UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MINDANAO

KIDAPAWAN CITY CAMPUS

Sudapin, Kidapawan City

Post-Structuralism
Janice E. Reynes
Professor

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 Definition
• Post-structuralism:
– an intellectual movement from France during the 1960s and
1970s that challenged the belief in stable or unchanging
meanings and identities

– an intellectual movement that developed as a response to

another (structuralism)

– the concept of 'truth' is tricky – if not impossible – to pin down

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 Definition

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 • Roland Barthes (1915–80)
heory (1)
• Jaques Derrida (1930–2004)

– prominent post-structuralist
theorists who have been
instrumental in bringing
post-structuralist theory to
literary analysis

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 Key Features

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 Key Features

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 Key Features

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 Key Features

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 Key Features

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 Key Features

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 Example

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 Guide Questions for analysis
• How is language thrown into ‘freeplay’ or questioned in the
work?

• How does the work undermine or contradict generally

accepted truths?

• How does a work fulfill or move outside the established

conventions of its genre?

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 Guide Questions for analysis
• What ideology does the text seem to promote?

• What is left out of the text that if included might undermine

the goal of the work?

• If we changed the point of view of the text – say from one

character to another, or multiple characters – how would the
story change? Whose story is not told in the Who is left out
and why might the author have omitted this character’s tale?
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 Text for Analysis

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 References
• file:///C:/Users/acer/Downloads/Post_Structuralism.pptx.pdf
• Post-Structuralism: Meaning & Examples | StudySmarter
• https://owlcation.com/humanities/how-to-analyze-literature-
using-the-post-structuralism-school-of-criticism

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 End of slide
Thank you for listening!

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