Historicism

1. Derrida: Derrida’s argument that there is nothing outside
the text in the particular sense that every aspect of the past
is only available in a textualised form is important.
Derrida mentions that the te4xt that is available is “thrice-
processed”, first through ideology or discursive practices
of its own time; second, through the individual and third,
through the misrepresenting maze of language.
New Historicist essays remake or permutate the
past. The genre considered is juxtaposed with a specific
document and a new object is formed. The new entity
represents the past in a new light by repositioning it.
2. Foucault: New Historicism celebrates difference and
“deviance”. It is against establishment and privileges
personal freedom. It proposes that the state is repressive
and all-powerful. This notion is adopted from Foucault
who sees the state as “panoptic”, (which means all-seeing)
surveillance.
The Panoptican is a design for a circular prison
conceived by the 18th century utilitarian Jeremy
Bentham. The panoptic state maintains control by the
force of “discursive practices” whereby its ideology is
passed on through the body politic. Rather than exerting
force, the Panoptican disempowers those who internalise
the operation of power.
Foucault believes that the discourse of the era
exposes the oppositions and hierarchies inherent in the
concepts it speaks about. Hence, concepts of knowledge,
truth are discussed, what is normal or deviant is also
deliberated.

3. Louis Althusser: Ideology situates individuals in every

discourse and the users of language as seen as “subjects”
within a discourse, whereby their interests are actually
subordinated to the interests of the dominant class.
4. Mikhail Bakhtin: Literary texts are dialogic and include
conflicting voices that stand for several social classes and
their interests.
5. Clifford Geertz: The cultural anthropologist Geertz
mentions that culture comprises distinctive signifying
systems and the notion of “thick description” and “thin
description” are relevant. “Thick description” is the way
in which a specific product or event of the society is
closely analysed or read so that diverse meanings it has
for people are retrieved.
Moreover, the network of systems, traditions and
codes, and ways of thinking are discovered through the
object in which the meaning is provided. Extracts of
documents are scrutinised and previous writing about the
same text is not at all considered.
Clifford Geertz: Cultural Anthropology, Thick and Thin
Descriptions
“Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of
Culture” is the first chapter in Clifford Geertz’s The
Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. In this chapter, he
mentions his views of culture and outlines the differences
between “thick description” and “thin description”. While the
term “thick description” was first used by the social
anthropologist Gilbert Ryle, it was Clifford Geertz who
popularised the term.

Geertz mentions that cultures are complicated concepts

made by man. He names culture a “web of significance” that has
been “spun” by man. Culture is complex, so cultural analysis
researchers should try to probe into and explain how people make
meaning of their lives rather than look for forms and rules that
explain cultures. Cultural studies should incorporate
interpretative search of meaning rather than experimental
research (3).
Culture is a complex phenomenon where communication
takes place within a certain context. So, contextual meaning
becomes relevant. Culture is closely related to present social
relations. Therefore, social structure and culture are the two
dimensions of the same phenomena. Culture should be explained
in detail so that complex and intricate details are understood
better. This can be done through “thick description.”
He provides the example of a wink to explain the
difference between a “thick” description and a “thin” description.
A “thin description” of a wink is: “The boy winked”. A thin
description is only a factual account of the event. A “thick”
description on the other hand, explores the complex cultural
moment of this gesture and probes and explains the context in
which the gesture was done.
Winking is not just a contraction of the eyelids, but a sign
that has both cultural and contextual significations that reveal the
state of mind of the winker, the audience, and how they interpret
the meaning of the winking action itself. While “thin description”
is the act of winking, “thick” is realising the meaning behind it
and its symbolic significance in society or between
communicators. The ethnographer has to interpret or translate the
events.
Geertz mentions that as a semiotic concept, “culture is not
a power, something to which social events, behaviors,
institutions, or processes can causally be attributed; it is a context,

something within which [interworked systems of construable

signs] can be intelligibly-that is, thickly-described.”
The process is a continuous attempt to uncover “the
degree to which [an action’s] meaning varies according to the
pattern of life by which it is informed. Understanding a people’s
culture exposes their normalness without reducing their
particularity” (14). When there are several complex conceptual
structures that overlap the other or tie to one another, it is
important to interpret them and understand how and why
behaviour is shaped in particular ways.
New Historicism in Practice
The literary and the non-literary texts are juxtaposed
(placed alongside) such that literary text is read in the light of the
non-literary text. The canonical literary text is defamiliarised
and all previous scholarship related to the text is eliminated so
that the text appears new. Both the text and the co-text are studied
to locate the issues of unquestioned state power, patriarchal
structures and their dissemination.
The process of decolonisation and the accompanying
frameworks are analysed. Finally, aspects of Derridean notion of
the textualisation of reality and Foucault’s notion of the
dominance of “discursive practices” in the determination of social
structures are made use of (Barry 172-73).
Old Historicism and New Historicism: A Comparison

The assumptions and methodology of New Historicism is
opposed to Old Historicism. According to Cox and Reynolds,
““new” historicism can be differentiated from “old” historicism
"by its lack of faith in ‘objectivity’ and ‘permanence’ and its
stress not upon the direct recreation of the past, but rather the
process by which the past is constructed or invented” (4).

E.M.W. Tillyard’s The Elizabethan World Picture (1943)

may be taken as a representative work of Old Historicism. Old
Historicism sees literature as expressing the spirit of its age. This
is exemplified in Tillyard who argues that the plays of
Shakespeare reveal the ideas of divine order, feudal hierarchy and
the connections between earthly and heavenly existence, which
together form the principal characteristics of the Elizabethan
period.
New Historicists like Greenblatt and Montrose on the
other hand, see Elizabethan literature as a discourse through
which the hegemonic structures are refashioned. Old Historicism
privileges the literary text, which is more valuable than the
historical background, which merely provides the setting and
hence it is less worthy. New Historicism gives equal importance,
that is “equal weighting” to literary and non-literary texts.
Moreover, New Historicism rejects the idea of authorial genius
that Old Historicism upholds.
Old Historicism is a historical project, while New
Historicism is a historicist project. New Historicism is interested
in reading history as it is represented and recorded in written
documents in “history-as-text.” Historical events are lost and the
past world is replaced by the word of the past. New Historicists
“defamiliarise” the canonical text, detach it from the stored
weight of previous scholarship and sees it as if different and fresh
to work on.
New Historicism probes into the text and the co-text to
reveal the issues of state power and the ways in which it is
maintained, patterns of patriarchal structures and their
propagation, and the process of colonisation and the ideologies
which sanction or approve it. New Historicism is influenced by
Derrida’s notion of the textualisation of reality and Foucauldian
idea that social structures are governed by dominant discursive
practices.

Advantages and Disadvantages of New Historicism

Advantages
Peter Barry outlines the advantages and the disadvantages of
New Historicism. Though New Historicism incorporates
poststructuralist thinking, it avoids the dense style and vocabulary
of Poststructuralism. The assumptions of New Historicism can be
scrutinised. The material is interesting and it is specific to literary
studies. New Historicism is less polemical and allows historical
evidence to speak for itself. It is politically oriented.
Disadvantages
Non-historians find this method appealing. Moreover, there is a
dramatic air in the method because New Historicism does not
consider previous discussions of a literary work.
Stephen Greenblatt and New Historicism

Representation, Power and Politics
Greenblatt inaugurated the New Historicist practice and
preferred to call his critical practice, Cultural Poetics, so that his
concern with the literature and the arts that are viewed as
fundamental to diverse social practices and complex interactions
with the culture of the period becomes evident.
In Renaissance Self-fashioning: From More to
Shakespeare (1980), Greenblatt argues that in the 16th century
fashioning of human identity was highly manipulative and
deceitful. He points out that the fashioning of identity in
terms of both its formation and expression is mainly the outcome
of social institutions.
The “fashioning” of identity was less autonomous in the
Renaissance period because structures such as the family, state,
and religious institutions exercised “a rigid and far-reaching
discipline upon their middle class subjects (Greenblatt 1).

Therefore, identity fashioning was artificial and imposed during

the early modern period.
By taking into account Chaucer’s characters, Greenblatt
suggests that especially in the 16th century this interest in the
fashioning of human identity had become more “self-conscious”
and understood as “a manipulative, artful process” (2). For
Greenblatt, 16th century poetry like Spenser’s “Faerie Queene”
or “Amoretti” presents a profound awareness of self-fashioning
(2). The “self-fashioning” points to the unavoidable presence of
ideologies prevalent during the time and the discursive structures
present.
He considers Thomas More “a character thrust into a play,
forever aware of his unreality while Thomas Wyatt fashioned
himself in a more conventional manner”. This means that “self-
fashioning” or self-representation seems initially possible, but in
the end the self is always fashioned according to discursive
structures in which it is positioned.
Greenblatt suggests that self is always a construction,
which is similar to the poststructuralist notion of the self, which
is not definite but a product of the interaction between the self and
the power relations the individual is part of.
Greenblatt also mentions the Foucauldian notion of power
that functions through discourses and ideologies that shape
individual thinking and self-perception. The subject feels that it
is natural to comply with the dictates of hegemonic structures and
his decision taken independently. Here, the power relations that
shape individual identity go unrealised by the individual. This
asserts that representation is always constructed by discourse and
it is impossible to project an authentic identity.
He reads a segment from Thomas Harriot’s A Brief and
True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588) as a
representative discourse of the English colonisers of America that
discloses princely power being instituted by force and fraud. He

discusses this aspect in the essay “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance

Authority and its Subversion, Henry IV and Henry V”.
The phrase “invisible bullets” refers to a ploy of the
English colonists who represented the diseases ravaging the
native populations as god-sent punishment for disobedience to
their colonial masters. The Native Americans are appropriated
and exploited by the power of the British. Greenblatt notices
parallel modes of power discourse and counter-discourse in the
dialogues in Shakespeare’s The Tempest between Prospero, the
imperialist appropriator and Caliban the appropriated native of
the island.
Greenblatt finds similar discursive configurations in
Shakespeare’s Henry IV-Parts I and II and Henry V. The Henry
plays expose the extent to which princely power relies on
predation, calculation, manipulation, deceit and hypocrisy.
However, the plays also reveal the subversive voices of Falstaff
and other representatives of Elizabethan subcultures. The
counter-discourses in Shakespeare’s plays are so craftily
manoeuvred that people glorify the power structure and the
audience is itself subordinated.
Through this strategy, he builds up a “subversion-
containment dialectic,” which has been the main concern of new
historicist critics of Renaissance literature who recognise that any
political or cultural order that tries to maintain power also fosters
subversive strategies in such a way that these strategies are more
curtailed than encouraged. Therefore, the impression is that the
act of containment or restrictiveness triumphs over the forces of
subversion.
In Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social
Energy in Renaissance England, Greenblatt defines New
Historicism as a “turn away from the formal, decontextualized
analysis,” and proposes “embeddedness of cultural objects in the
contingencies of history” (27). New Historicism does not use the

word “man” in a general sense to mean all human beings who

make “concrete choices in given circumstances at particular
times” (271), but the “particular, contingent cases” when “the
selves fashioned and acting according to the generative rules and
conflicts of a given culture”. This is because reality is not in the
“abstract universal” (272).
It is through the expectations of the individual’s class,
gender, religion, race, and national identity that history is
continually shaped and reshaped. Political patterns may change,
at times abruptly, and one form of “transformation” may be the
cause of chain reactions creating progressive situations (272).
Social Energy in Early Modern England

In Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social
Energy in Renaissance England Greenblatt mentions of his
“desire to speak with the dead” (1). He states that “textual traces”
have been left behind by the dead so that these remains “make
themselves heard in the voices of the living” (1). Certain texts
are not as resonant as the others are but the literature reproduces
“in the formal, self-conscious miming of life” and hence is more
operative than other ‘textual traces” left by the dead because
“simulations are undertaken in full awareness of the absence of
life they contrive to represent, and hence they may skillfully
anticipate and compensate for the vanishing of the actual life that
has empowered them” (1).
Cultural Poetics
Towards the closing of the 1980’s, Greenblatt and other
practitioners of New Historicism started using the term Cultural
Poetics instead of New Historicism. Though New Historicists
initially claimed that they were “doing” history, later with the
introduction of Cultural Poetics they confined their practice to a
much narrower domain. Greenblatt defines Cultural Poetics as
“the study of the collective making of distinct cultural practices

and inquiry into the relations among these practices.” This means
that Cultural Poetics would look into several cultural practices
like literature, music, film, and sports, trace the origin of any
cultural practice, situate this origin within diverse social spheres
and link each cultural practice with the other to observe how
cultural practices inform and influence each other (Nayar 212).
Louis Montrose’s Arguments of Representation, Power and

Politics in ““Shaping Fantasies”: Elizabethan Culture:
Gender, Power, Form.”
Montrose shows how literature becomes a discourse
through which hegemonic structures are refashioned in his essay
““Shaping Fantasies”: Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power,
Form” through Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
He asserts that the ruling ideologies of Elizabethan England
namely patriarchy, imperialism, divine right of kingship and
feudalism are refashioned and reinforced in Shakespearean plays
though subversive voices are evident.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the cult of the Virgin
Queen is obvious but so are the subversive elements in the play,
such as the voices of Hippolyta, Hernia and Titania. However,
these subversive voices are suppressed by patriarchy and
kingship. The happy ending of the play in fact reinforces
patriarchy. As Montrose mentions: “The festive conclusion of “A
Midsummer Night’s Dream” depends upon the success of a
process by which the female pride and power (manifested
in…possessive mothers, unruly wives and wilful daughters) are
brought under the control of husbands and lords.”
In Elizabethan England, which was ruled by a woman,
patriarchy was maintained in practice. In spite of having a woman
at the zenith of power, the ruling patriarchal ideologies were
perpetuated through its literature. Montrose states that the cult of
the Virgin Queen is a strategy to reiterate the Queen’s special

position and difference from other women, which however,
reinforces the male hegemony of her culture. The Queen is
proclaimed “Maiden, Matron and Mother”, thus fashioning her
not as a real woman but as a religious mystery.
Montrose’s essay notes the balance maintained between
the rigorous patriarchal structure and the reality of the female
monarch and details of the play show the attempts of the male to
come to terms with this. Male courtiers seem to undergo the
process of “unmanning”, in being chaste servants of the Virgin
Queen, while those who wanted advancement from her seemed
like children seeking the benefits of the mother of the nation. All
this demonstrates what is meant in practice by emphasising upon
the historicity of the text and the textuality of history.
Since the1980’s, New Historicism has influenced critics
and historians in a similar manner. New Historicism believes that
each individual lives a distinct historicity and the included
ideology with certain codes that are related to the society. It is
impossible to objectively approach the culture of the past because
the critic, similar to the author, is controlled by culture and
ideology.
Texts not only expose the aspirations and desires of a
society but also act as agents that mould the society in return. So,
texts can be assessed not to effect an objective reconstruction of
the past, but to realise the social energy so that the ideology of a
given culture can be figured out.
Cultural Materialism
The British Critic Graham Holderness mentions that
Cultural Materialism is “a politicised form of historiography.”
This means that the study of materials of history that include
literary texts is done within a politicised framework. This

framework incorporates the present, which have in some ways

been influenced and shaped by these literary texts.
The term Cultural Materialism was coined by Raymond
Williams and first used by Jonathan Dollimore (b. 1948) and Alan
Sinfield (1941- 2017) as the subtitle to the edited collection of
essays Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural
Materialism (1985). They identify four characteristics of Cultural
Materialism:
1. Historical Context: The historical circumstances under
which some texts were produced and accepted.
2. Theoretical Method: Importance is given to “textual
history and the textualisation of history,” which includes
reading through different branches of learning under the
premise that discourses intersect texts. It gives importance
to structuralism and poststructuralism and other critical
approaches that have emerged to the close of the twentieth
century.
3. Political Commitment: Power, dominance and
marginalisation of sections of the population reveal a
political orientation. Marxist and feminist ideologies are
politically shaped and they are preferred over religious
overtones that dominated Shakespearean criticism. Gender
and sex issues, and the exploitation of working classes are
focussed on.
4. Textual Analysis: Close readings of texts are prioritised
(qtd. in Nayar 213-214).

Definitions of “Culture” and “Materialism” in Cultural

Materialism
Culture includes all forms of culture expressed through
arts, literature and media and does not restrict its scope to “high”
cultural forms like the plays of Shakespeare. “Materialism” is
opposed to “idealism”. An idealist would believe that high culture
represents the free and independent play of the talented individual
mind. On the contrary, materialism proposes that culture cannot
overcome the material forces and relations of production.
Though culture does not reflect the economic and political
systems, it cannot be independent of it. In a sense, cultural
materialism aligns itself with Marxist criticism. Cultural
Materialism emphasises the role of institutions through which
Shakespeare is introduced to the public through the film industry,
the theatre companies and publishers who produce texts.
Cultural Materialism is indebted to British left-wing critic
Raymond Williams. In place of Foucault’s notion of discourse,
he introduces the term structures of feeling that are related to
“meanings and values as they are lived and felt.” Structures of
feeling, which are opposed both to definite systems of values and
beliefs and to the prevailing dominant ideologies in a society, are
typically found in literature and they resist the prevailing
circumstances.
Cultural Materialism is optimistic in that it sees the
possibility of change and views literature to possess oppositional
values. It uses the “past” to read the present and exposes the
policies of a society by what is chosen to emphasise or suppress
those of the past. Alternative Shakespeares (1985) edited by John
Drakakis, That Shakespearean Rag (1986) by Terence Hawkes
and The Shakespeare Myth (1998) by Graham Holderness are
books that undermine the fetishistic (obsessive) role of
Shakespeare as a conservative icon within British culture.

The Contribution of Jonathan Dollimore

The British theorist of Renaissance literature, cultural
studies, gender and queer theory, history of ideas and death
studies, Jonathan Dollimore (b.1948) is best known for Radical
Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of
Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (1984), Death, Desire and
Loss in Western Culture (1998), Sex Literature and Censorship
(2001), Political Shakespeare (1985) that he co-authored with
Alan Sinfield (1941-2017), and his memoir Desire: A Memoir
(2017). In his memoir, he delves into sex and identity, depression
and loss and the response of academia to gay subcultures. His
critical practice is known as Cultural Materialism.
Cultural Materialism examines texts closely and links the
social, and political contexts that result in their production and
reception. Theory and philosophy are applied together to show
allegiance with reformist and liberal political causes. This way,
idealist notions of literature as being timeless, apolitical and
gaining entry to describing fixed human nature are challenged.
Cultural Materialism studies historical documents, theory and
popular culture together with canonical literary texts.
Dollimore is interested in identifying marginalised
sections within authoritarian cultures such as gender queer or sex
workers and other considered possessing deviant orientations to
reveal how dissident practices and ideas continue to exist along
with prominent ideologies and can be chosen by them. He
advocates the use of theory to be continuously involved with
intellectual history to challenge ambitious purposes.
The Literary Influence of Alan James Sinfield

A scholar of literature and queer studies, Alan Sinfield’s
literary contribution includes Elizabethan drama, popular culture,
post-war literature, culture and politics, 20th century theatre,
Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Tennyson and modern pop music. His

primary concern in these works is the connections formed

between cultural forms and political and economic power; social
segregation or rejection and sexual identity, and the shared ability
to undermine, disrupt, challenge and transform society and its
cultures. He co-founded the first MA course in queer studies in
Britain “Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change” in 1990. He
lived with his gay partner Vincent Quinn until his death in 2017
due to Parkinson’s disease.
His first book The Language of Tennyson’s In Memoriam
(1971) is his association with representations of “same-sex
passion”. He mentions that Tennyson’s In Memoriam, which
expresses Tennyson’s grief at the death of his friend Arthur
Hallam also expresses the intensity of passion between them. This
association became problematic in the later 19th century when
sexual relations between men was considered scandalous. This
work by Sinfield is the first direct, detailed and theoretically
informed handling of same-sex relationships.
Literature in Protestant England 1560-1660 (1983),
which examines the responses of Renaissance writers to the
conflicts in English Puritanism helped him formulate his
arguments in Political Shakespeare (1985). He mentions that
Shakespeare’s unshakable hold in school curriculum ended in
students either failing or developing a conformist attitude.
Sinfield’s observation initiated changes within the curriculum in
Britain.
Sinfield explores the reasons for conflict between
interpretations and does not replace one viewpoint with another.
He emphasises the search for alternative meanings and in
Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident
Reading (1992), he delineates the practice of dissident reading to
reveal how dominant cultural forms during Shakespeare’s age or
even in contemporary periods are never as faultless as they might
seem to be.

He examines deviant sexual relations with power

influenced by age, race, gender and, above all, class differences.
The Wilde Century (1994), discusses how “queerness” is
intimately tied with upper-class effeminacy in the 20th century,
framed after the view that Wilde is an immoral celebrity, and
contrasts this with diverse opinions of same-sex desire in the
Renaissance and the 18th century.
Influenced by Foucault on his views of subcultures, in
Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (1989), he
critiques his earlier opinions on “Left culturalism”. He mentions:
“A divided society should have a divided culture: an (apparently)
unified culture can only reinforce power relations.” Recognition
of this important aspect is important for the revival of the Left in
the wake of Thatcher’s fall because the subcultures that cause the
divisions are already in place.
He seeks to theorise subcultures to develop cultural
materialist notion than romanticise them or result in
counterculture. Subcultures are seen across organisations that
influenced both the potential and limits of whatever social,
cultural or political life took place within them. Subcultural
activity could take place in theatres, universities, bars and clubs,
and production sites but they would be subjected to
institutionalisation and there could be no pure subcultural politics
or agenda.
Cultural Materialism: The Politics of Interpretation

A Cultural Materialist interpretation is intentionally
political because readings that not only pay attention to the
question of the exploited and the marginalised but also those that
seek possibilities of resistance and subversion in both the text and
the interpretive act are obvious.
Cultural materialists emphasise the necessity of creating
dissident reading for interfering with representational
constructions of power. This means that present conditions of

exploitation and power are worked on back with their historical
contexts. For instance, the present issues with gender related
exploitation can be worked back to the age of Shakespeare.
In this manner, readings on Shakespeare are linked to the
problems in the present. While New Historicists limit their
readings of Shakespeare at the historical level of Shakespeare’s
age, Cultural materialists resort to see Shakespeare in the context
of present concerns, imbalances and disparities.
Cultural Materialists argue that all types of representation
are politically motivated and therefore a politically neutral stand
cannot be taken. Every representation is a struggle for meaning
and power and literary texts are sites of such struggles. The critic
has to delve into the text to locate existing power structures and
systems of exploitation. The text would fail to reveal the political
agenda behind it if the endeavour is restricted to locating beauty
or truth alone.
Undertones of subcultural resistance, modes that counter
culture and rebellious attitudes in historical texts are identified by
Cultural Materialism. This practice reveals how the texts of
Shakespeare can be used to teach resistance to the social order in
contemporary times. The subversive capacity of the text is
highlighted.
Cultural materialists also look into ways in which
curricula are designed. They argue that the selection of texts is
based on the need to instil certain kinds of values, especially the
sense of English culture among youth or children. However, this
is done without finding out whether the practice of a uniform
culture is forced on them, and whether exploitation of several
sections is revealed. This school emphasises Shakespeare’s own
subversive strategies. This way, Cultural Materialists create a
strategy called dissident reading.

Dissident Reading
The practice of reading that questions the hidden political
agenda and power structures in texts and simultaneously looks for
potential subversive aspects to correlate the text and the present
is called dissident reading. The best examples are Alan
Sinfield’s Alfred Tennyson (1986) and The Language of
Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1971). In The Language of Tennyson’s
In Memoriam, Sinfield mentions that Tennyson evokes the
foreign lands to reinforce the theme that England is his true home.
Moreover, Tennyson tries to reverse sexual and gender
stereotyping, but he ends up reinforcing them. Sinfield reveals
that Tennyson mourns the death of Arthur Hallam, which
suggests a certain relationship between them, and it is a clear
instance of subversion of Victorian norms of heterosexuality.
However, towards the end of the poem, Tennyson celebrates
heterosexual union to be the only legitimate form of sexual
relationship.
Sinfield argues that resistance to a dominant social order
is evident in works such as Tennyson’s In Memoriam and the
changing of genders of the two lovers in the poem can be seen as
a mode of rethinking the issues of sex and gender, and the
institution of marriage. Anxieties around homosexual
relationships are raised. Sinfield underscores the fact that texts
conceal anxieties and they have to be read in order to reveal them.
Such anxieties reflect unstable relations of power in structures,
organisations, interactions as well as cultural practices.
Cultural Materialism in Practice

The literary text, which is often a Renaissance play, is
read in a way that the history or the context of exploitation can be
recovered. These elements are prioritised because the context
would inform how the loss of valuable information took place.
Marxist and feminist approaches to the text point out to the
dominant conservative social, political and religious

presumptions of Shakespearean criticism specifically.
Though close textual analysis is employed, structuralist
and poststructuralist approaches are used to ensure a break from
close analysis within traditional frameworks. Canonical texts and
traditional frameworks are preferred over little known texts
because it would be difficult to get politically involved.
Alan Sinfield’s Discussion of Shakespeare’s Othello in
Reading
Desdemona is seen to be a passive victim of patriarchal
ideology. Sinfield argues that contradictions and tensions are
inherent even within prominent ideologies. These “faultlines”
generate “dissident potential,” states Sinfield. He provides the
example of Desdemona who makes the “dissident” choice of
marrying a person that is unacceptable to her social group and
hence the social order is pressurised. However, Desdemona,
through this dissident act, is not an autonomous entity.
Dissidence, according to Sinfield, is not related to individual
agency but to the inner conflicts or disagreements that are typical
of any social order.
Focussing on the appearance of these cracks or faults or
fissures in the ideological outward image that texts offer, Cultural
Materialism reads even the most reactionary texts against the
grain. Readings of dissidence expose the ideological apparatuses
that marginalise and exclude certain voices and unearth the
possible causes for their downgraded status.
New Historicism and Cultural Materialism: Differences

New Historicism, which appeared in the United States,
was essentially a reaction against literary formalism. Cultural

Materialism, on the other hand, was powered by a reaction against

traditional understanding of literary history in England. Later,
these reactions were blended in the criticism and theory of both
movements.
Cultural Materialists argue that though literary texts
appear to support contemporary ideology, this ideology is less
prevalent than it actually appears to be. This is because the
dominant ideology is always under pressure as alternatives to the
hegemonic culture such as residual and emergent cultures always
exist that introduce alternative views and beliefs. An example
would be Sinfield’s discussion of the case of Desdemona in
Reading. Cultural materialism points out New Historicism’s
restraining of strategies of subversion and dissent as a limitation
of the practice.
Cultural Materialism considers dissident readings of texts

from the past as interfering with the politics in the present. This
means that Cultural Materialists seek instances of dissidence and
subversion in texts and seek a contemporary relevance to these
acts of resistance.
Cultural Materialists study the ways in which literature

from the past, for example the works of Shakespeare have been
made to function in later years or have been evaluated or re-
examined through diverse institutions in the succeeding periods.
They also find which works of Shakespeare are adopted by
University curricula or anthologized. They analyse how
Shakespeare has been constructed by the ideologies that operate
in contemporary times.

An interesting aspect is how Cultural Materialists analyse

the ways in which images and representations from the past are
used to promote a contemporary thought through media as a
means to uphold tradition. For instance, Shakespeare’s Globe
Theatre could function as an icon of British tradition in media
commercials.
The co-texts, that is the non-literary texts or historical
documents, in New Historicist readings of the plays of
Shakespeare are contemporary with Elizabethan or Jacobean eras.
However, Cultural Materialists not only accept the historical
basis of the co-text but also apply the discourse of the present age.
For instance, a politician could quote a few lines from
Shakespeare or notes could be prepared for a recent production
for a Royal Shakespeare Company.
While New Historicists situate the literary text in the
political situation of its times, Cultural Materialists situate the text
both in its time and in the present. The historicising of literature
and history are intertwined and this takes place in the present for
Cultural materialism, but with New Historicism, it dwells in the
past.
The Essay: “Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and
Politics of Culture”
The Reorientation of Studies Related to History and Culture
Montrose mentions that within Renaissance studies as
well as Anglo-American studies there has been a renewed interest
in historical, social and political conditions and outcomes of
literary production and reproduction. This mainly concerns the
writing and reading of texts and the ways in which they are
circulated and classified, analysed and taught as they are believed
to be interpreted within the framework of history and patterns of
culture.
It is seen that independent aesthetic and academic issues

are known to be intricately and complexly attached to other
discourses and practices. Inevitably, individual subjectivities and
collective enterprises or structures are mutually and continuously
moulded by such social networks.
J. Hills Miller, in his 1986 Presidential Address to the
Modern Language Association expresses his dismay at this
reorientation within literary studies. He mentions that literary
studies in recent years has not given importance to theory but it
has turned to language. Moreover, “history, culture, society,
politics, institutions, class and gender conditions, the social
context and the material base” are other aspects considered by
literary study.
Montrose points out that by making such a formulation,
Miller is differentiating or creating a rift between the linguistic
and the social realms. Montrose observes that cultural studies at
present reiterates the reciprocal and mutual relation between the
two. While the social aspect is discursively constructed,
language, which is dialogical in nature, is determined and
controlled by society and material aspects.
Montrose states that Miller’s disagreement with “reading”
to cultural critique of “theory” to the discussions of “history,
culture, society, politics, institutions, class and gender” appears
to simplify the two sets of terms and cover up the point at which
they meet and their similarities. Deconstructive reading is a
powerful tool that is used to analyse ideology. In terms of
European cultural politics, Derrida has pointed out that the
deconstructive strategy, which is interested in concepts and
meanings, is primarily a “political and institutional” practice.
When Derrida mentions that “there is no outside of
textuality,” denotes an “escape” from the demands of history in
its search for definiteness. It is impossible to find a definite
meaning in a text, and hence it is important to relish the indefinite

meanings offered by the text. However, this could also be

interpreted as an assertion of the ideological power of discourse
and especially those aspects, which reduce the function of
discourse as reflecting an earlier or “essential or empirical
reality.”
The Influence of Poststructuralist Theory
Poststructuralist theory includes several unstable,
differently combined and contradictory discourses. All these
discourses, however, have a common standpoint, which is the
problematisation of those processes by which meaning is
produced and established. Moreover, the discourses in
poststructuralist theory critique their own assumptions and
limitations as well as their approaches and intentions.
Miller believes that theory is influenced by
Deconstruction, and privileges it over ideology, which he
“scorns” at. According to him, ideology is a passionate and
illusionary state that is occupied by critics opposed to
deconstruction based on their right or left allegiance. Miller’s
criticism of and argument against ideology combines with the
intellectual and politically reactionary forces of the time.
Several approaches of socio-political and historical
criticism have not only been questioned and affected by recent
developments in theory but also played an important role in
defining and directing them. One such direction is the
understanding that “theory” is not comfortably or calmly placed
above “ideology” rather it is mired (stuck or caught up) or held
up within ideology.
Representations of the World in Written Discourse

Written discourse represents the world in such a way that
it constructs the world, shapes the modalities of social reality and
accommodates writers, performers, readers, and audiences to
diverse and changing subject positions within the world they are
made of, inhabit and interact. In the conventional sense,
“ideology” refers to the “system of ideas, values and beliefs
common to any social group.”
In recent times, this problematic but important term
“ideology” has generally been linked to the ways in which
subjects are “formed, reformed and enabled to perform as
conscious agents” in the society in a world that seemingly makes
sense. Therefore, both professional practice and academic
disciplines are products of ideology.
Ideology not only contains evidences of the educator’s
principles, beliefs and experiences, that is the individual “socially
constructed subjectivity” but also that it represents these
principles, beliefs and experiences. From this viewpoint, it could
be inferred that whatever Miller claim s to be as “an orientation
to language as such” is in fact an orientation to language that is
produced from a specific position with the frameworks of
“history, culture, society, politics, institutions, class and gender.”
“Politicizing” Renaissance Drama

Miller’s observation of a general crisis in literary studies
is reiterated in an article in PMLA that discusses “politicizing”
Renaissance Drama. The discussion begins with a warning that
criticism is possessed by “the spectre of a new historicism”.
Edward Pechter’s parody of The Communist Manifesto highlights
his claim that though the term “New Historicism” encompasses
several critical practices, it is principally a form of “Marxist
criticism”.
Marxist criticism considers “history and contemporary
political life” that are governed by “struggle, contestation, power
relations and libido dommandi” (the desire to dominate). To
Montrose this definition sounds more Machiavellian or
Hobbesian than Marxist. Pechter’s observation is indeed
disturbing to the mind because it is principally the

misinterpretation of the critic who is interested in attacking or
criticising the practice, and this approach becomes both appealing
and terrifying.
New Historicism
From the 1970’s, a group of critics called New Historicists
emerged that formed several theoretical, methodological and
political suppositions and suggestions that were distinct. The
principal aim of New Historicists is to reconfigure or reorganise
the socio-cultural field that situates canonical literary and
dramatic works of the Renaissance period. The method adopted
by them is to resituate the works in association with other “genres
and modes of discourse” as well as contemporary “social
institutions and non-discursive practices.”
Stephen Greenblatt is the prominent proponent of New
Historicism in Renaissance literary studies. He prefers to use the
term Cultural Poetics for his critical practice instead of the term
New Historicism. Cultural Poetics intends to reorient
(reposition) the “axis of inter-textuality”, that is the alignment of
“inter-textuality” in such a way that the synchronic text of a
cultural system is substituted for the diachronic text of an
independent literary history. This means that a text of a
contemporary period with specific cultural undertones is taken up
for study instead of a text that belongs to an earlier period of time
with a distinctive literary history.
Cultural Poetics adopts a strategy that is simultaneously
historicist and formalist, which implies and remains concealed,
and not sufficiently expressed or theorised. This approach
assumes that formal and historical concerns are not opposed to
each other but they are conjoined or united.

Interpretation of English Literature Related to Renaissance

Montrose notes that the current predominant mode of
interpretation of English Renaissance literary studies is a
combination of formalist strategies of close rhetorical analysis
with the detailed explanation of independent histories of “ideas”
or of literary genres and conventional themes or formulae in
literature (topoi). The explanation also involves histories that
have been separated or selected from their social milieus.
He also observes two other customary practices of
“history” in literary studies related to the Renaissance. The first
method is the selection of commentaries on everyday politics in
which the foremost ideology of the society under Tudor and
Stuart dynasties is deciphered, whereby the undependable
workings of social and political confirmations are misunderstood
to provide a fixed, logical and comprehensive image of the
Elizabethan period. The depiction thus discovered is
appropriately and clearly reproduced in the canonical literary
works of the period.
In the second method, which is a scholarly but
investigative eccentric work, texts are considered non-entities and
the meaning of characters and their action in fiction is attempted
to be established with reference to particular historical personae
or events.
New Historicism, which is the newer model of historical
criticism at times not only reproduces the inadequacies of
conventional idealist and empiricist modes of historical criticism
but also appropriates the scholarly efforts put into the analyses.
However, the difference is that New Historicism
problematises the notion that differences exist between
“literature” and “history”, between “text” and “context”. New
Historicism opposes the present practice that suggests and
privileges a unified and independent individual who could be the

author or an autonomous work that is set against a social or

literary context.
New Historicists form a heterogeneous group that
hesitates to theorise its practices. The absence of such well-
defined articulations would usher certain scholarly endeavours
that would pose the danger of underestimating any move to
differentiate new and old forms of historicism.
Since such ambiguities exist, it could be predicted that
New Historicism does not provide a critique of dominant critical
ideology but a “subject for ideological appropriation”. This is the
reason why New historicism has established itself as a new mode
of interpretation within academic circles, the “interpretive
community” of literary studies related to Renaissance.
Observations on New Historicism

New Historicists relish academic success, which is
evident in material and symbolic tokens of appreciation showered
on them. Moreover, conferences and publications on New
Historicism exert tremendous influence on academic endeavours
and they enjoy a greater status. It remains to be seen whether the
notion of newness would be more than just an intellectual pastime
or fancy in the manner Fredric Jameson observes the academic
sphere to be a marketplace under late capitalism.
The practice of “New Historicism” has not yet lost its
appeal within academic circles, and it has not yet occupied a quiet
space on the critics’ bookshelf. It has not yet been proved that
New Historicism defines as an agreed-upon intellectual and
institutional or established practice.
Various approaches under New Historicism have not
merged to frame a unique or a single methodical and influential
prototype that elucidates or interprets Renaissance texts. There is
no assurance that such a paradigm would ever emerge. The
academia is witness to debates and critiques on “New
Historicism” with several assumptions and contestations with the

ideological ground of Renaissance studies itself, and to a certain
extent influence other disciplines.
Routes Taken by New Historicism

Edward Pechter associates New Historicism with
Marxism because it asserts the presence of “struggle” as the
driving force of history. Some Marxist critics accuse New
Historicism of avoiding political obligations and “diachronic
analysis”, the analysis that extends a period of time. So, the
approach is not committed to history.
It is seen that some female and male Renaissance scholars
productively assimilate the interests taken up by New Historicism
and feminism, while others consider such initiatives particularly
opposed to gender considerations. Some others view New
Historicism as one of diverse approaches of social criticism that
involves forming a type of historical study that is “theoretically
informed” and post-structuralist in orientation.
Several critics are of the opinion that New Historicism is
similar to a new form of realist approach that is against all forms
of “High Theory”. Some critics observe that New Historicism is
concerned with “ideology and social context” as endangering
conventional critical considerations and values of literature.
Others see the New Historicist interest for “anecdote, or
narrative” that Clifford Geertz terms as “thick description”, which
is a determined move to consider entire forms of culture the
sphere or purview of literary criticism. It is a text that would be
interpreted continually and seen as a repository of stories from
which novel ideas, strange things or rare pieces may be skilfully
selected and restated.

Issues That Emerge within Academic Circles

Montrose pinpoints six complex, relentless and
unavoidable problems or questions that professors of literature
face, which they either confront or try to avoid. These are:
1. The essential or historical foundations that differentiate
literature from other discourses.
2. The patterns of connections between cultural practices
and social, political and economic processes.
3. The outcome of post-structuralist theories of textuality by
which historical or materialist criticism is practised.
4. The methods by which subjectivity is framed and
controlled by society.
5. The processes that produce and maintain ideologies,
which may be challenged or disputed
6. The points or configurations of agreement and
contradiction among principles and desires of a particular
individual as these are realised in the changing
speculations of diverse subject positions such as
“intellectual worker, academic professional, and gendered
domestic, social, political and economic agent.
These observations do not suggest that “New Historicism is a
project that can be defined, or the task of specific individuals that
identify themselves or known by others as New Historicists, can
provide answers to such questions. The implication is that the
term “New Historicism” exposes such issues and “hunts down”
particular positions within the discursive paths charted out by
these concerns.

The Poststructuralist Orientation to History

The Historicity of Texts and the Textuality of History
Within literary studies, it is seen that the post-structuralist
course taken to history is a structure in which there is a repetition
in reverse order (chiastic), a reciprocal relationship of “the
historicity of texts and the textuality of history”. “Historicity of
texts” means specific aspects of culture, the social fixation
(embedment) of all methods or approaches of writing that
includes not only the texts studied by critics but also the texts in
which people study them. “Historicity of texts” refers to the text’s
embeddedness in social, cultural, political and historical
environments that play decisive roles in its production.
“Textuality of history” refers firstly that it is impossible
to have a complete and accurate idea or knowledge of past events
without the intervention of the textual evidence or
remnants(traces) of the society that is studied. These traces are
not merely dependent upon complex aspects of preservation and
destruction, but they are assumed to be partially the consequences
of these aspects.
Secondly, the “textual traces” are themselves subjected
later to textual mediations when they are understood or
interpreted as the “documents” by which historians base their own
texts known as “histories”. Montrose quotes Hayden White’s
comment that “textual histories” often but partially provide
access to the “History” they refer to in their narrative and
rhetorical forms. “Textuality of history” refers to the fictional and
constructed aspects or nature of history.

Implications of “The Historicity of Texts and the Textuality

of History”
References to the text or the language (referentiality) have
become problematic because they arise from discourse, which
itself is dynamic and unstable and there is a reciprocal
relationship between the discursive and material spheres of
influence. This reappearance of the association between the
articulated and the social, the text and the world includes a
reproblematisation or abject rejection of some alternate notions
of literature. For example, to see literature as an independent
aesthetic entity that goes beyond the alternating pressure and
particularity of material necessities and desires. Similarly,
literature is seen as an amalgamation of passive discursive records
of “real events”. Literature is also considered the superstructure
of an economic base.
Recent practices reiterate both the autonomy of specific
discourses and their ability to affect social formations and make
things happen by changing the “subjectivities” of human beings.
Therefore, to refer to the social production of “literature” or of
any particular text is to suggest not only that it is a product of
society but also that it is productive. This means that literature is
the product of work done and that and that work is performed by
literature in the process of being written, performed or read.
Current theories of textuality convincingly argue that the
referent of a linguistic sign is unstable and that there is no fixed
meaning in a text. It is seen that reading and writing are forever
historically and socially determinate events, enacted in the world
by gendered individual and collective endeavours.
Hence, it would be appropriate to concurrently admit the
theoretical indeterminacy of the process of signification and the
historical particularity of discursive practices namely the acts of
speaking, writing and interpreting.

Montrose concludes the essay with the observation that

this new form of socio-historical criticism analyses the interplay
of discursive practices that are specific to a culture and in turn the
culture-specific practise participates in the interplay it seeks to
analyse. This way, the varieties or forms of the “Real” and
“History” are represented as examples, adopted and reproduced
and by these methods they may also be appropriated, challenged
or opposed and transformed.
Conclusion
The essay points out to two important aspects, “the
historicity of texts and textuality of history”. While “the
historicity of texts” foreground how the text is ingrained in the
social, historical, political and cultural setting of its production
because all types of writing are culture specific and socially
embedded, “textuality of history” refers to the fictional and
constructed nature of history.
Foucault, while discussing the archaeological approach to
history argues that old historians do not consider the aspects of
unpredictability, disputations, and discontinuities of actual
history and develop a coherent and consistent historical narrative
that conforms to the predominant ideology of the period.
Since history is a narrative, which is produced in a
particular context similar to the way language is, it is subjective.
Moreover, social, political and economic interventions from
dominant groups of individuals control historical representations.
New Historicism’s notion of “textuality of history” corresponds
to Derrida’s notion that reality is a textual interpretation of events
and Foucault’s belief that dominant discursive practices govern
social structures. The aim of New Historicism is a reciprocal
critical approach wherein a work is understood through its
historical background and cultural and intellectual history can be

understood through literature.
References
● A. Bennett, and R. Nicholas. An Introduction to
Literature, Criticism and Theory. Routledge, 2016.
● Brannigan, J. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism.
Macmillan, 1998.
● Buchanan, Ian. Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory.
Oxford UP, 2018.
● Cox, Jeffrey N., and Larry J. Reynolds, editors, New
Historical Literary Study: Essays on Reproducing Texts,
Representing History. Princeton UP, 1993.
● Denzin, N.K. Interpretive Interactionism. Sage,1989.
● Dollimore, Jonathan and Alan Sinfield. Political
Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, 2nd ed.
Manchester UP,1994.
● Gallagher, Catherine. “Marxism and the New
Historicism.” The New Historicism, edited by Aram H.
Veeser. Routledge, 1989, pp. 36-37.

● Geertz, Clifford. “Thick Description: Toward an

Interpretive Theory of Culture.” The Interpretation of
Cultures: Selected Essays. Basic Books, 1973, pp. 3-30.
● Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From
More to Shakespeare. U of Chicago P,1980.
● ---. “The Circulation of Social Energy.” Shakespearean
Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in
Renaissance England. Clarendon P, 1990, pp.1-20.
● ---. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of
Social Energy in Renaissance England. U of California P,
1988.
● Greenblatt, Stephen, and Michael Payne. The Greenblatt
Reader. Blackwell Reader. Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.
● Milner, A and Browitt, J. Contemporary Cultural Theoy,
3rd ed., Routledge, 2002.
● Montrose, Louis A. “Professing the Renaissance: The
Poetics and Politics of Culture.” The New Historicism,
edited by Aram H. Veeser. Routledge,1989. pp.15-36.
● ---. “Renaissance Literary Studies and the Subject of
History,” English Literary Renaissance, vol.16, 1986,
pp.5-12.


● Nayar, Pramod. K. Re-reading the Renaissance. A Short
History of English Literature, pp.106-110.
doi:10.1017/upo9788175968851.006.
Structuralism to Ecocriticism. Dorling Kindersley, 2010.\
● O’Brien, Phil. “Raymond Williams.” The Bloomsbury
Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, edited by
Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Bloomsbury, 2018, pp. 738-39.
● Parvini, Neema. Shakespeare’s History Plays: Rethinking
Historicism. Edinburgh UP, 2012.
● Ryan, K. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism: A
Reader. St. Martin’s P, 1996.
● Veeser, H. Aram, editor. The New Historicism Reader.
Routledge, 1994.
Web Links
● https://www.jstor.org/stable/2505207
● https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stephen-
Greenblatt
● https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-
25934-2_47
● https://durhammlacpgr.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/prof
essing-the-renaissance-louis-montrose.pdf

● https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/a74c28da-50d2-
4ea7-88a9-b7c2ee2ded4e/625259.pdf
Questions
I. Answer the following questions in a paragraph
1. The connection between Marxism and New
Historicism/Cultural Materialism.
2. Definitions of “Culture” and “Materialism” in Cultural
Materialism
3. Dissident reading
4. Ideology, hegemony and false consciousness.
5. Overdetermination
6. Neo-Marxism
7. Cultural Poetics
8. Residual, dominant and emergent cultures.
9. “Textuality of history” and “historicity of texts”
II. Answer the following questions as an essay
1. The contribution of Alan Sinfield to New Historicism.
2. Compare New Historicism and Cultural Materialism.
3. Elaborate Alan Sinfield’s discussion of Shakespeare’s
Othello.

Jane Austen and Empire

Edward Said
Objectives
● Understand and define postcolonialism
● Analyse the influence of Frantz Fanon, Edward Said,
Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Benedict Anderson.
● Provide a critique of Eurocentrism, Universalism,
nationalism and explain decolonization, National
Consciousness, Nationalism, Postnationalism, Imagined
Communities, Orientalism, Strategic Essentialism,
Subaltern Studies, hybridity, ambivalence, mimicry.
● Elaborate the essay “Jane Austen and Empire”.
● Apply postcolonial theory to literary works.
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism is interested in the history, culture,
political influences and literature of the countries that were earlier
colonies of various European countries and it traces the effects of
colonialism on these colonised countries. The term post-colonial
(with hyphen) denotes an earlier temporary phase experienced by
the colonies, which are now free. Postcolonial (without hyphen)
has wider implications. It considers a creative and a critical
approach that concentrates on imperialism and its influence on
the culture, economy, and society of the colonised country that
was subject to colonial rule. Postcolonial writers devise ways to
retaliate misrepresentations and misconceptions about colonised
nations in mainstream literature.
Europe’s control over nations of the world began in the

fifteenth century. India, Africa, New Zealand, the West Indies,
Canada and many countries in the Middle East and Southeast
Asia came under the British Raj. From the mid- twentieth century,
England’s control over several nations waned and England lost
all her colonial ownership and powers.
As a literary and critical discipline, postcolonialism and
its offshoots gained popularity with Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched
of the Earth (1961); Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978); Homi
Bhabha’s Nation and Narration (1980); and Bill Ashcroft, Gareth
Griffith and Helen Tiffin’s The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989).
Postcolonial literature examines the effects of oppression
and the outcome of colonialism on the culture of the colonised
country down the years till contemporary times. It considers the
ideologies that operate in the control and the strategies of
resistance and challenges devised by the former colonies to
charter a framework of postcolonial discourse and criticism.
The inherent struggle between the cultural domination of
the natives by the colonial powers has its remnants in the cultural
fabric of the society. The natives are regarded as barbaric, and
immoral and the Europeans considered it their task to educate
them to improve their living conditions. The colonisers place their
culture and themselves at the centre, while the colonised are at
the margins, known as the “other”. Such a practice of othering
creates the “demonic other” or the “exotic other”.
The arrogant and contemptuous belief in the racial
superiority of European culture as the ultimate standard,
prioritising this culture over other cultures and assessing the other
cultures in terms of this standard European culture is called
Eurocentrism. This notion employs the philosophy of
universalism whereby European ideas and experiences are
considered the standard for all others to follow.

Alterity
Individual consciousness was regarded as the preferable
basis for consciousness since Rene Descartes, and “the other
appears in philosophies of the post-enlightenment period as a
reduced “other,” which is an epistemological question” (Smith
and Johnson xix). This means, the concept of the human, in which
everything begins from the notion “I think, therefore I am”, the
major concern with the other is to be able to provide answers for
questions such as “How can I know the other?” or “How can other
minds be known?”
However, within postcolonial studies the term alterity
shifts the meaning of other from this philosophical, and
epistemological other to a more concrete and visible moral other,
where the other is located within social, political, cultural,
linguistic or religious contexts. The narrative of the west is
considered supreme in contrast to non-west other by colonial
discourse. This visible, physical, cultural and material otherness
is described as alterity within postcolonial studies.
Postcolonial Studies locates alterity as the outcome of the
west’s constructed belief in its superior and dominant self in
opposition to the non-Europeans, the other who are imagined to
be inferior. In studies related to the psychology of the colonial
subjects, Frantz Fanon used the term alterity, where the colonial
other is deprived of identity, representation, and agency.
Postcolonial thinkers, however oppose the notion of the other on
the ground that it is a logic of marginalisation. Othering is the
process by which others are devalued and marginalised within
binary constructs.
Eurocentric discourse divides the world into: First World
that comprises Britain, Europe and the USA; Second Word that
includes the white population of Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
southern Africa and the former Soviet Socialist Russia; Third
World, which includes the developing nations such as India,

countries in Africa, Central and South America and countries of

Southeast Asia; and Fourth World that consists of indigenous
population conquered and governed by white settlers. These
include Australian aborigines, the Red Indians or first people of
Canada, non-white people with minority status in the First World
countries, and other ethnic population from all the parts of the
world.
Edward Said’s Orientalism delves into the ideological,
political and cultural struggles of the Eastern parts of the world
under Western discourse. The stereotypical representation of the
East by the West that assumes a dominant and authoritative
control over the social, political and economic structures of the
East and restructures the orient is examined as a discourse. The
“ontological and epistemological” distinction between the orient
and the occident creates an overbearing attitude that the Western
adopts to control the east.
Western culture erects the entire body of knowledge and
learning that is unsurpassable under any context and the
homogenised world history from a privileged, advantaged and
superior position constructed by the West is part of a Eurocentric
agenda. Orientalism is the discovery of the west that defines itself
on positive terms and considers the rest of the world inferior and
powerless.
The colonial framework creates servile subjects that
behave and conduct themselves as desired by the colonisers. They
accept the British authority and superiority and imitate(mimic)
the foreign culture, and degrade their own, which is called
mimicry. In postcolonial studies, mimicry refers to the way in
which the native is forced to look or act similar to the coloniser,
and simultaneously the coloniser develops and maintains the fear
that this sense of superiority and difference would gradually
decline.

Homi Bhabha differs from the opinion of Edward Said,

who considers orientalism and other colonial discourses
responsible for the perpetuation of colonial rule and supremacy.
Bhabha argues that the colonial discourse could not attain its
objective because of an inherent contradiction.
While the colonial discourse portrayed the colonised
subjects as the other and subjugated them, simultaneously it tried
to study them to construct knowledge about them. That means the
colonised subjects were placed both within and outside western
knowledge. Hence, the colonial discourse occupied an
ambivalent position.
According to Bhabha this ambivalent stand breaks down
the colonialist project. He considers mimicry an ambivalent
position where the colonised subject not only accepts the inferior
position but also undermines the power of the coloniser by
making the act of mimicking appear like mockery. Ambivalence
refers to the complex and fluctuating relationship between the
coloniser and the colonised that is both attractive and repulsive.
Collaboration and resistance maintain an unstable relation
within the colonial subject, who sees the complex relationship
with the coloniser as both exploitative and nurturing, or
simultaneously nurturing. Therefore, the colonised subject is not
entirely opposed to the coloniser.
The shifting relationship between mimicry and mockery
is expressed by ambivalence. Bhabha considers this relationship
to be disturbing and crucial for the coloniser because it
undermines colonial authority and the colonial subject is not
entirely disempowered. Hence, the coloniser detests
ambivalence.
The colonial subject develops a double consciousness
whereby the world is perceived through the consciousness of the
coloniser as well as the one provided by the native culture. This
is also termed double identity. The divided self of the colonised

is also referred as unhomed or the condition of unhomeliness.

Examples would be migration, rootlessness, and other forced
conditions like being a refugee that have resulted in identity crisis
due to double consciousness and unhomeliness.
Postcolonial critics undertake writing in the native
language to overcome cultural invasion by the colonisers and
reclaim their pre-colonial past. Decolonisation and globalisation
are two opposite poles that are the outcome of the debates related
to cultural clash and cultural hybridity.
Within the framework of globalisation, hybridity refers
to the celebration of a global condition of mixed cultures, races,
ethnicities, cultural practices, nations and so on. The word hybrid
is employed from biology where new species are derived by
combining different species.
Homi Bhabha uses the term hybridity to denote the
interdependence of colonisers and the colonised to claim that it is
impossible to claim “purity of racial or national identity”.
According to him, hybrid identity is produced in a third space,
which lies in between the subject and the idealised other. The
hybrid identity is not well-defined and confusion sets in. This
way, the concrete identity admits the hybrid identity.
The split subjectivity confuses the subject because a
sense of alienation sets in. The hybrid identity consists of two
parts- the known and the unknown, which bewilders and unsettles
the subject. In this liminal situation, a complicated divided nature
of postcolonial hybridity called uncanny develops in the subject
who experiences a strange and uneasy feeling.
Postcolonial critics such as Aijaz Ahmed, Chandra
Talpade Mohanty and Benita Perry mention that the third space
is an ideal position, which is not based on reality. They argue that
hybridity is a condition or a state of being. Some writers consider
it necessary to rejuvenate and assert native cultures to prevent
being completely consumed, overcome or drowned by foreign

culture. This extreme form of adherence to the past in the attempt

to revive indigenous culture is called nativism or nationalism.
In Beginning Theory, Peter Barry mentions that
postcolonial criticism is divided into three marked phases:
1.Adopt phase: Writers and critics adopt the European form to
elaborate their experiences. They accept the principle of universal
validity of European culture.
2.Adapt phase: The forms and norms of literature are modified
to suit their specification or requirement.
3. Adept phase: The turn in the colonial mind-set that becomes
independent, creative and cross-cultural in expressing its
experience. The postcolonial writer forms a unique cultural
standard and reshapes the colonial experiences.
Postcolonialism revisits, reminiscences and interrogates
the colonial past. This process exposes a relationship that is based
on the duality of antagonistic desire of both the coloniser and the
colonised circumstances.
Modernisation and industrialisation are the reasons for the
spread of colonisation as the need for raw materials and manual
labour was required. The quest for trade routes also necessitated
the conquest of countries around the world.
Economic exploitation and cultural dominance assert the
superiority of the white race and the colonised countries are
represented as mysterious and exotic. The motive is to gain their
stronghold over the colonised and expose them to be ignorant,
irrational and sentimental. Novels such as Heart of Darkness
(1899) and A Passage to India (1924) to mention just two of the
best several examples of the biased representation of the
colonised.
Colonial domination is maintained through reinforcement
of racial differences between the natives and the conquerors. The
complex structures of representation and discourse along with

economic and military power are employed to control and subdue
the natives.
It is notable that the false representation of the natives in
Africa, Asia and South America is maintained and spread through
education, religion and law. The documentation of the history of
nations like India and several colonies in Africa is the
representation through the European lens.
Mahatma Gandhi, Aimé Césaire, Leoplod Senghor and
Albert Memmi expose the hollowness of imperial rule that erodes
native social and cultural values, and the language. The outcome
of cultural domination is revealed through representation,
discourse and documentation, which open up avenues to study
literature, religion, educational practices and writing of history
under postcolonial theory.
Frantz Fanon and Postcolonialism

The French West Indian psychiatrist and political
philosopher Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) elaborates the
psychological effects of postcolonialism in The Wretched of the
Earth (1963) and Black Skins, White Masks (1967). Other works
include Collections of Essays: A Dying Colonialism, 1959 and
Toward the African Revolution, posthumously published in 1964.
In Black Skin, White Masks, he draws on psychoanalysis
to argue that the identity of the native is destroyed by colonial
representation that is believed to be “non-human and animalised”
(qtd. in Nayar 157).
Due to the repeated portrayal of the native as evil, pagan
and primitive, the native starts to internalise this prejudiced and
racialised view. The native loses individual identity and the sense
of self because the native becomes attuned to seeing him/herself
through the eyes of the white man.

The native is degraded to such a low level that he/she

begins to see oneself more of an animal than a human being. The
native begins to acknowledge and value the culture of the white
man and displaces the white man for the term “man”.
The native is seen as a primitive Other and the negative of
the white culture and values. The Europeans’ sense of the self
develops from its relation with the Other, who is the native. This
binary is created only within the purview of postcolonial
discourse. The native confronts this negative representation and
position psychologically by being as ‘white’ as possible.
The native follows the western values, religion, language
and cultural practices and disowns indigenous or native
traditions. This way, he puts on “white masks.” However, this
white mask over the black skin does not resolve the issue and
results in a schizophrenic condition due to the conflicting dual
identity.
This shortcoming or inadequate and inferior status that
develops in the native’s psyche leads to violence that is directed
against his own people, which is the compensation for the
inability to become white in the true sense of the term or banish
the whites from the territory. The clashes among clans and tribes
are the outcome of such violence propelled by the colonial system
and the “wretched” fight against each other obsessed by an
incapacity to reject the colonial master.
In The Wretched of the Earth (1963), which is Marxist
analysis of social hierarchy in the colonial and postcolonial
societies, Fanon puts forth the notion of national literature and
national culture that would propagate national consciousness. He
mentions that the black people can rewrite their history to
overcome false representation and overthrow colonialism.
Efforts should be made to return to African myths and
cultural practices to reclaim and reemphasise black identity.
Fanon argues that anti-colonial nationalism would bring warring

tribes and groups within the colony together to express their

solidarity.
This move is both social and psychological because it
helps prevent and defeat the cultural and psychological damage
of colonialism. Moreover, a national literature or national culture,
which is the outcome of resistance to colonialism promotes the
rise of national consciousness in the colony.
National Consciousness and National Culture

After putting forth the need for building a national culture
and creating national consciousness for countering colonialism,
Fanon elaborates the development of black national culture,
which is built in three stages. In the first stage, the native mimics
and embraces colonial culture and rejects native culture.
In the second stage, he realises that he cannot be truly
white and attain a status similar to the white, so he goes back to
his cultural roots, his past and the depths of memory to revive his
glorious past. He studies his own culture that romanticises his
tradition and past, which is celebratory and not critical.
In the third stage, which is anti-colonial, the native fights
colonial domination and simultaneously examines the oppressive
structures or outmoded practices within native culture in the hope
to frame a new future (Nayar 158). This is the revolutionary phase
where a national literature emerges because the native realises the
need to speak to the people and stir their national consciousness.
It is seen that Fanon’s views take on a materialist-
economic dimension that diverges from representational and
cultural views of national identity. He considers the economy
important as culture and national consciousness. He advocates
transformations in cultural practices that would conform to
changing historical situations over rigid and outdated forms.
The third stage of black culture would offer a critique of
national culture to revolutionise conventional practices. Fanon
finds the nexus between the colonial masters and the privileged
sections of colonial nations intimidating.
Political independence is important for the natives, but
this would result in clashes between the privileged sections and
the others in the postcolonial states. This means that the vicious
cycle of exploitation, corruption and subjugation of the working
classes would continue; however, it would be by the natives on
their own fellowmen, which is neo-colonialism.
The middle classes, the intellectual groups and elite
sections that received education under colonial rule, would
dominate the working classes and perpetuate unreasonable and
exploitative colonial procedures even after political liberation and
freedom,
The Contribution of Aime Césaire and Leopold Senghor

The Afro-Caribbean author and politician Aime Césaire
(1913-2008) argues that the notion of community living and anti-
capitalist stand are destroyed by the capitalist agenda of the
colonial powers. Césaire recognises the reformist notion of
colonialism to be a farcical enterprise and considers the
relationship between the native and the coloniser to be driven by
the profit motive within the capitalist agenda. Native cultures are
suppressed under colonialism and negritude battles this rejection
and dominance.
Negritude is the term coined by Cesaire to denote the
cultural response of the natives to reclaim their lost culture under
imperialism. To form a unique black identity and raise
consciousness among the natives is the main aim of negritude.
Guided by Harlem Renaissance of the African-Americans and
propelled by the Black Arts Movement, Césaire’s negritude
also recognised the need for framing a separate culture of the
black community and rejected assimilationist tendencies among
the natives.
Leopold Senghor is Césaire’s accomplice in the negritude

movement, who believes that colonial intervention in African
culture has destroyed its communitarian and socialist outlook and
created a capitalist space to segregate native culture.
Decolonisation
The processes of exposing and undermining or destroying
colonial power and in all its dimensions is decolonisation.
Denouncing Eurocentric colonial forms of thinking, institutional
and cultural forces maintaining colonial power, privileging
Western and colonial cultural codes and languages over native
ones, dominance of writing over orality, and linguistic culture
over inscriptive cultures (folk cultures) are some of the major
concerns of decolonisation. Attempts are made to block such
colonial practices and efforts are made to give thrust to
indigenous forms of art and cultural practices.
The decolonising process advocates a return to indigenous
languages that engages in democratising, reassessing and
reviving native cultures. The efforts of the Kenyan writer and
academic Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (b.1935) who writes in Gikuyu are
recognised. India too boasts of Bhashaa languages that seek to
evaluate and widen the scope of local languages over the
languages of the colonisers. Nativism advocates that colonial
modes of thought and practice should be replaced by the recovery
and promotion of pre-colonial, indigenous ways.
However, certain postcolonial critics such as Kwame
Anthony Appiah, Simon Gikandi and Mudimbe consider
nativism an extreme decolonising project and question the
grounds on which such a stand is formulated. They regard the
projection of African cultures as natural, holistic units, which
colonialism had repressed to be a form of the decolonizing
project, which the African writer had to recover.
Gikandi mentions that discourses of nationalism and
national liberation are ineffective ways of addressing the
problems of post-independence conditions. Decolonisation is a

complex and continuing process rather than something that is
achieved automatically or naturally when independence is
achieved.
Nativism
Nativism is a term that is closely associated with
decolonisation. It argues that colonialism should be replaced by
the recovery and promotion of pre-colonial, indigenous ways.
The desire to return to native practices and cultural forms as they
existed in pre-colonial society is expressed through nativism;
though the extent to which the return has to be made or be desired
is questioned.
Spivak and Bhabha assert that such nativist
reconstructions undeniably undergo processes of cultural
intermingling promoted by colonialism from where a possible or
simple return is impossible. The multicultural nature of most
postcolonial societies make the issue of what constitutes the pre-
colonial native culture problematic.
Frantz Fanon advocates “critical nativism” says Edward
Said. Fanon is sure that pre-colonial societies are not simple or
homogenous. Though he encourages the new national leaders to
make a passionate search for a national culture that existed before
the colonial era, and urges the indigenous communities to renew
their association with the oldest and pre-colonial cultures, he is
completely aware of the inherent dangers of such endeavours.
Fanon also thinks that such pasts could be mythologised
and used to create new elite power groups pretending to be
liberators. He observes that it is important to change national
consciousness into social consciousness otherwise the future
would not hold on to liberation but consider the consciousness an
extension of colonialism. The task of the national liberator,
according to Fanon, is to bring people together without giving
room for a particular view that would question every move or step
towards national consciousness.
Fanon considers national culture something more than
folklore or an abstract populism. He warns that once nationhood
is attained, the middle class could turn national consciousness
into an “empty shell” due to cowardice or laziness. He also warns
the native poets and writers against ignoring the actual conditions
of the present times and cultural influences in their efforts to
revive the past for aesthetic inspiration.
He wants people to realise that the truths of a nation are
embedded in realities that surround them. The truths of the past
are obsolete and questionable because history is always being
rewritten. The poet or writer can use the past events to usher a
better future. National consciousness should be connected to
present realities so that “our perceptions and our lives are
transfused with light.”
Edward Said and the Construction of the Orient

The Palestinian American academic, political activist, and
literary critic Edward Said (1935-2003) explores how the West
constructs non-European cultures through discursive practices
and in European texts. Said analyses how archaeology,
ethnography, political theory and literary history among others
are used by the West to talk about the East in a particular manner.
The representation of the East in the form of documentary
evidences and archives is crucial to preserve domination and
maintain power. The Europeans are able to sustain control over
the East, and consolidate military and political power over the
natives through such discourses.
Said exposes the construction of the Orient in his
Orientalism (1978) as barbaric, pagan and undeveloped in
contrast to the European, the Occident. This construction
legitimises the European right to govern and aid the weak and
poor. It is the task of the European to aid development of these

backward sections. Religion and religious texts are Western
interpretations of the hidden aspects of native cultures.
Misconceptions and ideas are formed to reflect the political
ideologies of the Europeans.
Europe and the Orient are constructed as binary opposites,
where the Orient is the negative aspect of the hierarchy. However,
Edward Said mentions that the Orient is Europe’s “contrasting
image, idea, personality, experience”. This means that the identity
of the European is established only when it is in contrast to the
East, and hence the deconstructive reading that the Orient is
integral to the formation of a European identity is revealed.
The Europeans project a static and undeveloped Eastern
culture, which is contrary to the Western culture that is
progressive and developed. The introduction of reforms, laws,
educational and political referendums are the outcome of the
belief that native cultures would not be able to interfere or change
them thereby the position of the West would be consolidated. In
turn this also asserted that native cultures could be studied as well
as transformed and controlled.
To trace the path of Orientalism during the formative
years from 1750 to 1850 is to uncover that the first stage involves
the process of discovery of the mysterious East by the Europeans.
From this stage of the journey of discovery the Europeans
proceeded to confirm the culture of natives as negative, evil and
primitive. The Orient is therefore the “dark Other” of the West.
Said argues that English education, translation of native
works into English and opinions framed on the basis of the
representations of the East reinforced European colonial presence
and the identity of the native depends on the colonial discourse
and its assimilation by the native. This consenting attitude of the
superiority of the West over the East preserves and maintains
colonial strongholds.

Said mentions that it is important to locate the kinds of

representation of the cultures of the East and West through the
imagination of the Europeans in literature. He asserts the need to
read texts contrapuntally, that is against the grain so that the
racial and imperial stand of the imperialists is not only exposed
but also resisted. Through resistant reading it is possible to frame
a different historical narrative other than the one passed on by
imperial discourses to generations of natives.
Edward Said’s work has certain drawbacks. It does not
address the differences between colonialisms, for instance the
French invasion of Algeria, the settler colonialism in Australia
and the British imperial rule in India. The homogenisation of
colonial experience is denounced. He does not explain the
gendered and sexualised nature of colonial discourses such as the
experiences of the Algerian woman in the veil or the Indian
widow who needs the support of the European male. The issues
of class distinction and native compliance in propagating and
sustaining imperial notions are ignored.
Critique of Orientalism
Said’s notion of Orientalism is fraught with discontents
because Foucauldians argue that he misuses the ideas of Foucault,
Marxists believe he is anti-revolutionary and historians claim that
he is unhistorical. Aijaz Ahmed observes that though Said
employs Foucault’s notion of power in his analysis, he neglects
to mention how the operation of resistance works. Said
misappropriated Foucault for he did not take into account the
counter-hegemonic thought centred around and beyond the
Western metropolis.
Dennis Porter points out that Said’s notions of truth and
ideology are problematic. Porter notices that while Said argues
that all knowledge is tainted because the Orient is a construction,
he also suggests that there might be a real Orient that is knowable.
This ambivalence between knowledge and ideology remains

unresolved in Said’s work.
Porter criticises that Orientalist texts are presented as
homogenous or unitary by Said, who does not notice the
heterogeneity of Orientalism because there were alternative
writings within the Western tradition both in the colonies and in
the West.
In White Mythologies (1990), Robert Young mentions that
Orientalism does not provide any alternative to the phenomenon
it critiques. Gender critics hurled several major criticisms on
Said’s work because he seemed to ignore women’s writings
completely and concentrated only on writings by men.
Reina Lewis, in Gendering Orientalism (1995) argues that
women’s differential gendered positions would suggest that this
produced a gaze that was less absolute than Said’s homogenous
characterisation. The omission of women’s issues in Orientalism
defeats postcolonialism’s very purpose of fighting against
stereotypical representations.
Reinterpretation of Texts in Postcolonial Literary Studies

Literary studies on postcolonialism engage in uncovering
literary figures, themes and representations that have sustained
colonial power and asserted imperial ideology that are enforced
on the colonisers. The colonial experiences of the colonisers and
the colonised have a political dimension in the literary
representations. The undertones of racism, gender inequality and
imperial domination are unearthed from the apparent humanistic
or universal themes that surface in the texts.
Masks of Conquest (1989) by Gauri Vishwanathan
(b.1950) elaborates the three reasons why English literature was
introduced as a subject of study in India, namely to reject native
literary texts, impart English education through English texts, and

employ certain sections of people to the colonial government

service.
The task of re-interpreting colonial texts within the
postcolonial framework also explains the contexts in which the
texts are produced, and examines the colonial strategies that
operate within the texts. Examples include Chinua Achebe’s
argument in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that Conrad has
portrayed the Africans in a negative light through animal and
dehumanised images.
Edward Said reads Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park to
expose how the Caribbean plantation in Antigua is inevitably
linked to the prosperity of the family in England. Thereby, he
delineates how the colony plays a decisive role in England. Other
examples include Sara Suleri’s reading of Rudyard Kipling’s
Kim, Homi K. Bhabha’s reading of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to
India, and Peter Hulme’s reading of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe among others.
While reinterpretation of texts unearths colonial
strategies, there are processes that operate to reveal the modes of
resistance, subversion and dissent in English texts and the native
ones. This method of reinterpretation is the search for a colonial
discourse that is called anamorphic (Nayar 166).
Homi K. Bhabha notices how the authors he studies in The
Location of Culture (2007) tend to undermine colonial
discourses. Bhabha employs the term ambivalence to show how
colonial authority is questioned both by the colonial power at
times and the natives. Several colonial writers had earlier
mistrusted the empire and doubted the attitude of the empire
towards the colonised.

The Contribution of Homi K. Bhabha

Said argues that the construction of the colonised within
the colonial framework occurs through the process of
interpellation and the colonised are marginalised subjects without
agency or identity. The Indian English literary and cultural critic,
and theorist of postcolonial culture Homi K. Bhabha (b.1949)
explains the process that makes the interpellation of the native
possible within postcolonialism. Through the terms mimicry,
ambivalence and hybridity Bhabha exposes the exercise of
unquestioned power relation between the coloniser and the
colonised and simultaneously brings out the inherent within the
terms in the postcolonial context.
Bhabha argues that identities are never stable within
colonial experiences and they are often skewed because the
construction of the identities rests on differences that are
relationally oppositional. This suggests that the coloniser is
required to endorse the identity that the coloniser has claimed.
Therefore, identity as well as postcolonial identity is constantly
shifting, liminal, dislocated and relational.
Bhabha notices that colonial relations rest on the
fetish/phobia model, where the two terms are contradictory to
each other. This also creates stereotypical representation of the
native subject. Within this structure, the coloniser looks for and
desires the Other, while simultaneously wishing to dissolve the
difference.
This results in the formation of stereotypes such as the
mysterious native, the unknowable the Other on the one hand, and
the innocent childlike native who the coloniser knows he can
control on the other. Therefore, the subject position of the native
within the postcolonial discourse is unstable and the colonial
power is rendered powerless. It is only through the repetition of
the stereotypes that power and their validity as signs is ensured.

To prove his argument, Bhabha mentions the case of the

“English book”, which is the Bible in his essay “Signs Taken for
Wonders”. The Bible functions as the sign of colonial power to
spread the message of the book in the entire colony. However, the
aspect of ambivalence sets in the book (the sign) when the act of
disseminating it occurs. This happens when the native translates
the contents of the book into their context and the book is
subjected to the processes of subversion and resistance.
The more number of times the book gets repeated,
variations in reading occur. Meanings undergo changes, the book
fails to retain the original meaning and it appears to be totally
different. So, by “extension,” the book loses its authority as a sign
of colonial power. This way, colonial discourse becomes unstable
and resistance surfaces. Ambivalence refers to this split between
the desired “original authority of the English book or sign and the
effect of repetition and difference” (Nayar170).
Bhabha employs the term mimicry in “Of Mimicry and
Man” to denote the manner in which the native imitates the white
man. The native is taught to mimic (copy) the white man and his
culture persistently through Western education, religion and
constructions that train the native to think and behave like the
white man. By this act, colonial authority breaks down and the
native cannot become completely white though he is trained to be
a white.
He is a mimic who can now fit himself into the colonial
structure, react or reply in English and partake of rationality and
reasoning in the argument that Western education has taught him.
Though the mimic man appears to stick on to the control of the
white man and reveal the power of colonial discourse, he breaks
it. The native begins to represent himself rather than be
represented by colonial discourse.
On the one hand, the colonial ruler wants the native to be
similar to himself, but on the other, desires to recognise the

relationship between himself and the native through difference.

The native continues to imitate the colonial ruler, but certain
variations and distinctions (nuances) become apparent. Mimicry
becomes submissive and mockery (“sly civility”), which results
from the ruptured (cracked or broken) nature of colonial discourse
known as hybridity.
The native who is in the hybridised condition not only
refuses to return the “colonial gaze” but also refutes the position
and authority of the colonial master. Hence, he is now placed in
a position between the adopted Englishness and the original
native culture. Mimicry results in the “dualism of deference and
disobedience” which is resistance, according to Bhabha.
This hybridity creates a “third space,” where it is noticed
that relations between the coloniser and the colonised are
challenged, colonial discourse is asserted and undermined, there
is deference and difference, a fracture and a compromise within
colonial discourse takes place, and imitation (mimicry) and
ridicule or contempt (mockery) occur (Nayar 171). In the “third
space,” the subject puts up resistance and Bhabha sees the subject
to be fractured, decentred, changeable and resistant.
Gayatri Spivak and the Subaltern

The Indian scholar, postcolonial theorist, and feminist
critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (b. 1942) is an active member
of the Subaltern Studies Group known as Subaltern Studies
Collective based in New Delhi. She employs Marxism, feminism
and deconstruction to examine political issues like class, gender,
race and politics.
She uses a historiographical approach to explain the
suppression of women and lower classes and their ideological
representations in narrative texts. Some of her important essays
include “The Woman’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism”
(1985) and “French Feminism in an International Frame” (1987).
She attained attention among literary circles with the publication

of the English translation of Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology
(1976).
The Subaltern
In “The Intellectuals” taken from Selections from the
Prison Notebooks (1971), Gramsci states that all human beings
possess the capacity to be intellectuals, but not everyone ends up
being an intellectual for diverse reasons. A group of people is
designated as intellectual because of the profession related to
church, law, medicine, education and the sciences. This group
forms the “traditional” intellectuals. They remain outside the
structures of class in the society, take an apolitical stand, protect
the interests of the dominant class and consciously preserve the
structures of hegemony.
Another group called “organic intellectuals” that belong
to other marginal sections of the society at different periods in
history connect with their own class and identify themselves with
specific modes of thought. They intercept and counter existing
narratives and hegemonies. Their potential to form emancipatory
and reactionary counter-hegemonies primarily distinguishes them
form their traditional counterparts.
In relation to Italy’s class struggle, Antonio Gramsci uses
the term “subalterno” to refer to the proletariat or the subordinate
or the dependent in the society in his Selections from Prison
Notebooks (1971). The subaltern is created through the
inferior/superior relationship among social and economic
sections. In recent scholarship, the “subaltern” is used to refer to
all oppressed groups such as peasants, workers, women and tribal
people.
In South Asian Studies, The Subaltern Studies Collective
is a group of revisionary historians that has marked influence on
the scope of Subaltern History. They attempt to articulate “history
from below” to give voice to those who have been represented

“out of history.”
Ranajit Guha, a member of the group accuses the
dominant historiography of Indian nationalism of conveniently
avoiding the struggles of the marginalised, the poor and the
outcast. In “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial
India,” he announces a revisionist agenda for the Subaltern
Studies Volumes on Indian History. Guha’s essay inaugurated the
use of the term subaltern in postcolonial studies.
Guha defines “subaltern” as “the demographic difference
between the total Indian population and all those …defined as
elite.” The elite consists of dominant groups- foreign and
indigenous. The foreign group includes British officials of the
colonial state, missionaries and financiers. The indigenous
include feudal lords, and the industrial and mercantile
bourgeoisie.
Subaltern Studies renders voice to “the small voice of
history” and attempts to provide a corrective to both the
colonialist and the bourgeois- nationalist historiography. Anti-
colonial and humanist in approach, Subaltern Studies analyses
human suffering and marginalisation to be the outcome of the
three-way domination and oppression due to caste, class and
gender.
Postcolonial theory and Cultural Studies employ the
subaltern to denote a subdued and muted group that would not be
able to stand for itself. In the essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
(1985), Spivak borrows the notion of the subaltern, which means
oppressed class from Antonio Gramsci to theorise the condition
of the native within the postcolonial framework and women in
postcolonial state.
Her reading of the practice of Sati in India in the early
twentieth century elaborates that the native woman, who is
silenced by both the structures of patriarchy and colonialism

(gender and race) writes her body. Since there was no other option
for speaking out, the native woman wrote her body.
Arguing from a poststructural stand, Spivak mentions that
subjects are established through discourse, which is controlled by
power. An individual develops a particular identity only by being
the subject of a discourse over which there is absolutely no
control. The construction of the subject position of the subaltern
is only within the discourse. It is impossible to have a pure
subaltern consciousness because the subaltern is muted and hence
can only be spoken for. So, she is the object of somebody else’s
discourse within the discourses of patriarchy and colonialism.
Spivak denounces Sati and criticises this colonial act
because the subaltern women who immolate themselves on
husbands’ pyres are still mute in terms of the practice’s abolition
or otherwise. Moreover, the British act is regarded as an ideal
example of “white men saving brown women from brown men”
to demonstrate that a good society is one where women are
protected and all third world women in general should be
safeguarded for the betterment of the world. Women therefore
become subaltern objects of protection from her own people.
Spivak argues that it is better to let the woman remain at
the margins of the discourse than speak on her behalf because it
would push her further into silence. Spivak concludes the essay
by noting that the subaltern cannot speak because we, the
superaltern cannot hear them. The solution is to acknowledge the
complicit role by us to silence the subaltern and reframe the
categorisations to bring the subaltern within our frameworks of
perception.
Spivak adds that the idea and projection of “subaltern”
consciousness or “Third World” woman is heterogeneous and the
experiences vary. She mentions that the process of transaction is
the relation of the speaker and listener. The native woman’s
speech is understood and interpreted within structures that would

offer specific meanings. It is important to create a moral response

to the voice of the subaltern. This means that the subaltern woman
needs a room, a space for the voice of the radical Other.
She contends that the marginal position is desired,
maintained and recognised by the West, so postcolonial studies
itself becomes dubious. She challenges postcolonial theory to
address silencing of women and other subaltern subjects not only
within colonial discourses but also in postcolonial responses to
the discourses.
Postcolonial Theory and Epistemic Violence

Spivak employs the term epistemic violence in the essay
“Can the Subaltern Speak?” published in the collection Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture (1988). Spivak’s concept of
“epistemic violence” echoes Gramsci’s notions of the ways by
which hegemonic ideology restricts development of the genuine
experiential knowledge produced by the everyday life of
subaltern classes.
In Selections from the Prison Notes (1971), Gramsci
argues that the direct experience of workers and their
ideologically imbibed “common sense” consists of a
consciousness that is contradictory. This suggests that their lived
experience of exploitation is blocked from development by the
hegemonic ideology that refuses to accept exploitation.
This conflicting situation leads to moral and political
passivity that neither permits action nor decision or choice.
Hence, theoreticians belonging to subaltern groups have to bring
out the “best sense” of their “spontaneous philosophy” and make
it “ideologically coherent” (421).
Spivak applies Gramsci’s argument of “contradictory
consciousness” as a mode of epistemic violence to suggest ways
by which possibilities of an authentic discourse for Indian women
are undermined or weakened by colonial reasoning. The Indian
women experience double cultural subordination to the ruling

agreement of dominant local and colonising institutions and
discourses. Hence, they cannot speak or be heard.
The discourses of intellectuals and researchers, which are
based on neo-colonial ways of thinking, obstruct and distort the
expression and growth of genuine experiential knowledge of
subaltern women. The relationship between the centre and the
periphery within postcolonial discourse is subjected to aesthetic,
ideological and political changes. Cultural imperialism controls
discourse that creates subject positions by those in power.
Strategic Essentialism
The ways in which marginalised sections of the society
forget their differences temporarily, unite, create the sense of
collective identity and join political movements to resist colonial
rule is referred as Strategic Essentialism, a term coined by
Gayatri Spivak in the 1980s. The formation of such alliances by
specific ethnic groups that united disparate groups for a common
goal was a common feature during the post-war period.
Spivak is of the opinion that the use of terms such as
“indigenous” or similar ones become problematic and unstable
formations that wipe out important distinctions; however, these
acts of identity- formation achieve significant political ends.
Therefore, while representations such as Indian, African or
Native American are created, they suppress noticeable
differences, but do appreciable work.
Strategic Essentialism is a strategic move by minority
sections to influence mainstream society to act in unison to fulfil
certain purposes. Though the members of the group are markedly
differentiated internally, they may get involved in essentialising,
and to a certain extent standardising of their public image. The
group identity is advanced in a simple and collective manner to
achieve desirable goals.

Postcolonial Subaltern
The Marxist philosopher, literary theorist and political
commentator Aijaz Ahmed (b.1932) draws parallels between the
colonial masters and the postcolonial nation-states that oppress
sections of the society. While the native is the subaltern during
colonial rule, women, people of the lower caste and classes and
ethnic minorities are the subdued by postcolonialism.
The new elite is as oppressive and exclusive as the
colonial master. Noted examples are Rohinton Mistry’s depiction
of the Parsi minority that is marginalised and the fiction from the
North-eastern states in India project underdevelopment, cross-
border issues, refugee marginal status, and neglected tribes that
pose a challenge to a unified country.
Deforestation and rapid industrial growth at the expense
of forest cover pose a threat to tribal livelihood, which is aptly
portrayed by Randhir Khare, in People Unlike Us: The India That
Is Invisible. Mainstream postcolonial society marginalises and
decimates several sections, cultures and ways of life. Problems of
equal access to education, and healthcare continue to be issues
faced by India, which is one of the largest democracies in the
world.
Postcolonialism continues to subordinate people and
nationalism is reduced to a process of homogenisation excludes
all those who are considered unfit. In India, Dalit writing in native
languages formulates a powerful critique of postcolonial
subalternisation and contributes to protest literature.
The Concept of Nation and Nationalism

The idea of a nation, which possesses a continuous and
shared tradition is the outcome of anti-colonial movement.
Within postcolonial studies, the influence of the Chinese-born
Anglo-Irish political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson
(1936-2015) is phenomenal because it explores the origins of
nationalism. He argues that the concept of nation is primarily

“imagined” in his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on
the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983).
People from different parts of a geographical boundary
that are unknown to each other accept the other people within the
boundary as parts of “our” nation. ‘Nation” is a shared experience
that remains primarily in acts of imagination. Therefore, the
notion of “unity” cannot be real; nevertheless, it is influential and
powerful.
The sense of a shared unity is created and maintained
through certain aspects of culture and society such as stories,
traditions, songs, films and history. Festivals, idols in every field,
film stars, the national anthem, and national flag are some
symbolic markers that suggest belonging to a nation and the
nation is ours. Nation is therefore a myth that has immense
control over the mind of the people. A national identity brings
together people of diverse cultures and ensures that they function
in unity in the name of the nation.
The concept of negritude is part of the endeavour to instil
national consciousness and the collective imagination to
challenge colonial power. To counter imperialism, Africa was
projected as native, pure and a true country, while the colonial
power was considered foreign, intrusive and false (Nayar 176).
Nationalism influenced writers could delve into the past and
redefine the concept of nation and they could predict a better
future for the natives who shared a common space provided by
the nation.
The Indian postcolonial theorist Partha Chatterjee’s
(b.1947) arguments about the nation and its relation to
imperialism, modernity, progress and Western systems of thought
have influenced the concept “nation” in several contexts. He
observes that the idea of nation is Western (23). The ideas of
modernity are borrowed from the West by nationalist movements

and the idea of a nation is launched. Chatterjee argues that the

alteration of Western notion of the nation by natives takes place
three stages:
1.Acceptance of western ideas of progress and modernity by
natives.
2. Formation of a new form of national identity and creation of
mass support by the elite in the colony by the use of folk and
popular local cultural forms.
3. Projection of both Western and local cultural forms as native
nationalism by the elite.
The anti-colonial movement mixes the Western model
with elements of folk to propose and highlight a genuine
“national” idea. Nationalism is therefore a “derivative discourse”
because it is developed by the Western notion of modernity and
progress. He asks, “Can nationalist thought produce a discourse
of order while daring to negate the very foundations of a system
of knowledge that has conquered the world?” (42). Chatterjee
examines the birth of India as a nation. The issue with Indian
national identity is that it is in its early stages.
India’s “anticolonial thought in the strict sense combines
a critique of colonial ideology with an embrace of the norms and
valuations of the colonizer. The “India” so produced is
continuous with the values and culture of imperialism even or
especially where it appears most critical of imperialist
domination” (266). India continues its imperial ideology because
sites of systematic oppression have not been erased.
Benedict Anderson and Nationalism

In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (1983), Benedict Anderson coins the term
Imagined Community that argues that the notion of a nation as
a community is socially constructed. He mentions: “A nation is

an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both
inherently limited and sovereign.” A nation is imagined by people
who distinguish themselves as a part of this group. It is
“imagined” because it is not based on the everyday direct
interaction between the members, but they envision unity among
them. Though the members of this group may never know each
other, they may possess similar interests or identify themselves as
parts of one nation.
The nation is “imagined” as “limited” because it is
bounded by “finite…elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other
nations.” Similarly, the nation is “sovereign” because dynastic
monarchy cannot claim authority in any nation in modern times.
Sovereignty is related to Enlightenment and Revolution because
they brought down the legitimacy of the divinely ordained
hierarchical dynasty prevalent at the times.
The nation is also a “community” because the nation is a
fraternity that brings people together in spite of different levels of
inequality and exploitation. Moreover, there is a profound feeling
of comradeship among members of a nation. It is this intimate
bonding that makes people willing to sacrifice their lives for each
other and the nation.
Beginnings of National Consciousness

Anderson believes that there is no relation between
nationalism and a consciously driven political ideology.
Nationalism is perceived as a part of large cultural systems that
existed earlier. Nationalism is rooted in invention and myth and
not in logical surveys of historical events. Historians and
academicians that conduct materialist evaluations of history have
difficulty in considering myth as something more than deception
and invention is seen as fabrication.

Anderson however takes on a romantic view of the

creative power of imagination. Imagined versions of the
community are as authentic and legitimate as objective historical
analysis. National myths have the power to mobilise society and
make people ready to die for their nation-states. This way,
Anderson traces the cultural roots of nationalism and affirms that
“nationality”, “nation-ness” and “nationalism” as cultural
artefacts.
After tracing the cultural origins of nationalism, Anderson
analyses revolutionary ideas of human consciousness, especially
European consciousness that triggered nationalism. He believes
that nationalism gained popularity when three significant
Western pointers, namely Church, King and Cosmos started
losing importance. Anderson elaborates the decline of religion,
the divine right policy and historical cosmology that expanded the
concerns of national sentiment and organisation.
First, the religious community witnessed drastic changes,
especially after the Middle Ages when the explorations of Marco
Polo discovered non-Christian and non-European civilisations
and European Christianity started losing its importance. Europe
and Christianity were enclosed within borders that separated them
from the rest of the rest of the world.
In addition, the sacred language Latin was devalued
because older communities doubted the unique sacredness of
their language in predicting ontological truth. The emergent
literate bourgeois communities stressed the need for markets for
works in the vernacular. Newspapers and books in native
languages were boosted and Latin lost its market. The works of
Martin Lither King written in German sold one-third of the total
publications during the Reformation.
Second, borders of dynasties that were not clearly
demarcated in earlier times and importance was given to centres
of cultural development. When monarchy began to decline in the

17th century, people began questioning the rationale of a society

being organised around high centres.
Third, a revisionist approach to historical cosmology.
During the middle ages, cosmology and history were
undifferentiated. Moreover, time was considered simultaneous
then, but in the modern age, time is regarded as homogenous and
empty. According to Anderson, the cause of nationalism is time,
cosmology and history. Nationalism was considered fixed in the
past and as an omnipresent permanent entity. The concept of
nation is now seen to be timeless; nevertheless, the reality of time
factor is not being considered by Anderson.
After outlining these three factors, Anderson moves on to
reveal how the individual gradually lost importance during the
transition from the pre-national to the national. While religion,
divine dynasty and historical cosmology placed great emphasis
on the life of the individual, science stressed the importance of a
community or a class or a group. An example would be the
Marxist view of historical-dialectic materialism with regard to
modern evolutionary or progressive history.
Hence, Anderson claims that nationalism gained
importance only after “faith, King and cosmos” were replaced by
“human social needs” and cultural consciousness took the form
of nationalism. Moreover, the influence of new systems of
productive relations like capitalism and new technology of
communications, the print media and the rise and spread of the
vernacular placed society and social needs at the centre. Thus the
nation was born from the rise of different kinds of capitalism and
the gradual decline of feudalism.
By mechanically reproducing print languages, print
capitalism played a significant role for enhancing the use of
vernacular and modifying other languages. Certain standardised

languages could be created to cater to the needs of diverse groups

of people. Print media exposed people to a range of new
experiences, which they were not directly connected to. This also
led to the rise of the bourgeois class that expressed an imaginary
solidarity with the nation through the structural and technological
tools offered by capitalism.
Kinds of Nationalism
The Industrial Revolution and the rise of the printing press
are instrumental in the formation of several types of nationalism,
namely Creole Nationalism, Linguistic Nationalism, Imperialistic
or Dynastic Nationalism and Postcolonial Nationalism.
Creole Nationalism: Europeans placed in the Americas are
creole colonisers. Therefore, racism is not a factor for excluding
them from wielding power, but European powers controlled
colonial administrators vertically and laterally unmindful of race.
The White indigenous population is conquered by arms
and disease and controlled by Christianity and a completely
“alien” culture. Though the indigenous people are privileged,
they are not granted independence from the colonial power. They
are at the same time “colonial community and an upper class.”
Creole nationalism is born out of the dual factors of dispossession
and privilege.
Linguistic Nationalism: Language plays a crucial role in
developing national consciousness. The intelligentsia and the
literate middle class are important for the propagation of national
consciousness. Nationalism is a populist notion that appears all-
inclusive that is based on language identifications. Such a
nationalism is democratic in its outlook and it speaks against
slavery or serfdom. European nationalism is based on differences
of language depending on geography, and between the rulers and
the ruled.

For instance, Germany created a state language and

imposed it on the people to instil German nationalism. However,
Magyar nationalism was born out of a reaction against the
imposition of a state language. Repression of minority languages
gave rise to several forms of linguistic nationalism in Europe
because these languages were considered lacking in “historical
personality.”
Imperialistic or Dynastic Nationalism: Ruling European
dynasties that speak foreign languages appropriated linguistic
nationalism to serve the interests of existing aristocratic and
imperial structures. These dynasties exhibited “national drag”,
which means that they tried to forge new identifications with the
people they ruled over. For example, Romanovs discovered they
were Great Russians, while Hanoverians thought that they were
English among others.
Anderson describes this strategy using an effective
metaphor, that is “stretching this short, tight skin of the nation
over the gigantic body of the empire.” Such official nationalisms
created by rulers is an “anticipatory strategy” adopted by
dominant communities that feared they might be excluded from
newer ones struggling to emerge.
Postcolonial Nationalism: Formed in Asia and Africa,
postcolonial nationalism followed the pattern of development and
establishment of nationalism prevalent in Europe and the creole
colonies. Also known as “nation-state”, this form of nation came
to prominence after the First World War and gained ground after
the Second World War. Postcolonial nationalism is the outcome
of anti-imperial struggles and modelled on nationalism in Europe.
Americana and European models are “modularly imagined”.
National consciousness in the colonies gained impetus
from the native intelligentsia because they were bilingual and had
access to Western models of nationalism, nation-ness and nation-
state. This means that European political and intellectual history

formulated and sharped postcolonial nationalism. For this reason,

Anderson considers this “a derivative discourse”; “a
Cannibalistic model of revolt” which depends on the colonisers’
gift of language or ideas.
Globalisation and Neocolonialism

The movement of people, capital and commodities
beyond national and international borders is included in
globalisation. The otherwise closed borders facilitate smooth
transition of the essentials based on the international relations
with countries of the world. Such mass movements bear
economic and cultural overtones. Merging of cultural practices of
the native and foreign cultures takes place in the natural outcome
of globalisation. The world is essentially cosmopolitan,
multicultural and hybridised with globalisation. The influence of
immigrants is largely felt due to globalisation.
The advent of globalisation has given rise to a new type
of colonial dominance called neocolonialism, which is more a
culturally strategic move than a political one. Global consumer
culture has witnessed the intervention and spread of McDonald’s
and Levi’s among others, which are considered agents of neo-
colonialism. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, in Empire (2000)
name the new forms of colonialism as Empire. They believe that
it is impossible to analyse the newer forms of colonialism within
the paradigms of the older structures.
Empire, which is a novel form of rule, is “decentred”
because it has no definite capital. It is also “deterritorialised”
because it exists beyond a specific territory, border or domain. It
dissolves the supreme power of nation-states and includes the
nation in a world-wide dominion.
There are no marked or easily recognisable or prominent
power structures within the world-wide sphere because financial,
military and political centres are many-sided, complex and

dispersed. Within the purview of such globalised cultural

patterns, of new forms of authority and exploitation, of diverse
displacements and cultural orientations, fresh grounds of literary
and cultural analyses through divergent forms of writing and
cultural practices develop (Nayar 179).
Diaspora
Immigrant and diasporic identities are taken into
consideration by postcolonial theory that recognises the people or
authors as “ex-colonial by birth”, mentions the prominent figure
in the field of colonial and postcolonial literary studies, Elleke
Boehmer (b.1961), who describes this factor in the context of
culture and cosmopolitanism. Authors and thinkers like the West
Indian Derek Walcott (1930-2017) argue that migrants often
possess a double consciousness, the native one which is left
behind and a First World one.
The Kenyan author and postcolonial writer Abdul R.
JanMohamed (b.1945) in his book Worldliness-Without-World,
Homelessness-As-Home - Toward a Definition of the Specular
Border Intellectual (1992) talks about the “specular border
intellectual” – one standing at the border of two cultures and
examining both without assimilating or combining with any of
the two cultures. Hybridity is an extended form of this situation
which looks towards both but does not belong to either.
Homi K. Bhabha elaborates the concept of hybridity
which rejects a single or unified identity and gives importance to
multiple cultural locations and identities. Hybridity could be seen
as a step to revive a past that incorporates the native or a tribal
cultural form or even reactionary or one that adapts to the global
multicultural and transnational condition. Hybridity in
postcolonial theory provides the answer to the dangers of the
cultural binary, where us is separated from them and the primary
need is to seek pure cultural forms.
Cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall argue for new

ethnicities that reject essential black or white identities and
propose diversity of interest and identities. Diaspora theorists
such as Avtar Brah and Robin Cohen mention that home is a
“mythic place” that mixes desire and longing and includes both
the present, which is a chosen location of the immigrant and the
native one. Home is a place of no return even if it is possible to
visit the place physically mentions Brah. The Indian American
poet and scholar Meena Alexander (1951-2018) describes the
“multiple spaces and identities” occupied by the immigrant who
expresses nostalgia and longing for the mythic and distant
homeland.
Within postcolonial theory and literature, the condition of
longing for the distant homeland and the possession of multiple
identities is described at length. Salman Rushdie accounts for the
nomadic and “placeless state” of being that is expressed by the
migrant. Bhabha explains the “in-between” condition or identity
that does not always help working class immigrants. The
experience of being a nomad is different for racial and ethnic
groups, migrants that are empowered or dependent, or the
minorities.
The Essay: Jane Austen and Empire

Introduction
In this essay, Edward Said probes into the relationship
between the manor home and plantation, country and city in Jane
Austen’s Mansfield Park, which is a chapter in his book Culture
and Imperialism. He explains how a colonial ideology that gives
importance to the practice of humanistic British values exists
simultaneously with the devaluation of colonised cultures that is
evident in pre-imperialist novels that are not however considered
to have explicit colonial themes.
Said also observes that in pointing out these themes which

are not explicitly mentioned he does not reject Austen’s work as
insensitive and concerned with the activities of the dominant
class; rather he believes that the understanding of Austen’s
depiction of British life should be accompanied with the
awareness of its geographical positioning and the political
inferences understood from that positioning.
Geography and its Political Consequences
Said quotes V.G.Kiernan who says that “empires must
have a mould of ideas or conditioned reflexes to flow into.” Said
does not agree that this statement is too simple and the idea that
every aspect of European and American culture is designed to
support and justify colonialism. He also emphasises that such
tendencies whether they are common or present would be highly
misleading.
There could be liberals who would support non-European
cultures abroad and support freedom. For example, John Stuart
Mill asserts that “the sacred duties which civilized nations owe to
the independence and nationality of each other are not binding
towards those to whom nationality and independence are certain
evil, or at best questionable good.”
Therefore, a belief in the backwardness of the native is
justified over the suggested pre-imperial literature because these
ideologies are contained in causal relationship to later
imperialism. Said argues that it is important to discover a
counterpoint between several forms in British writing about
Britain and its representations of the world beyond the British
Isles. Therefore, geography and its political implications become
relevant.

Mansfield Park: Historical Background

Edward Said uses Reymond Williams’ The Country and
the City as the main text to discuss geographical considerations.
Williams’ book had discussed the interplay between rural and
urban places from the past to present day literature and had noted
that the relationship between England and its colonies was
important in literature from the mid-19th century onwards. Said
suggests that the importance of the colonies is seen in British
Literature frequently; moreover, the competition between
England and France in their colonies could be seen in the
references to overseas land in literature throughout the 18 century
that helped instil the sense of Englishness in opposition to French
interests abroad.
Applied to Mansfield Park, this historical background
creates a complex reading than Williams’ suggestion that the
book is simply blind to class difference and that Austen is
involved with the behaviour of the people who, in the effort to
improve their conditions try to organise themselves into a class;
however, “where only one class is seen, no classes are seen.”
Williams comments on how English culture has described
land, its possession, imagination and organisation in the works of
Dickens, the Brontes, Gaskell and more prominently Kipling,
Orwell and Maugham. After 1880 Williams noticed an extension
of landscapes and social relations that correspond with the great
age of the empire.
The period between 1800 and 1870 saw the country facing
a crisis that followed England’s widespread land enclosure. The
old organic rural communities disintegrated and new ones
emerged against the backdrop of industrialisation, parliamentary
activities and demographic dislocation. England and France
emerged as two opposing rival powers and as time went by their
rivalry intensified. The major pre romantic literature in France
and England contains references to their overseas dominance.

The historical connections provide an expanded

perception of Mansfield Park, which is most explicit in the
ideological and moral affirmations of Austen’s novels. Said
believes that the novel generally appears to be more implicated in
the rationale for imperialistic expansion than they appear, which
is similar to pre-imperialist novels.
Spatial Considerations in Mansfield Park

Said mentions that the early half of the novel is
“concerned with a whole range of issues whose common
denominator …is space.” There are several instances of spatial
dislocations and relocations in Mansfield Park. The novel is
situated around diverse interests and issues that extend across
hemispheres, include two major seas and involve four continents.
At the beginning of the novel, Sir Thomas Bertram and
his family move from London and settle down at Mansfield Park
in the country along with Fanny Price, the poor orphan from
Portsmouth. Fanny Price eventually acquires a position similar to
the other fortunate relatives of the Bertrams’ and towards the end
of the novel becomes the spiritual mistress of Mansfield Park.
The family’s sustenance depends on the economic gains
from the Bertram estate in Antigua in the Caribbean. Fanny Price
also gains importance in the family, which is similar to the growth
of the material prosperity of the family. Therefore, two apparently
dissimilar but simultaneous processes develop. Sir Thomas is
often away from the family to maintain his colonial estate and in
his absence there is chaos in the house. The central action is the
discussions “where [Fanny] is to live, read and work,” while her
cousins are mainly involved with improving their property, their
estates. A conflict develops when a French play is proposed to be
staged, but the activity stops when Sir Thomas returns.
Said is of the opinion that Austen brings together the
domestic and the overseas authoritarian control of Sir Thomas
whose presence is required for maintaining order. He is the

household’s “Crusoe, setting things in order.” Said makes a firm
connection between “domestic and international authority.”
The role of Fanny Price in the Bertram family is
noteworthy because her gradual growth from the poor quarters of
Portsmouth to the luxuries at Mansfield Park witnessed her
movement from a smaller space to an openly colonial one. Space
is necessary for an uninhibited and accurate perspective when
Fanny returns home and finds herself at a loss because she misses
the size and sociability of Mansfield Park.
Fanny’s visit to her immediate family at the original
Portsmouth home years later brings out the emotional and
aesthetic turmoil in her mind when she finds that she has become
so accustomed to the comfort and luxury at Mansfield Park that
she cannot relish her old home. Moreover, she has taken the
luxuries at Mansfield Park for granted.
If it is impossible to have access to such a place at birth,
there is the possibility that like Fanny the right to live could be
acquired “by leav[ing] home as a kind of indentured servant or to
put the case in extreme terms, as a kind of transported
commodity.” Her movement is comparable to Sir Thomas’,
whose estate she inherits years later. Fanny’s “small-scale
movement in space” and the “more open colonial movements of
Sir Thomas, her mentor, the man whose estate she inherits,” with
each being necessary to the other. Both these movements are
related to each other.
Austen is aware of the Empire and its activities in the
Caribbean Islands, Brazil and Argentina, while Conrad and
Kipling probe further into the Empire’s growth, development,
authority and influence across the world. Austen, however is
aware of the plantations in the West Indies that were the principal
sources of income for the settlers who not only perpetuated
slavery but also used the geographical space for extension of

political and economic power. Austen’s references to Antigua

point to this fact. This fact reflects the idea proposed by Mill that
“the avowedly complete subordination of the colony to the
metropolis” also reflects the British attitude to the colonies.
Antigua and Colonialism
Said believes that Antigua is the geographical space that
satisfies the needs of the Bertram family. Trade, production and
consumption are crucial to maintain and guarantee the morality
portrayed in the novel. Austen carries together morality and the
social basis for the rise of moral concerns. The British, according
to Mill, do not consider the colonies as independent nations but
as convenient farmland for British production of tropical crops.
Antigua is similar to Fanny’s native Portsmouth because
it serves to provide manors like Mansfield Park with material
goods. These goods, similar to Fanny’s service, are necessary to
sustain the lifestyle and values of the Bertram family at Mansfield
Park.
Fanny Price is concerned about slave trade in the West
Indian sugar plantation. When she asks Sir Thomas about the
slave trade, there was a “dead silence.” This silence asserts that
sugar plantations in Antigua and slave trade are needed for British
sustenance, which is exemplified by Jane Austen in Mansfield
Park.
Austen exposes these historical realities to vouchsafe the
existence of several social, economic and political practices that
were not only crucial for imperialism but also for the maintenance
of British standards of living that were morally and
psychologically contradictory.

Conclusion
Said concludes the essay by saying that the novel
exemplifies how British values, morals and principles are
disregarded abroad because the disregard was necessary to
exploit people and resources and make possible the practice of
those values at home. The novel does portray the history of sordid
realities of imperial conquest. Its importance lies in the fact that
it opens the doors to a vast domestic imperialist culture that draws
similarities with Britain’s expansive colonial power and conquest
of territories.
References
● Abrams, M.H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of
Literary Terms. 11th ed. Cengage Learning, 2015.
 Ashcroft, Bill et al. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies.
Routledge, 2001.
 Bhabha, K. Homi. The Location of Culture. 2nd ed.

Routledge, 2014.
● Bressler, Charles. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to
Theory and Practice, 1999.
● Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial
World: A Derivative Discourse? Zed, 1986.
● Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical
 Guha, Ranajit. The Small Voice of History: Collected
Essays. 2nd ed. Permanent Black, 2012.

● Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge,
1998.
● McLeod John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester UP,
2007.
 Michael B. Smith, and Galen A. Johnson. Ontology and
Alterity in Merleau-Ponty: Studies in Phenomenology and
Existential Philosophy. Northwestern UP, 1990.
Kindersley, 2010.
● Young, Robert J.C. Postcolonialism: An Historical
Introduction. Blackwell, 2001.
Questions
1. Mimicry, Hybridity and Ambivalence
2. Nationalism
3. Double consciousness
4. Decolonisation
5. The Orient

6. The Subaltern
7. Negritude
8. Three phases of postcolonial criticism, according
to Peter Barry
9. Imagined Communities
10. Nativism
II. Essay Questions
11. The contribution of Frantz Fanon, Edward Said
and Gayatri Spivak to Postcolonial theory
12. Elaborate how the imperialistic narrative becomes
central to Mansfield Park, according to Edward
Said.
13. Attempt a critique of Orientalism.

Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of

Environmental Crisis
` Cheryll Glotfelty
Objectives
● Comprehend and define ecocriticism and the waves of
ecocritical studies
● Analyse the contribution of Jonathan Bate, Cheryll
Glotfelty, Laurence Coupe, Patrick DMurphy, and
William Rueckert.
● Elaborate the key concepts: Anthropocentrism, Shallow
Ecology vs Deep Ecology, The crisis of humanism,
Nature/Culture, Green Studies, Environmental
Imagination, Ecofeminism.
● Explain the essay “Introduction: Literary Studies in an
Age of Environmental Crisis.”
● Apply ecocriticism to literary works.
Introduction
The term ‘ecocriticism’ was first used by the American
ecocritic William Rueckert (1926-2006) in the essay “Literature
and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism” written in 1978
(Barry 240) and the field of study was earlier known as “the study
of nature writing” (Malik and Batra 159).
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) initiated the move
to preserve the degraded environment due to the excessive use of
chemicals and pesticides over natural methods. As a critical field
of study, Cheryll Glotfelty (b.1958), the founding officer of the
Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)

and a professor of literature and the environment at the University
of Nevada, Reno initiated ecocriticism.
Definitions of Ecocriticism
Some of the definitions of ecocriticism point out to the
interactions among nature, environment and the society that have
influenced studies related to the interconnections made. Pippa
Marland refers to ecocriticism as an umbrella term, “…a range of
critical approaches that explore the representation in literature
(and other cultural forms) of the relationship between the human
and the non-human, largely from the perspective of anxieties
around humanity’s destructive impact of the biosphere” (846).
The critic Jonathan Culler emphasises the unique ability
of ecocriticism to act as a vehicle for social transformation.
Culler’s definition of ecocriticism is: “Most narrowly, it is the
study of literary representations of nature and the environment
and the changing values associated with them, especially
evocations of nature that might inspire changes in attitude and
behaviour” (146).
In the book Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature
Writing, and the Formation of American Culture, Lawrence Buell
defines ecocriticism as “a study of the relationship between
literature and the environment conducted in a spirit of
commitment to environmentalist praxis” (430). In literary circles,
Cheryll Glotfelty’s definition of ecocriticism, in The Ecocriticism
Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology (1996), as: “the study of
the relationship between literature and the physical environment”
that takes “an earth-centered approach to literary studies” (xviii)
is widely used.

Environmental Concerns
The shared belief among ecocritics is that the world is in
a precarious condition. The reason is attributed to man’s improper
approaches of being in the world, which is culturally determined.
Lawrence Buell mentions that the environmental crisis is a “crisis
of the imagination that necessitates better ways of imaging nature
and humanity’s relation to it” (The Environmental Imagination
ii). He believes that human relationship with the environment has
to change drastically and the task of the ecocritic is not only to
critique the ineffective conceptualisations but also to pursue
“better ways of imaging”.
Greg Garrard notes that the beginnings of environmental
consciousness that provides the backdrop to ecocriticism, is the
publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), which is
hailed as the advent of “modern environmentalism” (i).
Encouraged by Henry Louis Gates Jr. the African-American
Studies scholar, and Elaine Showalter the feminist theorist,
Cheryll Glotfelty brought together scholars working on
environmental studies as well as environmentalists working on
their own and introduced the study of literature in relation to the
environment.
Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm founded ASLE in 1992
at Reno, Nevada, USA and brought out their journal ISLE
(Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment). They
also published The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary
Ecology (1996), a collection of phenomenal essays on the relation
between nature, ecology and literature from diverse perspectives.
Karl Kroeber’s Ecological Literary Criticism (1994) and
Lawrence Buell’s trilogy on ecocriticism, The Environmental
Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of
American Culture (1995), Writing for an Endangered World
(2001), and The Future of Environmental Criticism:

Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (2005) trace the

beginning and the development of the field till the present.
Ecocriticism and Green Studies

While ‘ecocriticism’ emerged as a critical approach in the
USA in the late 1980’s, in the UK ‘green studies’ was inaugurated
as early as the 1980’s. In America, ecocriticism was inspired by
three transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1818),
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-
1862), who belonged to the group of New England writers,
essayists and philosophers that wrote extensively on nature,
wilderness and life-force.
Emerson’s Nature (1836), Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes
(1843) and Thoreau’s Walden (1845) recount the writers’
experiences with nature, and reveal how they made efforts to
renew themselves through ‘return to nature’. These books could
be considered the texts that laid the foundation for eco-centred
writing. The poems of Walt Whitman are also regarded as
important for studies on nature.
Green Studies in the UK, inspired by the Romantic
Movement owes much to Jonathan Bate (b.1958) whose
Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition
(1991) is considered the origin of studies on ecology. Raymond
Williams’ (1921-1988) The Country and the City (1973)
expresses ecological concerns. Laurence Coupe’s The Green
Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism (2000) is an
influential work. A sister organisation of ASLE was set up in the
UK in 1998, which now comprises the UK and Ireland with its
own journal Green Letters, first published in 2000.
Significant contributions to ecology include Literary
Nevada: Writings from the Silver State (2008); The Bioregional
Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place (2012); The
Biosphere and the Bioregion: Essential Writings of Peter Berg
(2014); Material Ecocriticism (2014) by Serenella Iovino

(Editor), Serpil Oppermann (Editor), David Abram (Contributor);
Veer Ecology: A Companion for Environmental Thinking (2017)
by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert, with a Foreword
by Cheryll Glotfelty, and A Visitor’s Guide to the University of
Nevada, Reno Arboretum (2018) by James W. Hulse, Cheryll
Glotfelty and Rod Haulenbeek.
In the essay “A Guided Tour of Ecocriticism, with
Excursions to Catherland” (2014), Glotfelty elaborates both the
developmental phases of feminism suggested by Elaine
Showalter and the developmental stages of ecocriticism.
Lawrence Buell and the Two Waves of Ecocriticism in the
USA
The waves of ecocriticism, especially in the US involve
literary representations of the world outside the text that gives
importance to the search for various forms of literary expressions
that would convey a message on the protection of the
environment. The Harvard Emeritus professor and ecocritic
Lawrence Buell (b.1939), in The Future of Environmental
Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (2005)
uses the metaphor of the wave to identify only two phases of
ecocriticism.
The first-wave is primarily associated with writers such
as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Mary Austin, Edward
Abbey, Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard who write non-fiction
nature-writing. They describe the wilderness, the connections
between individuals and the landscape, hence their works have
the undertones of American Transcendentalism. The primary
concern is to “speak for” nature (10).
The second-wave, according to Buell, contains some
elements of the first-wave that give importance to the “general
physical presence of nature” and consider ways to develop and
refine the form of writing and indulge in the search for the
environmental imagination. It encourages the inclusion of both

nature and the urban (11) within its domain. The second-wave is
a rethinking of the issues that have not been discussed during the
early phase.
The Four Waves of Ecocriticism
Scot Slovik, the ecocritic and Professor of Humanities at
the University of Idaho, outlines the characteristic features of the
four waves of Ecocriticism:
First-wave (1980’s to the present)
● Nonfiction, primarily related to nature-writing
● Non-human nature and wilderness given importance
● American and British strands
● Expansive ecofeminism
Second Wave (mid-1990s-present)
● Emergence of diverse genres and green cultural studies
● Multicultural
● Focus on local and indigenous literatures around the
world
● Environmental justice
● Urban and suburban ecocriticism
Third Wave (2000-present)
● Global concepts that include place- bioregionalism
● Translocality

● “Material” ecofeminism, eco-masculinism, green queer

theory
● Animality- evolutionary ecocriticism, animal subjectivity
and agency, vegetarianism, justice for nonhuman species,
and posthumanism.
● Critiques from within- relationship with theory,
representationality, celebratory tone, “literature” too
limited a focus, forgotten role of activist feminism, lack
of precise definition, subfields seeking to break away.
● Occurs in several forms or stages and campaigns to effect
social or political changes. (Polymorphously activist)
Fourth Wave (2008- present)

● Ongoing multiculturalism among American ecocritics
and concerns on multicultural experience and voices.
● Environmentalism from Guha/Martinez-Alier to Nixon-
nurturing ecocritical voices in the developing countries
like Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, and others.
● Material ecocriticism and its offshoots- material
ecofeminism, nonhuman/non-animate agency, public
health narratives.
● Studies of perception/apprehension/vast and minute
scales; psychonarratology
● Applied ecocriticism -material culture, sustainability,
energy, food, and other issues.

Summary of the Four Waves of Ecocriticism

The first-wave projects a realist and less debatable
interpretation of nature and gives importance to the continuous
engagement with nature. Its reputation as an “avowedly political
mode of analysis” (Greg Garrard 3) is understood and maintains
the cultural distinction between human and nature, and advocates
the value of nature.
The second-wave is modern in the sense that it questions
and breaks the differences between the human and the non-human
(Garrard 5). The contradictions related to human and non-human,
and nature and non-nature are challenged. Movements of justice
that raise awareness of class, race, and gender through ecocritical
reading of text” (Bressler 236) are initiated and the condition of
the poor who are victims of pollution and have little access to
nature in the conventional sense is analysed.
The second-wave not only engages with the physical
environment, but also provides a more sceptical and controversial
view of the environment. It involves several debates and
considers formal approaches and genres to engage with the
environment. So, the relationship between the self and the world
can be ascertained and studies within the canvas of social and
environmental history are supported.
The third-wave forms interconnections globally and
relates individual problems as important issues on a global scale.
It proposes to denounce global capitalism and work for issues like
climate change. Material ecocriticism emerged in the fourth-wave
that initially focused on the impact of the environment and the
changes on the human body that gradually moved forward
towards a posthuman stand and further discussed animal bodies,
and the wider material world.
The fourth-wave recognises multicultural experiences
and voices that express the concerns of American ecocritics, and
critics from developing countries such as Bangladesh, Brazil,
Cameroon among others. It considers material ecocriticism and

also includes narratives related to health like psychonarratology.
Applied ecocriticism that discusses consumption of energy and
food at the global level is central to fourth-wave ecocriticism.
On the whole, the waves suggest the decentring of the
human being and the move towards posthumanism that would
later advance to studies on animal life. The point is to recognise
that human beings and animals share the same environment and
promote an ecological egalitarian outlook to break up the
traditional binaries of humans/ animals or humans/ nature.
Anthropocentrism
In Western conception, Anthropocentrism refers to a
human-centric perspective. Philosophy regards human beings as
the central or the most significant entities in the world. Humans
are separate from and far superior to nature. Human life has innate
values and all other forms of biotic and non-biotic entities are
resources that could be used indiscriminately to suit human
requirements.
Non-anthropocentric or anti-anthropocentric views
include ecocentrism, biocentrism, and similar backgrounds.
Questions related to anthropocentrism and its allied concepts
form part of discussions on nature/culture duality that is
considered a drawback in Western philosophy and environmental
thought.
Culture and Nature

There have been several critical discussions on the
relationship between nature and culture within academic circles
and the deliberations in ecocriticism are significant. Ecocritics
refuse to accept the notion held by several theories that everything
is socially or linguistically constructed (Barry 243). Ecocritics
argue that nature subsists and its presence can actually be felt. It
is an entity that affects human beings and if it is abused, the

consequences would be disastrous.
Barry mentions that Nature cannot be reduced to a mere
concept, which is conceived as part of practices of culture in the
way the notion of God is perceived and projected onto the
universe. Theory understands the world as constructed by the
society and language and the views are expressed in texts through
discourse and Ecocriticism rejects this way of theorising.
Ecocriticism disagrees with the essential conviction in
“constructedness” which is important for theory (243).
Ecocriticism claims that everything cannot be understood in
terms of social and linguistic construction and challenges theory
to prove it otherwise.
Peter Barry maintains that Nature and culture are entities
that are “real” and environments where nature, culture and the
state where both are included, exist. For instance, wilderness,
such as deserts, oceans and uninhabited continents; scenic
sublime that includes forests, mountains, cliffs and waterfalls; the
countryside with hills, fields and woods and the domestic
picturesque with gardens, parks and lanes are different types of
“outdoor environment”.
While wilderness is ‘pure nature’, the domestic
picturesque is primarily ‘culture’. However, wilderness is
affected by global warming, which is the consequence of culture
and gardens depend on sunlight, which is an aspect of nature. So,
the presence of nature and culture in both cannot be denied.
Moreover, the other two areas that are placed in between contain
elements of both nature and culture in varying degrees. From this,
it could be inferred that nature and culture are separate entities.
Ecocritics argue that there is no place on earth that is not
affected by man’s intervention and hence problems such as global
warming and other anthropocentric problems have to be
addressed through social ecologists. Similarly, concerns related

to gender, race and class will be taken up by ecofeminists, but in

the discourse environmental destruction is overlooked.
Deep Ecology and Shallow Ecology

In the essay “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range
Ecology Movements: A Summary” (1973), the Norwegian
philosopher Arne Dekke Eide Naess (1912-2009) introduced the
phrase deep ecology, which refers to the deep transformation of
modern society could avert the collapse of the ecological system.
Here, the word deep refers to the extent to which the questions
raised in environmental conflicts address the purposes and the
values. The questioning should go deep down to the root-cause.
Arne Naess condemned the partisan technological
approaches in addressing environmental issues, an attitude that he
calls shallow ecology. This includes “technological fixes” such
as “recycling, increased automotive efficiency, export-driven
monocultural organic agriculture” and these are based on values
and methods of consumption of the industrial economy.
He believes that the deep approach includes redesigning
all the systems in the biosphere based on values and methods that
would genuinely conserve the ecological and cultural diversity of
these natural systems. Deep Ecology emphasises that all life
forms are essentially connected to each other. Anthropocentric
thinking separates humans from the natural environment and
leads to its exploitation.
Naess formulates that human life forms are an essential
part of the earth and they should include other life forms for
consideration. It is important to be emotionally attached to the
environment than maintain a rational attitude. Both the human
and the non-human forms are endowed with certain innate values.
The value of non-human life is independent of its usefulness to
human sustenance. Ecosystems in nature can be preserved only if

human activity or interference is minimal and the emphasis

should be on appreciating the quality of life.
Literary Ecology
In The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing,
and the Formation of American Culture (1995), Laurence Buell
outlines four criteria, “ingredients” for evaluating a text as
contributing to environmental consciousness:
1. Assurance of the presence of the non-human world in
texts that do not pretend to acknowledge the concerns of
the non-human world. This implies that both the human
and the non-human worlds are united.
2. The human interest is not a priority over any other
system,
3. The text shows humans are responsible to the
environment and their actions damage the ecosystem.
4. The environment is a dynamic entity, one that constantly
changes and does not remain static (7-8).
Nature writing considers wilderness to be the pristine form
of the landscape that is contrary to the corrupted man-made
landscape. Ecocriticism examines the interaction between
culture and nature in texts. And considers that these two entities
influence each other. Texts which recognise and elaborate this
influence are considered ecologically conscious. Apart from
this, the condition of animals worldwide is also to be considered
in respect of the loss of habitat and from medical and research
points of view.

Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism or ecological feminism is a term coined by
the French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne in her book Le
Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). She argues that the subjugation and
oppression of women, the non-white population and the
economically disadvantaged sections is related to the degradation
of the natural world because both arise from patriarchal
dominance.
Ecofeminim is a branch of ecocriticism that essentially
“analyzes the interconnection of the oppression of women and
nature” (Bressler 236). Ecofeminists compare the domination of
land by men and the domination of men over women and point
out the hierarchical, gendered relationships, where the land is
associated with the feminine that is viewed as a fertile resource
and the property of man.
Prominent ecofeminists include Val Plumwood, Greta
Gaard, and Susan Griffin, Carolyn Merchant and Vandana Shiva
to name a few. Vandana Shiva (b.1952) the Indian environmental
activist is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science,
Technology, and Ecology (RFSTE) and the president of
Navdhanya International and the American ecofeminist
philosopher and historian of science Carolyn Merchant (b.1936)
is the author of Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the
Scientific Revolution (1980).
Greg Garrard mentions that ecofeminists are divided into
two groups: radical ecofeminism, which does not approve the
patriarchal domination of man over woman and nature, “exalting
nature,” the non-human, and the emotional” (24). They mention
that women are biologically, spiritually, and emotionally closer
to nature. The second group maintains that there is no such thing
as a “feminine essence” that would make women more likely to
connect with nature (25). Ecofeminism is a highly diverse and
complex branch of study and the hierarchical relationships within

cultural representations of nature and of women and other

oppressed groups are taken up for future studies.
There are several aspects that ecofeminists look into,
primarily patriarchal dominance as the cause of oppression and
marginalisation of women, children, women of colour and nature.
It is important to cultivate an ethic of care over cultural
domination and exploitation by men. All forms of oppression due
to ethnicity, race, gender, colour are interrelated and
unacceptable. The connection between patriarchy and all forms
of oppression have to be understood for justifiable change. The
people who are the worst affected by environmental destruction
must lead the movement.
Rachel Carson and Environmental Degradation

Rachel Carson (1907-1964) is an American writer,
scientist and ecologist who challenges the notion that human
beings could control nature through the use of chemicals, bombs,
space travel and marine explorations. Her ground-breaking work
Silent Spring (1962) warned of the serious consequences of the
indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides such as DDT and
questioned the rationality of modern science, especially after the
II World War. Her relentless efforts accelerated environmental
conservatism and she urged the public, environmental scientists
and the government to learn how to speak for nature.
She ends the book Silent Spring with the lines “We stand
now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert
Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have
long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway
on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.
The other fork of the road-the one -less traveled by’-offers our
last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the
preservation of our earth”.

Her first book Under the Wind (1941), which is about life
under the sea, is written in a conversational style. The Sea around
Us (1951) is a brief biography of the sea. The Edge of the Sea
(1955) discusses the ecosystems of the Eastern coast from Maine
to Florida. Carson’s concerns in all her writings are about climate
change, rise in temperature, melting Arctic glaciers, declining
animal and bird populations and collapsing geological fault-lines.
She advocates the need to cultivate environmental ethics that
would recognise the support of interactive and interdependent
systems of nature.
The Contribution of Val Plumwood
The Australian philosopher and ecofeminist Val
Plumwood (1939-2008), famous for her contribution to
anthropocentrism, in her book Feminism and the Mastery of
Nature (1993) discusses the culture/nature dualism among
several others. She asserts that these dualisms rest on the principle
of “divide and rule”. She mentions that since Plato, rationality is
associated with masculinity and both are granted absolute rights.
A series of contrasts such as reason/nature; male/female;
mind/body; rationality/animality; spirit/matter; self/other
maintain a hierarchical relationship due to a “remorseless logic”
(42), and initial term in the binary is considered superior to the
later one.
Plumwood points out that in Western thought, female
nature has always been denigrated and exploited. It can be
deciphered that the planet can be destroyed by ‘the master
subject’ in the name of ‘rational economy’ and global profit,
unless ‘reason’ can be remade. This does not mean that the female
nature can be privileged and the logic of patriarchy can be
reversed.
The endeavour should be to develop the rationality of the
‘mutual self’, which would guarantee “the incomparable riches of
diversity in the world’s cultural and biological life” and
encourage participation in the whole ‘community of life’” (195-

6). Plumwood’s suggestion is that both dualism and hierarchy can
work in tandem to strengthen each other.
Jonanthan Bate and Ecocriticism

In his seminal work Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and
the Environmental Tradition (1991), Bate uses the term “literary
ecocriticism” to denote studies related to ecology and
environment. Some scholars and critics consider this book as the
starting point of studies on ecology in Britain. He published The
Song of the Earth in 2000. Bate is acutely conscious that human
civilisation is not moving in the right direction to preserve nature.
Bate asserts that eco-critics should face such a world,
discuss the social cause for ecology crisis, and find out “where
our human civilization began to go wrong”. The ecological crisis
in the world is the outcome of deep-rooted anthropocentrism that
purposefully controls nature and expropriates its rights.
He reads the works of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy,
Byron, Keats, and Shakespeare through the ecological lens and
argues that the aesthetics of the picturesque should be read with
the true spirit of ecological concern and its practical application.
He considers the thought of poetic dwelling and dreams in the
ideal nature and the ecosystem, a way to dwell on the earth such
that human beings “participate in nature, conform to nature and
preserve nature”. He believes that the dichotomy between the
mind and nature, the self and the environment cannot be
understood without “ambitions of conquest and mastery.”
Ecocriticism is not a predetermined array of suppositions
or proposals, but a continuous process of reflections or the
consciousness about ecological responsibility and mission to
harmonise with nature. Ecocriticism is the awakening call to re-
establish ecological balance and ensure the secure co-habitation
of all species.
Laurence Coupe and “Green Theory”

Laurence Coupe is a Senior Lecturer in English at
Manchester Metropolitan University, where he teaches a course
in ecological literary theory. His most important contribution to
literary studies is the book The Green Studies Reader: From
Romanticism to Ecocriticism (2000). In the essay “Green
Theory,” Coupe defines ecology “as a branch of science which
deals with the relation between organisms and their
environments, and with the total pattern of such relationships’ and
ecology is derived from two ancient Greek words: oikos
(household) and logos (word) (154).
Ecological studies gained prominence only in the latter
half of the twentieth century when the “unstable” relationship
between human beings and their environment became quite
evident and now, it has become a challenge to restore ecological
balance.
Ecological literary criticism’ is abbreviated as
‘ecocriticism’, which is “the study of the relation between
literature and nature: in particular, the literary representation of
nature and, just as importantly, the power of literature to inspire
its readers to act in defence of nature”. Green Studies includes
“literary, artistic, cinematic, musical, political or philosophical”
paradigms to the study of nature.
The Relationship Between Nature and Culture According to

Coupe
Coupe explains the relation between nature and culture in
the essay “Green Theory.” He mentions that there are several
literal meanings of ‘nature,’ and out of several definitions, he
chooses two definitions of nature, namely 2a (often Nature) the
physical power causing all the phenomena of the material world
(Nature is the best physician); b.these phenomena, including
plants, animals, landscape, etc., and 6a an uncultivated or wild
area, condition, community, etc; b the countryside, esp. when

picturesque” are important for green theory.
Green theorists give importance to flora, fauna and the
landscape as well as the ecology of the city, which is clear from
the definitions 2b and 6b. From definition 6a, it is clear that
theorists would not use the words ‘wild’ or ‘uncultivated’ or
‘savage’ to refer to people who live in close connection with
nature because it would suggest that the language of colonialism
is being used.
In a similar manner, they would not approve
“commodification” of landscape that was mentioned in relation
to the use of the word ‘picturesque’ in the eighteenth century,
where rural landscapes were recognised centres of business. So,
Green Theory ‘debates’ “Nature” so that it can defend nature.
The word ‘culture’ etymologically means ‘inhabitation’,
‘cultivation’ and ‘worship’, which suggest activities performed in
relation to nature. People inhabit a part of the earth; they may
engage in cultivation of the soil; they may worship a ‘power’.
The word ‘cultivation’ was earlier used to refer to both the
soil and the soul. This way, a relationship is established between
earthly matter and the human spirit through the word ‘culture’.
This suggests that human culture is another aspect of a larger
culture called nature whether it is referred to as ‘Nature’ or not.
Patrick D. Murphy and Ecocriticism

Patrick D. Murphy (b.1951) is the founding editor of
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE)
and Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Some of his important works include Literature, Nature, and
Other: Ecofeminist Critiques and Understanding Gary Snyder
(1995); Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural
Studies: Fences, Boundaries, and Fields (2009); Feminist
Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (Ecocritical
Theory and Practice) (2012), and Transversal Ecocritical

Practice: Theoretical Arguments, Literary Analysis and Cultural
Critique (2013).
In Ecocritical Explorations (2009), Murphy explores
literature on the environment and environmental cultural issues
through the avenues of both theoretical and applied criticism. He
discusses the potential causes of global warming and disasters
such as hurricanes. He integrates his findings based on
scholarship with pedagogy in the classroom based on his own
teaching experiences. The book is a peep into the way human
relationship with the environment is represented.
Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and
Literature (Ecocritical Theory and Practice) (2012) delves into
the relation between the denigration of the environment and the
subordination of women. Oppressive dichotomies of male/female
and nature/culture that underlie contemporary environmental
problems are delineated and ways for emancipation are
considered.
The works of Rachel Carson, Barbara Kingsolver, Ursula
K. Le Guin, and Mary Shelley are analysed with this reformatory
zeal. The book attempts to bring together the two parallel lines in
contemporary theory, feminist criticism and ecocriticism and
traces how multiple perspectives have given rise to feminist
ecocriticism, a new area of study.
Transversal Ecocritical Practice (2013) reiterates the
need to “ask questions about the literature and ourselves before
we commence telling about the text” (5). At the time of the
environmental crisis, people should reflect on existing views of
the environment and persuade people to “think about and act upon
their own sense of selfhood in relation with the rest of the world”
(40). He combines several theories, texts and perspectives,
challenges traditional views of ecocriticism, and suggests new

ways of connecting with the abiotic elements of nature. He

emphasises ethically justified interdisciplinary ecocriticism.
The Essay: “Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of

Environmental Crisis”
Glotfelty’s “Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental
Crisis” is the introductory chapter of The Ecocriticism Reader:
Landmarks in Literary Ecology (1996), a compilation of several
essays by ecological thinkers and environmentalists, and the joint
venture of Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Glotfelty states
that literary studies in the postmodern age are unstable because
every field of study expands when newer concepts are introduced.
She observes that in a book of collected essays, several
critical approaches before the postmodern period such as Marxist
criticism, reader-response theory, cultural criticism and the
“historical fields and subfields” have undergone revision, but
ecology is left behind. Though several contemporary issues have
been discussed, nothing on the global environment crisis has
emerged. This reveals that in spite of several strategies being
adopted to revise recent literary studies, the academia is
“scholarly to the point of being unaware of the outside world”
(xv). Literary studies do not delve into the issues of
environmental concerns.
Though discussions related to race, class and gender have
been discussed by literature, pressing environmental issues
related to destruction, poisoning and contamination of natural
resources and issues of waste disposal, global warming, acid rain,
and so on are elaborated only as newspaper reports, and “you
might never know that there was an earth at all” (xvi).
This incongruity between the depiction of events and
discussions taken up by literary circles is proof that literary
scholarship has neither focussed on contemporary issues nor been
aware of environmental crises, or published any journals,
organised professional societies, held discussions and

conferences. While all other branches of study have flourished,
environmental concerns are left out and it seems that social
movements have transformed the society, but environmental
movements have failed to make an impact.
This does not, however mean that few works have been
written in this direction because several literary and cultural
scholars have individually written exceptional works, but they
have not organised themselves into a “distinct critical school or
movement” (xvii). Individual contributions appeared under
subject headings such as American Studies, Regionalism,
Pastoralism and so on. The critics were unaware of others in the
field of study, so they rarely cited each other’s works.
The Beginning of Literary Studies on the Environment
Literary studies on the environment emerged in the mid-
eighties, when scholars initiated collaborative projects and in
1985, Frederick O. Waage compiled Teaching Environmental
Literature: Materials, Methods, Resources. In 1989, Alicia
Nitecki brought out The American Nature Writing Newsletter,
which intended to publish essays, reviews and classroom notes
related to the study of nature and environment.
Environmental Studies became part of the curricula in
universities and several programmes were organised in various
forums. In 1990, the first regular programme of study in
Literature and the Environment was created in the University of
Nevada, Reno(xvii). Harold Fromm and Glen Love among others
contributed extensively to promote environmental studies.
In 1992, the Association for the Study of Literature and
Environment (ASLE) was formed with the slogan: “to promote
the exchange of ideas and information pertaining to literature that
considers the relationship between human beings and the natural
world” and to promote “new nature writing, traditional and

innovative scholarly approaches to environmental literature and

interdisciplinary environmental research” (xviii).
In 1993, Patrick Murphy founded ISLE- Interdisciplinary
Studies in Literature and Environment the journal that would
discuss “ecological theory, environmentalism, conceptions of
nature and their depictions, the human/nature dichotomy, and
related concerns” (qtd. in Glotfelty xviii). Literary studies on
ecology developed as a distinguishable critical school in 1993. It
took almost twenty years for scholars and critics to establish a
formidable group of academics for studies on literature, nature
and the environment.
Ecocriticism: Definition and Scope of Study
Glotfelty defines ecocriticism as: “the study of the
relationship between literature and the physical environment”
that takes “an earth-centered approach to literary studies” (xviii).
The ecocritics and theorists discuss how nature is represented in
literature in its various dimensions. For instance, the role of the
physical setting in the plot of a novel, nature writing as a genre,
issues of race, class and gender and the concept of place,
wilderness, environment crises and popular culture, the effect of
science of ecology on literature and interdisciplinary approaches.
The basis of ecological criticism is that human culture is
related to all the aspects of the physical world “affecting it and
affected by it”. The interrelatedness between nature and culture
and the cultural compositions of language and literature are
analysed and it maintains close connections between literature
and land. “As a theoretical discourse, it engages in dialogues or
discussions between the biotic and the abiotic elements of the
ecosystem, that is the “human and the nonhuman” elements.
Ecocriticism differs from other critical approaches. While
literary theory analyses how writers, texts, and the world inform
each other, where the world includes the society, “the social
sphere”, ecocriticism encompasses the “entire ecosphere”. Barry
Commoner’s first law of ecology says, “Everything is connected

to everything else”, which suggests that literature must
incorporate not only the aesthetic aspects but also play a part in
the complex global system where “energy, matter and ideas
interact”.
Joseph W. Meeker, in The Comedy of Survival: Studies in
Literary Ecology (1972) introduced the term literary ecology that
is “the study of biological themes and relationships which appear
in literary works. It is simultaneously an attempt to discover what
roles have been played by literature in the ecology of the human
species” (qtd. in Glotfelty xix).
Ecological criticism was probably first coined in 1978 by
William Rueckert in his essay “Literature and Ecology: An
Experiment in Ecocriticism.” Rueckert defines ecocriticism as
“the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study
of literature” where he not only expresses his concern for the
science of ecology but also relates to literature and all the other
aspects of the physical world. Other terms used within ecological
studies are “ecopoetics, environmental literary criticism, and
green cultural studies”.
Ecocriticism is the common terminology preferred over
others because it can be adapted into other forms like ecocritical
and ecocritic. Eco- is more acceptable than enviro- because
corresponding to the science of ecology, ecocriticism studies
relationships between things and especially between human
culture and the physical world.
While enviro- is anthropocentric and dualistic, where
human beings occupy the centre or they are regarded as the most
important elements of existence and they are surrounded by the
environment, eco- in contrast, suggests mutually dependent
communities, the unified systems, which are not only intimately
bonded but also strongly united.

The Humanities and Environmental Dimensions

Most works on ecocriticism are aware that human
excesses have a debilitating effect on the environment. Several
species have become extinct and the world is on the verge of an
apocalypse. Human beings are more a part of the problem than
the solution. Academicians can contribute meaningfully to the
present environmental problem, which are the by-products or the
consequences of culture.
In this connection, Donald Worster mentions that the
global crisis is the result of the improper functioning of the ethical
system that does not try to understand and reform the thought
processes and not the ecosystem. Historians, literary scholars,
anthropologists and philosophers can help understand
environmental crises.
Academicians could supplement an environmental
dimension to their disciplines. Historians like Worster write
environmental histories that study the mutual relationships
between humans and land, and trace the relations among
“environmental conditions, economic modes of production, and
cultural ideas” developed over the ages.
Anthropologists analyse the connections between culture
and geography. They are particularly interested in the ways in
which primeval or primitive cultures inform about coexistence,
value systems and rituals that have helped them survive.
Psychologists study the connections between the
conditions of the environment and mental health and they propose
that the modern life-style that distances itself from nature is
responsible for social and psychological derangements.
Philosophy incorporates several areas of study such as
environmental ethics, deep ecology, ecofeminism and social
ecology that try to comprehend the main cause of environmental
degradation and to devise an alternate view of existence that will

provide an ethical and conceptual foundation to sustain and

maintain appropriate relations with the earth.
Theologians view the earth sacred and recognise the hand
of God in creation. Several theologians consider worship of the
Earth Goddess, Eastern religious traditions, and teachings of
Native Americans, and other “belief systems that contain much
wisdom about nature and spirituality.”
Literary scholars interrogate “value, meaning, tradition,
point-of-view, and language” that are decisive to environmental
thinking. Environmental crisis is the outcome of “fragmented,
compartmentalised and overly-specialised way of knowing the
world” and scholars of humanities must reorient themselves and
adopt interdisciplinary methodologies to study issues that
concern the environment.
Evaluation of Ecocriticism in the USA

Given the wide range of topics included under
ecocriticism, it would be advisable, says the novelist, historian
and literary critic Wallace Stegner to consider the “suggestive and
open ways” to intercept literature and studies on environment
rather than systematise or categorise them. Glotfely explains
Elaine Showalter’s model of the three parallel phases in
ecocriticism that corresponds to the three stages of feminist
criticism:
1. In first stage in feminist criticism is “images of women”
stage that is related to the representations of women in the
literary canon. The study gives importance to raising
consciousness to the ways in which sexist stereotypes such as
witches, bitches, broads and spinsters” are portrayed and
hence the absences, alleged universality of ignored
experiences are pointed out, and hence, the aesthetic value of
literature is questioned.

Similar stereotypical representations are identified in

ecocriticism when Eden, Arcadia, virgin land, savage
wilderness are portrayed that question the absence of the
natural world in the text. Other areas include “the frontier,
animals, cities, specific geographical regions, rivers,
mountains, deserts, Indians, technology, garbage and the
body”.
2. The second stage in feminist criticism is women’s literary
tradition stage that raises consciousness as it “rediscovers,
reissues, and reconsiders” literature by women. In
ecocriticism, similar efforts are being undertaken to
rejuvenate the otherwise neglected genre of “nature-writing”.
The non-fiction that begins with Gilbert White’s A Natural
History of Selbourne (1789) and carried forward by Henry
Thoreau, John Burroughs, John Muir, Mary Austin, Aldo
Leopold, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard,
Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams and others (xxiii).
Ecocritics make use of several theories such as
psychoanalysis, New Criticism, feminism, the concepts of
Bakhtin, and deconstruction to promote and advance
ecocriticism.
The works of Willa Cather, Robinson Jeffers, W.S.Merwin,
Adrienne Rich, Wallace Stegner, Gary Synder, Mary Oliver,
Ursuala Le Guin and Alice Walker are acclaimed just as the
works of Native American authors. Ecocritics study
environmental conditions of an author’s life and the role of
the place where the author lives and writes about, which
triggers imagination.
3. The third stage, the complex theoretical phase that has
deeper implications and raises pertinent questions about the
“symbolic construction of gender and sexuality within literary
discourses.” In criticism, this resembles the symbolic
construction of species. The representation of the human as a

dual entity in Western thought, wherein meaning and matter,

mind and body, men and women are separated, hauls
humanity away from nature.
Ecofeminism is a variant form of this discourse that
analyses the link between the oppression of women and the
domination of nature. Several projects attempt to develop
ecological poetics, taking the science of ecology with its
concept of the ecosystem and its thrust on “interconnections
and energy flow, as metaphor for the way poetry functions in
society.” Deep ecology is a philosophy that explores the
inferences that its radical critique of anthropocentrism might
contribute to literary studies.
Ecocriticism: Future Directions

It is important to raise consciousness to find ways to
resolve environmental issues. Glotfelty insists that ecocriticism
redrafts the boundaries of literary studies. She hopes that every
literature department gives preference for a specialist in literature
and the environment and several candidates associated with the
environment hold high profiles. Similar to feminists and ethnic
groups that have transformed the society, she hopes the ecocritics
would effect changes in the curricula, literary canon and
university policies.
She is delighted to know that Aldo Leopold’s A Sand
County Almanac (1949) and Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire
(1968) are standard texts prescribed for courses in American
literature. Students should be encouraged to reassess the
relationship of humans to nature and about the ethical and
aesthetic dilemmas thrown up by the environmental crisis.
Colleges and universities of the twenty-first century should see
that every student completes at least one interdisciplinary course
in environmental studies. Since ecocritical studies are
multicultural, interdisciplinary, and spread world-wide, experts
from various disciplines could contribute at international

conferences.
Glotfely argues: “Ecocriticism has been predominantly a
white movement”. It has to become multi-ethnic to make stronger
ties with the environment, raise issues of social justice and bring
multiple voices to contribute to the present discussions. Since
environmental problems have crossed boundaries, a reassessment
of discussions from a global perspective to seek viable solutions
is necessary.
The introduction concludes with the lines from Loren
Acton, a solar astronomer, a payload specialist from the
Challenger Eight Space Shuttle who sees the hostile, vast infinity
and only one “welcoming planet”. He says, “an incredibly fragile
shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the
human drama and comedy. That’s where life is; that’s where all
the good stuff is” (xxv). Glotfelty considers the preservation of
nature to be significant because the survival of the human species
depends on the “right” treatment of the environment.
References
● Bressler, Charles. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to
Theory and Practice, 1999.
● Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination:
Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of
American Culture. Harvard UP, 1995.

● ---. The Future of Environmental Criticism:

Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination.
Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
● Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Penguin, 2000.
● Cohen, Michael P. “Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism
under Critique.” Environmental History, vol.1, no. 9,
2004, pp. 9-36.
● Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short
● Coupe, Lawrence. The Green Studies Reader:From
Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Routledge, 2000.
● ---. “Green Theory.” The Routledge Companion to
Critical and Cultural Theory. 2nd ed. edited by
Simon Malpas, and Paul Wake, 2013, pp. 154-66.
● Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. Routledge, 2004.
● Glotfelty, Cheryll. “Introduction: Literary Studies in an
Age of Environmental Crisis.”The Ecocriticism Reader,
edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. U of
Georgia P, 1996, pp. xv-xxv.
● Marland, Pippa. “Ecocriticism.” Literature Compass,
vol.10, no.11, 2013, pp. 846- 68.


● Nayar, Pramod K. From Text to Theory: A Handbook of
Literary and Cultural Theory. Viva Books, 2017.
Structuralism to Ecocriticism.Dorling Kindersley, 2010.
● Phillips, Dana. The Truth of Ecology: Nature, Culture,
and Literature in America. Oxford UP, 2003.
● Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature.
Routledge,1993.
● Rueckert, William. “Literature and Ecology: An
Experiment in Ecocriticism.” The Ecocriticism Reader,
edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. U of
Georgia P, 1996, pp. 105-23.
Web Links
● https://nick-demott.medium.com/a-brief-history-of-
ecocriticism-a120614d30fc
● https://www.asle.org/features/celebrating-asle-co-
founder-cheryll-glotfelty/
● https://www.jstor.org/stable/41616853?seq=1
● Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy.
pdf. p.206.
http://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/AppalFor/Readings/240
%20-%20Reading%20-%20Deep%20Ecology.pdf

● https://www.academia.edu/233299/Ecocriticism_and_Co
nsilience
● https://www.academia.edu/14741084/Ecocriticism#:~:te
xt=Introduction%20Ecocriticism%20is%20an%20umbre
lla,destructive%20impact%20on%20the%20biosphere.
● https://www.asle.org/
● file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/283%20(5).pdf
● http://sunrise-n.com/transatlantic_ecology/wp-
content/uploads/2016/09/SlovicThe-Fourth-Wave-of-
Ecocriticism.doc.pdf
Questions
I. Paragraph Questions
1. Ecofeminism
2. The four waves of ecocriticism
3. The three parallel phases in ecocriticism.
4. Green Studies
II. Essay Questions
5. Discuss how Glotfelty calls for eocriticism to seek an
earth-centred approach to literary studies.
6. Why does Glotfelty feel that colleges and universities of
the twenty-first century should see that every student

completes at least one interdisciplinary course in

environmental studies? Elaborate.
7. The future of ecocriticism, according to Glotfelty.

“Presentism: Postmodernism, Poststructuralism,

Postcolonialism”
Graham Good
Objectives
● Comprehend Presentism.
● Relate Presentism with postmodernism,
poststructuralism and postcolonialism
● Comprehend the precepts of New Historicism.
● Comprehend the relevance of the essay “Presentism:
Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism”
Introduction
A resident of Vancouver, Graham Good teaches English
and Comparative Literature at the University of British
Columbia. His interests include European literature and Buddhist
philosophy among several others. He has published books and
papers on contemporary literary theory, that include the essay as
a literary form in The Observing Self: Rediscovering the Essay
published in 1988; the article “Northrop Frye and Liberal
Humanism” published in Community Values: Special Issue of
Canadian Literature in 1996, and Humanism Betrayed: Theory,
Ideology and Culture in 2001; Rilke’s Late Poetry: Duino
Elegies, The Sonnets to Orpheus and Selected Last Poems,
translated with an Introduction and Commentary in 2005 apart

from significant book reviews and academic papers. He launched

his translation of Goethe’s poetry, Goethe’s Poems in 2015.
The essay “Presentism: Postmodernism,
Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism” is included in the anthology
Theory’s Empire: An Anthology of Dissent (2005). The book
traces the decline of scholarship within academic circles due to
the dominance of theory that began in the late 1960’s and became
prominent by the 1980’s.
The title Theory’s Empire: An Anthology of Dissent
(2005) is taken from Christopher Ricks essay “The Pursuit of
Metaphor” in What’s Happened to the Humanities, in which he
suggests “Theory’s empire [is] an empire zealously inquisitorial
about every form of empire but its own” (14) because anybody
who has remained for some time in the academy would be
astonished by the importance being given to Theory and would
want to understand the means by which scholarly pursuits of truth
and excellence have been undermined by political correctness.
The forty-seven essays in the book refer to this aspect in several
dimensions.
The editors ascertain that Theory reigns supreme
throughout academic circles in present times. The political and
social despotism of this view of the world has led to annihilation
of cultural heritage. Young scholars have not only little training
in historical methodology, sociological practices, philosophical
perspectives, but also hardly any understanding of the
foundations of Western civilization.
They consider Cultural Studies, which is interdisciplinary
and in vogue to be thinly disguised political commentary. The
essays trace the path of intellectual demise as Theory branched
out from structuralism to postmodernism and, finally, all
scholarly endeavours were framed with regard to power politics
(11-13).

The essays in the anthology validate that Theory is only a

pastiche, a combination of several approaches such as formalism,
Marxism, structuralism, Lacan psychoanalytic theories,
feminism, historicism, as well as Queer Theory and Postcolonial
Studies, which cannot be applied with any consistency (5). René
Wellek and Tzvetran Todrov endorse the importance of
structuralism which is as much concerned with analysing the
meaning of a text as New Criticism is (50,53). Wellek says that
the trouble is with the theory of deconstruction that is often
referred as poststructuralism, and considered a departure from
objective reality.
The consequences of accepting this approach are
disastrous. The elimination of aesthetics, the blurring of the
differences between poetry and critical prose, preference for
misreading in place of proper interpretation, and the rejection to
any reference to reality are indications of an intense disordered
condition. If literature is unable to explain individual emotions,
human minds, the cosmos, death and humanity then it loses its
meaning (49).
Presentism
Theory is not fascinating or appealing because many of its
concepts have become unexceptional or part of the everyday.
Barry identifies four ideas that were once contested because were
yet to gain acceptance, but now they have turned ordinary. First,
identity is an unstable concept and it is impossible to possess a
fixed identity.
The fact that the idea of ‘being’ while discussing ‘after
theory’ already contained the process of ‘becoming’ within it
should be understood. Second, every text, whether the canonized
or the one after theory, does not contain a fixed perception of that
it is because the text means different to different groups of people.

So, the text is subject to diverse interpretations and

appropriations.
Third, language is unstable because the exact meaning of
the words escapes between the tasks of differentiating and
explaining. Language incorporates figurative language that
disrupts ordinary language. Fourth, all assertions or positions
taken are subject to improvement, they are transitional and
unpredictable. Therefore, these four points of instability of
identities, texts, linguistic structures and truth are very important
for theory after theory. Barry adds that the opinions of these four
kinds of instability are also unstable. (289).
Peter Barry mentions four other changes in theory in
contemporary times. Theory is more practical and does not claim
authority. Several theories that were once considered prominent
are reduced or concealed by their branches. Matters related to the
‘spiritual’ are preferred over British Culturalism and American
New Historicism.
Hence, importance is given to metaphorical “reading, writing and
textuality” or to other forms of representations they are associated
with. Importance is not being given to language that constructs
everything. The sublime quality of language is discarded.
Events such as 9/11, political conflicts among nations of
the world, environmental deterioration and religious
fundamentalism have been critically examined. There is also
greater indulgence with moral, religious and ethical concerns and
the atmosphere of an impending doom prevails among literary
circles.
Therefore, theory at present is more pragmatic, not
completely materialist, gives less importance to the absolute
power of language, and more inclined towards creating an
awareness of global crises. Theory has in fact coursed its way
through several new frontiers of thought. There are new areas of

developments in theory, namely Presentism, and Cognitive

poetics. (290-91).
Presentism
Presentism is an approach to literature that contradicts and
opposes “historicist approaches oriented to meanings in the past”
(qtd. in Barry 291). Formerly interested in studies related to
Shakespeare, it is studied as ‘critical presentism’ under
Romanticism. Terence Hawkes, Hugh Grady and Ewan Fernie
are experts in this field. Critical presentism is primarily a response
to approaches to literature that are centred on historical analysis
such as New Historicism and Cultural Materialism that have been
practised since the 1980s.
Michel Foucault had emphasised the study of history in
The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), in the sense that it is
important to understand the “exact specificity of its occurrence”.
This means that it is not only important to analyse the literary text
but also understand it within the specifics of history. Therefore,
the conditions under which the text was written, its limitations, its
relations with other texts and the texts that it excludes arte to be
found out. This would mean indulging in an endless process of
historical findings and literary scholars would end up engaging in
the historical method of analysis. Presentism reacts against this
situation.
Differences between the Views of the Presentist and the

Historicist
Presentism earlier meant the inclination for reading the
past in terms of the present. The present is considered the end or
the point that the past has been attempting to reach. A presentist
is interested in the past only if it directly relates to the present so

that it is possible to ascertain what is relevant or suitable and

reject the rest.
It is important to read literature that addreses
contemporary concerns. Presentists would engage in finding the
present in the past, “the present in the past” to speak or negotiate
with the living, which is opposed to historicists who tend to
engage with the dead or rather “speak with the dead”
The difference between the presentist and the historicist is
that while the presentist engages with the living, the historicists
speaks to the dead; however, the reality is that these two groups
are in discussion with themselves. The aim of the historicist is to
study literature within the confines of time and place, but the
presentist questions the relevance of such a study. Peter Barry
gives the example of Shakespeare, the most widely read and
studied dramatist than any other in the contemporary times, so he
is more firmly placed in the modern world than the Renaissance
period.
Historicism is based on the inherent conflict that if
identity is historically situated or constructed, then it is
impossible to come out of one’s own historically constructed
identity and recognise one of any other period. Presentism differs
from Historicism in that it engages with the contemporary aspects
of the world. It reverses the strategies of new Historicism to a
certain degree and begins with the material present, that is
material at hand and then sets out to interrogate the relevance of
this material in the present time.
Introduction to “Presentism: Postmodernism,
Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism”
In the essay “Presentism: Postmodernism,
Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism”, Good argues that Theory is
the epitome of Orwell’s totalitarianism because it is embedded in
presentism, which is “the belief in the primacy of the present, and

the refusal to be guided by a vision either of the past or of the

future” (287).
Presentism mentions that it is impossible to know the past
and asserts on interpreting events subjectively. Seen through the
lens of postcolonial Theory, all British literature, and western
literature should not be read not for aesthetic value but rather for
its depiction of power politics (291-3).
The Essay: “Presentism: Postmodernism, Poststructuralism,
Postcolonialism”
Presentism is the belief in the importance of the present
and the refusal to be guided by a vision of either the past or the
future. It rejects historicism and maintains that it is impossible to
know the truth of the past “as it really was”. The historians of the
nineteenth century pretended or believed to have known the past,
but presentism claims that the past has never been knowable.
Therefore, the efforts taken to know the past is futile and
it would be better to accept what survives of the past as a
repository of “heritage” motifs and styles to be used in the present
for enjoyment or for the sake of uniqueness of representation of
the old-fashioned.
The past modes of architecture, art or attire are reshaped
by employing pastiche, collage, interpretation or appropriation to
serve current political needs. In present times, historical
appropriateness has replaced the notion of political correctness.
However, this is an ideal, which is unattainable and humanistic
studies should struggle to achieve it.
It is a fact that the past cannot be known entirely or
precisely. Presentism takes this truth and transforms it into the
belief that it is impossible to know the past, that is “the past cannot
be known at all’. To put it practically, the politics of the present
times determines which version is acceptable. Nietzsche’s idea
that the past can and should be used to increase the influence of
those already in power is important because he realised that it was
impossible to predict historical truth, especially in the context of

distribution of power, which was lopsided and considered part of
“a slave conspiracy’.
This means that the quest for historical truth conspires
against the politically strong. The quest for historical accuracy is
absolutely baseless because it is a sign of pedantry in comparison
to the empowering stories of myth.
Presentism overturns Nietzsche’s political accusations
who would approve the belief that when history is written by
winners there would definitely be selective and biased accounts
of events. Nietzsche eventually predicted the victory of the weak
and their subsequent rewriting of history after the success in
conspiring against the strong and the free. Contemporary history
therefore is considered part of the rewriting process, which makes
it doubly ironic that Nietzsche enjoys as much a canonical status
as the theorists do.
History that is rewritten by the former losers must be as
much a “construct” as the winning history that it replaces. Both
sides question the necessity of acknowledging facts that are
inconvenient to them and ignoring, denying or distorting facts if
they would make the respective sides more powerful. Though
Nietzsche and theory are politically opposed to each other, they
share the common ground of forgetting facts and making myths.
Presentism rejects the vision of historicism and the
predictions of the future, which are articulated as a rejection of
aspects such as teleology, in philosophical terms; human destiny
in religious terms, and human progress in political terms. The
most appropriate version of this rejection is Lyotard’s “Grand
Narratives”, which includes the Biblical journey from creation to
apocalypse, the opinions of the Whigs that humanity is gradually
progressing towards betterment despite several setbacks, and the
Marxist vision of Proletarian revolution, the decline of the State
and the end of history.

Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History, a brilliant work

that provides a coherent and persuasive vision of one’s place in
human history is dismissed as unread because Fukuyama worked
for the US State Department and hence it was not studied, argued
or disproved.
Any long term view of human history or destiny is
detested by Presentism. Without any vision of the future, the
notion of overall development, any ideal, end or objective, the
present becomes only a muddle of short-term activities. Marxist
theory becomes a combination of meaningless terms and concepts
if they are not understood in terms of the system to which they
belong.
Theorists use the terms “bourgeois” and “reactionary”
rather negatively because they could be averse to Marxian
ideology. Theorists use the term “Progressive” positively, while
they attack the idea of human progress that highlights its
significance.
It is seen that theory discards several genuine progressive
ideas such as liberalism, humanism, individualism, realism and
science because they are either attacked or regarded with
suspicion and hostility. Everything is “…a repetition, a re-
reading, a re-writing”, so theory is devoid of individuality,
originality and independence and the prefix “re’ is widely used in
academic circles just as “post” is used.
This atmosphere of not infusing anything fresh in theory
and the delay in doing so is a paradoxical result of presentism.
Without a narrative that links the present to the future and the
past, there cannot be any development, only repetition.
In actual practice, theory encounters problems because
something has to determine the theoretically indeterminate and
presentism has to give some direction to the theoretically
futureless and pastless present. So, instead of ‘pastness’,
‘postness’ should be used.

The three posts that situate theory in contemporary times

are postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism but
they are “like three characters in a Beckett play,” says Good. In
the absence of a concept of history, the present can only be
described by the immediately preceding phase or period, the
period in view or just the recent past that the present follows.
Presentism and Postmodernism

In Good’s opinion, postmodernism is a shaky construct as
its basis, modernism. The period between 1910 and 1930 or 1900
and 1940 is designated the modern period in art and literature;
however, the complete realisation of its usage is only in the
1970’s and until then only “modern” literature was prevalent.
Movements like Futurism, Vorticism and Imagism existed at the
time, but not modernism. Modernism in art is post-
impressionism, the precursor of post-modernism.
Good observes: “Modernism, like other concepts of the
period, requires an emphasis on discontinuities and a neglect of
continuities.” Writers like James Joyce, D.H.Lawrence and
E.M.Forster were earlier thought to be extending realism to
exceptional and annoying degrees.
This is exemplified by Henry James, in his essay “The New
World”, where he places Joseph Conrad and D.H.Lawrence
alongside Arnold Bennet and H.G.Wells in respect of their
continuation of the realist tradition.
However, it is Virginia Woolf’s paper that explores
modernity “Mr. Bennett and Mr. Brown,” published in 1924 that
draws the distinction between the Edwardians, namely Arnold
Bennet, H.G.Wells and John Galsworthy, and the Georgians,
Forster, T.S.Eliot, James Joyce, Lawrence, Lytton Strachey and
Woolf herself, who later came to be known as the modernists.

Woolf prefers the Georgians to the Edwardians because

they are better at creating lively, authentic characters. The
Georgians are superior to the “external” methods of Bennett. The
radical innovations of modernism exhibited in the works of the
Georgians is preferred to the conventional and naïve style of the
Edwardians and the intellectual and formal sophistication of the
Victorians.
The advent of postmodernism in the 1970’s
“repositioned” modernism to where it had earlier placed the
Victorians and the Edwardians. Postmodernism is “radical,
experimental, sceptical, self-reflexive, parodistic and allusive” in
approach. Don Quixote is identified as the novel with
postmodernist elements. The genre, novel has always combined
realism and experiment.
Good states that realism is not the “naive, conventional,
bourgeois form of the theorists’ caricature”, but an endless
experiment in itself, though critics always try to categorise the
methods of realism and experiment into different periods. Since
presentism sees the present as a “radically new period’, it
considers the recent past to be conservative. Both modernism and
postmodernism claim to have no foundations and dispense with
history “as a coherent narrative”.
Presentism and Poststructuralism

Poststructuralism shares similar weakness as
postmodernism, which is the excessive dependence on the
concept it postulates. Structuralism that was prominent during the
late 1960’s and the early 1970’s argued that literature would
finally be subjected to a scientific method, which was similar to
the “structural anthropology” of Claude Levi-Strauss.
Just as theorists were examining this prospect, Derrida
came up with the principles of Deconstruction. He discovered that
Levi-Strauss’ “rigorous” structuralism and all the other texts were
self-contradictory. As a result, academic endeavours soon

retreated from structuralism because if all the plots were reduced
to mathematical equations, nothing much would remain to be
done.
Deconstruction offers much more material for literary
discussions and shows how every text is self-contradictory.
Whereas before 1970, critics discovered the hidden unity of
image, symbol, theme and plot in literary texts, with the advent
of post-structuralism, they went into reverse and located disunity
in the same texts, including critical texts. This opened the
gateway that showed the infinite chains of texts, each showing the
contradictions of the previous ones.
There is little need for primary texts and a small group of
already much discussed texts by Proust, Rousseau or Poe are
preferred because they offer several layers of commentary.
Lectures and discussions centre more around Jacques Derrida,
Stanley Fish or Jonathan Culler than any poet or novelist.
Presentism and Postcolonialism

Good points out the incongruity that while the base of
primary texts is contracting in one area, it is expanding in another,
where there is the incredible flourishing of creative writing in
countries that were once colonies of the European powers.
Unfortunately, these emerging literatures are categorised under
the third ‘post’- postcolonialism.
According to Good, similar to postmodernism and
poststructuralism, postcolonialism is an inadequate response to
literature because its objective is to cover or theorise. In the
anxiety to move beyond thematic and descriptive criticism,
postcolonial critics have adopted, often uncritically, the
terminology and concepts of poststructuralism.
This background is not only applied to a handful of
canonical western texts benefitted by deconstruction, but also

made to work from numerous cultural backgrounds. Thus, while

postcolonial critics criticise Eurocentrism, simultaneously they
constantly cite European theorists like Foucault, Barthes, Lacan
and Derrida. Good notices that the theoretical reorientation in the
English speaking world has witnessed the shift from
Anglocentrism to Francocentrism.
Postcolonialism, like postmodernism and
poststructuralism inherits the structures of what is ‘post’. The
former colonies of the British empire, namely India, Sri Lanka,
the Caribbean islands, Canada, Australia and the African
continent are culturally quite different and they all have only one
aspect in common, that is of being governed by Britain.
By maintaining this imposed grouping, Good argues,
postcolonialism reproduces colonial patterns. It is rare to find
courses that study African literature as a homogenous entity.
Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone (Portuguese)
literatures are treated separately from each other and from works
in African literatures.
Postcolonialism’s dependence on colonialism also leads
to a lack of historical depth. Presentism conceals almost
everything that happened before the nineteenth century. Thus,
Roman imperialism is rarely discussed, despite its obvious
importance for later discussions on European imperialism.
Negative Eurocentrism, which considers Europe as the only
guilty party conceals non-European instances of imperialism like
the Islamic conquests in Africa and India, Japanese annexations
of Korea and parts of China, the Chinese invasion of Tibet, and
the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.
The case of Indian literature exposed the limitations of the
postcolonial framework that neglected the 3000-year tradition
that predated and survived the British imperial rule. The long-
term context is vital to understand the most recent works of Indian
literature, while the international postcolonial one is insufficient

by itself. A related obstruction is Theory’s hostility to religion,

which is a serious barrier in approaching a culture like the Indian
one, which is imbued with religious beliefs and practises that are
to an extent unimaginable to Eurocentrism.
The study of postcolonial literature in English is united as
a field by a negative Anglocentrism, which often goes beyond
attacking British imperialism to a general attack on British culture
as such. A favourite hypothesis in postcolonial theory is that
Britain is in a terminal cultural decline as a result of the rise of
postcolonial cultures, and this perception ignores contemporary
British writing. Moreover, wealthy white settler countries like
Canada and Australia are included among the countries that
suffered the real impact of imperialism.
Good argues that such an inclusion gives the postcolonial
intellectuals from these countries the luxury of presenting
themselves as members of the oppressed. Good points out the
irony that Australia and Canada are more affluent than post-
imperial Britain. He also points out the case of the British media
being owned by the British media being owned by the Canadian
or Australian tycoons like Conrad Black or Rupert Murdoch.
The Myth of the Cultural Decline of Britain

The myth of the British cultural decline is also
contradictory with the charge of continuing cultural imperialism.
In Good’s view there is more evidence for the reverse hypothesis
that Britain is culturally dominated by its former colonies. Apart
from media ownership, this is evidence that the cultural
establishment is tremendously open to postcolonial talent as
shown by the powerful roles of a host of writers, critics,
publishers and TV presenters from former colonies. This is more
a case of “The Empire Moves In” than “The Empire Writes
Back”.

Postcolonial writers do not acclaim Britain on its

openness to foreign talent. They ignore the equal abundance and
quality of contemporary “native” British writers, and view this
aspect to be another sign of cultural eclipsing. They also neglect
the awkward question that probes why remarkable postcolonial
writers are attracted to a supposedly declining centre.
The poverty of postcolonial theory as opposed to the
richness and diversity of its literature is revealed in one of its
fundamental texts, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice
in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989) (a phrase used by Salman
Rushdie) is co-authored by three academicians from Australia,
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. After expressing
open hostility to British culture and even language use in the first
two hundred pages, it ends with the vision in which “the English
canon is radically reduced within a new paradigm of international
English (sic) studies”.
Haggard and Kipling are examples of open pro-
imperialist attitudes that could replace the standard Victorian
classics like Thomas Hardy and George Eliot in courses on
British literature. Kipling’s support of imperialism cannot be
forgiven by literary academics when compared with Ezra Pound’s
fascism and T.S.Eliot’s anti-Semitism.
Hostility to British culture and language is also evident in
Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism (1993), which maintains
that every work of the 19th century and the early 20th century
European literature, especially Jane Austen’s novels are involved
with imperialism, whether it is mentioned or not. According to
Good, Said’s book Culture and Imperialism (1993), should
actually have been titled European Culture and Imperialism since
it does not mention anything about Russian, Islamic, Chinese or
Japanese imperialism except the preface that acknowledges their
existence. The guilt, rather, is focussed on the West.

Works such as Robinson Crusoe and Shakespeare’s The

Tempest influence postcolonial thinking. Viewing Caliban as the
innocent victim of the imperialist Prospero seems to be the only
current interpretation, disregarding Shakespeare’s obvious
intention to show Prospero as a wise but imperfect ruler.
Shakespeare is seen as an object of judgement by the
present, which condemns any divergences from prevailing
standards of uprightness. The Signet classics, according to Good,
have brought out an article in the collection of critical essays in
their Shakespeare editions that rates each play according to its
degree of racism, sexism and homophobia.
A similar bias is seen in the whole Western tradition,
which is put on trial and is found guilty. Postcolonialism
combines with Presentism to accuse the past as a substitute for
trying to understand it. The past is guilty of not being present.
History becomes simply a repository of grievances, whose
historical truth cannot be ascertained.
Students get the idea that western culture is exceptionally
guilty of racism, sexism, homophobia, ecocide and imperialism.
This kind of negative Eurocentrism would certainly be modified
and definitely be amended by a genuinely global outlook, which
would expose these abuses and prejudices as extensive in the
history of the world.
The Practice of New Historicism

In Good’s opinion, the apparent exception to the existing
presentism is the so-called New Historicism. The Old Historicism
sets the works of the past in the context of its period, and the
period with respect to the present through a coherent overview of
history, be it the Whig view of gradual progress or the
conservative view of progress or decline or the Marxist view of
straggle that evolves into a revolution. The New Historicism uses
a collage technique to place alongside a literary with a non-

literary text from the same period and provide a feeling of moving
outside the realm of fiction.
This technique began in the field of Renaissance Studies,
where drama is the dominant literary genre, and this led to the
habit of placing alongside a scene from a play and a “scene” from
public life. The opening of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish
(1975 in French; 1977 in English was influential here, in
recording in detail how he French regicide Damiens were
tortured, dismembered, and burned in 1757.
The typical New Historicist article begins with a quoted
description of an opulent Pageant or a spectacularly brutal
punishment, executes some transitional theoretical “moves”
involving power or desire, and arrives at a play without bearing
“freshness” or “political relevance”. According to Good,
““History” is simply a juxtaposed image, a gesture, a cross-
reference.”
The basic precepts of the New Historicism are outlined in
the introduction of H. Aram Veeser’s The New Historicism: A
Reader. The five main assumptions are:
1. that every expressive act is embedded in a network of
material practices;
2. that every act of unmasking, critique, and opposition
uses the tool it condemns and risks falling prey to the
practise it exposes;
3. that literary and non-literary ‘texts’ circulate
inseparably;
4. that no discourse, imaginative or archival, gives
access to unchanging truths nor expressed inalterable
human nature;

5. that a crucial method and a language adequate to

describe culture under capitalism participate in the
economy they describe.
A close examination of the the third point expresses the
idea that there is no essential difference among types of text and
literature is merely an arbitrary concept from the Romantic period
onwards, which serves bourgeois ideology. This leaves the New
Historicist free to juxtapose (place side by side) any quotation
from a poem or a play with any quotation from a historiographical
text, usually with the effect of guilt with association, thereby any
literary text can be accused in the evils that were going on nearby.
The “embeddedness” thesis is preferred by the Marxists
who note that culture reflects economic realities, but gives a
localised version of it, without the overarching narrative of
Marxist history, and without necessarily giving primacy to the
economic level as the ultimate cause of cultural expressions. This
again enables the New Historicist practise of arbitrary
juxtaposition. New Historicism creates an intertextual and
contextual web around a text, which ultimately consists of
thematic parallels of the kind the New critics of the earlier period
used to discover within texts.
The fourth point asserts that there is no continuous nature
underlying cultural change, and reflects the anti-humanist
thinking prevalent in contemporary theory. Human behaviour and
creativity change over time, and it is true that the human condition
keeps changing, which enables us to understand and learn from
works of the past. New Historicism takes one truth and rejects the
other, producing an unbalanced view of creativity as completely
determined by culture.
The second and the fifth points could be taken together as
the principle of necessary collaboration. Resistance to the system
is part of the system. To expose a practise is partially to reproduce
that practise. Criticism is dependent on what it criticises. There is
neither independence nor innocence. All intellectual activity in a

capitalist society supports capitalism.
When these five points are taken together, they show the
consequences of discarding the idea of autonomy- the autonomy
of the self and the work. This autonomy is limited by culture and
many other factors, but the freedom of the artist and the critic are
nevertheless realities. In a sense, the self and the work lose
autonomy, and this aspect is demonstrated by New Historicism
onto culture, and as a result the culture of a specific area and
period becomes completely powerful, creative and explaining.
Culture becomes God, the individual nothing in the anti-
humanist way of thinking. However, culture is also divided into
autonomous units according to period, nationality and so on and
they do not connect with each other into a coherent narrative.
History turns into a disconnected series of “past presents” that
wait to be organised and reorganised to suit the preferences of the
actual present condition.
New Historicism primarily involves with both textualist
as well as presentist ideas to cancel or reverse the notions of the
Renaissance. Besides the rise of the “autonomous self,” the
Renaissance period considerably progressed both artistically and
scientifically in “accurate representation”. By framing a unified
perspective of objects, portraying a realistic depiction of the
people, exploring navigation and map making techniques and
developing classification in Botany and Zoology, the much
needed consistency and reliability of presentation is provided.
These systems of accurate representation coincided with, and
partially enabled the emergence of Humanism by enhancing
humanity’s ability to describe and represent its experience of the
world in a referential manner.
The power to represent reality precisely and in a verifiable
manner was a powerful liberating force that was not discredited
by the use of some of its practises in the continuance of

colonialism. These referential, verifiable representations

gradually took over from ideological representations, that is those
which expressed and projected pre-existing beliefs about the
cosmos or humanity.
The new genre of novel was created in Don Quixote by
contrasting the chivalric “constructions” of the deceived hero
with the harsh realities of Spain in 1600, rendered in the new
referential prose. Similarly, in science, academic proofs validated
by the authority of Aristotle were gradually replaced by empirical
proofs substantiated by repeatable experiments. Truth was no
longer established intersubjectively by faith or ideology, but
objectively and individually, with no authority other than
experiment itself.
Current Intellectual Trends and Presentism

Current intellectual trends jeopardise the commendable
progress made on the basis of the systems of accurate
representation. Realism, artistic or scientific and individualism
are the twin mutually supporting conceptions of the Renaissance
that are now questioned.
The period of the dominance of these two ideas, the 17th
to 20th centuries is also disfavoured. This period is blamed for its
connection with the rise of European colonialism, but the
progress that was made towards social equality and prosperity is
forgotten.
In Good’s opinion, New Agers and Deep Ecologists see
the period as a spiritual disaster, reiterating the desacralisation of
the world, and the exploitation of natural resources, while
forgetting the contribution of Reformation to initiate
individualistic forms of spirituality and the revival of respect for
nature by romanticism, which led to the protection of areas of
natural beauty.

Though presentism claims to have done away with Grand

Narratives, it actually has one of its own about the last five
centuries, whose achievements are reduced to the twin disgraces
of imperialism and patriarchy, obscuring all the positive aspects
of the period.
Rejection of the humanist centuries and their legacy by
the presentist coincides with the conservative perspective of T.S.
Eliot who saw the period as a disaster for poetry due to the
“dissociation of sensibility”, which is supposed to have occurred
during the 17th century and split thought from feeling. His ideal
society was the medieval Christendom of Dante.
Eliot was also hostile to liberal humanism. Where current
theory sees individual freedom as an illusion produced by
bourgeois ideology, Eliot saw it as real but socially destructive,
destroying the hierarchical unity of medieval society. Eliot, like
many theorists believed that culture creates poetry and not vice-
versa.
For both theory and Eliot, culture is something already
ready or prepared, not something to be achieved as in liberal
humanism. Both are hostile to literary individuality because while
Eliot saw the poet’s mind as a mere passive vehicle for combining
ideas and images, theory sees poetry as just another textual
“effect” of the discourse system.
Eliot’s conventionalism resembles theory in seeing the
new artwork as simply a recombination or recycling of existing
themes. Both are suspicious of, or hostile to, individualism and
realism in art as well as to any idea of originality. Presentism
desires historical agency to individuals and to groups. It lacks the
onward momentum provided by class struggle in Marxism, and
hence falls short of explaining why one discourse system or
regime changes into another.
“Resistance” is as active as it is possible to get in this
view, and even this form of dissent is hard to explain within the

suppositions of theory. At times, dissent is elaborated as a safety-

valve in the system, a device that lets off pressure through an
illusory subversiveness, and thus preserving the system in a more
effective manner.
While radical academics apply this theory to their own
“subversive” activities, the result may be a confession that
amounts to a sign or an indication. The radical claims of theory
seem to be based on the idea that while exposing the injustices of
a system, somehow the system will undergo a change. Since
theory views all systems as total and all thought as an “effect” of
the system, it cannot explain how or why injustice can never be
exposed.
Theory is self-confessedly “ineffectual” because as an
effort of the system, it remains ineffectual to a considerable
extent. Therefore, claims of radical dissent are alternately
advanced and withdrawn for they can neither be maintained nor
discarded. Though the practices of the western society are
condemned, they are simultaneously accompanied by cynical
acceptance and professional careerism.
Thus it is inferred that Presentism concurs that both the
individual as well as groups and collectives fail to play an active
role in history. Presentism refuses to see any impersonal,
inevitable direction to history, of the Hegelian, Christian, Marxist
or liberal kind, and all these are grouped as outmoded Grand
Narratives. This leaves only the lame and vague explanation of
constituting periods by what they follow, simply adding the prefix
post.
Presentism sees the human situation helpless, powerless,
and directionless, completely subjected to ideological control.
The result is a kind of resignation or defeatism where culture
plays the role of fate. Literary and cultural studies need a more
balanced and progressive outlook than passively accepting the
situation.

References
● A.Van Belle, Douglas. A Methodology for Critiquing and
Reconceptualizing Theories and Models.Sage,2019.
● Good, Graham. ‘Presentism: Postmodernism,
Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism.” Theory’s Empire:
An Anthology of Dissent, edited by Daphne Patai and Will
H. Corral. Columbia University Press, 2005, pp. 287-97.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/pata13416.23.
Web Links
● Canadian Literature.
https://canlit.ca/canlit_authors/graham-good/
● Fabula. D. Patai, W. Corral, editors. Theory’s Empire:
An Anthology of Dissent.
https://www.fabula.org/actualites/d-patai-w-corral-ed-theory-
s-empire-an-anthology-of-dissent_11443.php
● Ronsdale Press.
http://ronsdalepress.com/authors/graham-good/

Questions
I. Paragraph Questions
1. What is Presentism?
2. The basic precepts of the New Historicism as outlined in
the introduction of H. Aram Veeser’s The New
Historicism: A Reader.
II. Essay Questions

1.Postmodernism is a form of Presentism. Discuss
2.The relation of Presentism with postcolonialism
3. Elaborate the myth of the cultural decline of Britain.

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LITERARY CRITICISM

AND THEORY – PART II

LITERARY CRITICISM AND

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 2

UNIT 2. Post-Structuralism/ Deconstruction: An Overview.

UNIT 3. Psychoanalysis: An Overview. Major theorists:

UNIT 4. Feminism: An Overview. Major theorists: Virginia

UNIT 5. Cultural Materialism/ New Historicism: An

UNIT 6. Postcolonialism: An Overview. Major theorists: Frantz

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 4

UNIT 7. Ecocriticism: An Overview. Major theorists: Jonathan

UNIT 8. Critiquing Theory: An Overview

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 5

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 6

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 7

1. Mimetic Theories: Ancient theories about art that see art as

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 8

2.Reader-centred approach: Reception theory and reader-

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 9

● Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 10

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 11

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 12

A Brief Outline of Contemporary Literary Theories

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 13

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 14

The aim of deconstruction is not to destroy the binary, but to undo

issues of caste, race and ethnicity. Feminism rejects patriarchal

New Historicism/Cultural Materialism

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 16

Conflicting languages and cultures, nativity, and the notion of the

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 17

The Structuralist Activity

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 19

profoundly influenced by the Marxist ideology and the existential

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 20

erotic body of language that is flexible and transient always.

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 21

Therefore, a structure is a conceptual (theoretical or

Saussure’s Principles of Structuralism

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 22

Linguistics (1916) (French: Cours de linguistique générale) is a

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 23

defines the signifier as a sound image and signified as the

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 25

School of Distance Education

or meanings because it has been collectively agreed upon. In a

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 26

can, fan, or pan. Therefore, the differential relation among signs

Critics like Jonathan Culler, Gerard Genette, Tzvetan

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 27

The structuralist critic understands the rules and

Structuralism and Russian Formalism

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 28

Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) disapproves of Saussure’s

Literary Criticism and Theory - II 29

Lévi-Strauss regards the mental structure alone to be the