Poststructuralism: A Very Short

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Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction
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Very Short Introductions available now:

ABOLITIONISM Richard S. Newman

THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS Charles L. Cohen
ACCOUNTING Christopher Nobes
ADOLESCENCE Peter K. Smith
THEODOR W. ADORNO Andrew Bowie
ADVERTISING Winston Fletcher
AERIAL WARFARE Frank Ledwidge
AESTHETICS Bence Nanay
AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION Eddie S. Glaude Jr
AFRICAN HISTORY John Parker and Richard Rathbone
AFRICAN POLITICS Ian Taylor
AFRICAN RELIGIONS Jacob K. Olupona
AGEING Nancy A. Pachana
AGNOSTICISM Robin Le Poidevin
AGRICULTURE Paul Brassley and Richard Soffe
ALEXANDER THE GREAT Hugh Bowden
ALGEBRA Peter M. Higgins
AMERICAN BUSINESS HISTORY Walter A. Friedman
AMERICAN CULTURAL HISTORY Eric Avila
AMERICAN FOREIGN RELATIONS Andrew Preston
AMERICAN HISTORY Paul S. Boyer
AMERICAN IMMIGRATION David A. Gerber
AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY G. Edward White
AMERICAN MILITARY HISTORY Joseph T. Glatthaar
AMERICAN NAVAL HISTORY Craig L. Symonds
AMERICAN POETRY David Caplan
AMERICAN POLITICAL HISTORY Donald Critchlow
AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND ELECTIONS L. Sandy Maisel
AMERICAN POLITICS Richard M. Valelly
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY Charles O. Jones
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Robert J. Allison
AMERICAN SLAVERY Heather Andrea Williams
THE AMERICAN SOUTH Charles Reagan Wilson
THE AMERICAN WEST Stephen Aron
AMERICAN WOMEN’S HISTORY Susan Ware
AMPHIBIANS T. S. Kemp
ANAESTHESIA Aidan O’Donnell
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Michael Beaney
ANARCHISM Colin Ward
ANCIENT ASSYRIA Karen Radner
ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE Christina Riggs
ANCIENT GREECE Paul Cartledge
THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Amanda H. Podany
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas
ANCIENT WARFARE Harry Sidebottom
ANGELS David Albert Jones
ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman
THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair
ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR Tristram D. Wyatt
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM Peter Holland
ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia
THE ANTARCTIC Klaus Dodds
ANTHROPOCENE Erle C. Ellis
ANTISEMITISM Steven Beller
ANXIETY Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman
THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS Paul Foster
APPLIED MATHEMATICS Alain Goriely
THOMAS AQUINAS Fergus Kerr
ARBITRATION Thomas Schultz and Thomas Grant
ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn
ARCHITECTURE Andrew Ballantyne
THE ARCTIC Klaus Dodds and Jamie Woodward
ARISTOCRACY William Doyle
ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes
ART HISTORY Dana Arnold
ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Margaret A. Boden
ASIAN AMERICAN HISTORY Madeline Y. Hsu
ASTROBIOLOGY David C. Catling
ASTROPHYSICS James Binney
ATHEISM Julian Baggini
THE ATMOSPHERE Paul I. Palmer
AUGUSTINE Henry Chadwick
JANE AUSTEN Tom Keymer
AUSTRALIA Kenneth Morgan
AUTISM Uta Frith
AUTOBIOGRAPHY Laura Marcus
THE AVANT GARDE David Cottington
THE AZTECS Davíd Carrasco
BABYLONIA Trevor Bryce
BACTERIA Sebastian G. B. Amyes
BANKING John Goddard and John O. S. Wilson
BARTHES Jonathan Culler
THE BEATS David Sterritt
BEAUTY Roger Scruton
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Mark Evan Bonds
BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS Michelle Baddeley
BESTSELLERS John Sutherland
THE BIBLE John Riches
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Eric H. Cline
BIG DATA Dawn E. Holmes
BIOCHEMISTRY Mark Lorch
BIOGEOGRAPHY Mark V. Lomolino
BIOGRAPHY Hermione Lee
BIOMETRICS Michael Fairhurst
ELIZABETH BISHOP Jonathan F. S. Post
BLACK HOLES Katherine Blundell
BLASPHEMY Yvonne Sherwood
BLOOD Chris Cooper
THE BLUES Elijah Wald
THE BODY Chris Shilling
NIELS BOHR J. L. Heilbron
THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER Brian Cummings
THE BOOK OF MORMON Terryl Givens
BORDERS Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen
THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea
BRANDING Robert Jones
THE BRICS Andrew F. Cooper
THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION Martin Loughlin
THE BRITISH EMPIRE Ashley Jackson
BRITISH POLITICS Tony Wright
BUDDHA Michael Carrithers
BUDDHISM Damien Keown
BUDDHIST ETHICS Damien Keown
BYZANTIUM Peter Sarris
CALVINISM Jon Balserak
ALBERT CAMUS Oliver Gloag
CANADA Donald Wright
CANCER Nicholas James
CAPITALISM James Fulcher
CATHOLICISM Gerald O’Collins
CAUSATION Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum
THE CELL Terence Allen and Graham Cowling
THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe
CHAOS Leonard Smith
GEOFFREY CHAUCER David Wallace
CHEMISTRY Peter Atkins
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY Usha Goswami
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE Kimberley Reynolds
CHINESE LITERATURE Sabina Knight
CHOICE THEORY Michael Allingham
CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson
CHRISTIAN ETHICS D. Stephen Long
CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead
CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS Russell Foster and Leon Kreitzman
CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy
CITY PLANNING Carl Abbott
CIVIL ENGINEERING David Muir Wood
CLASSICAL LITERATURE William Allan
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY Helen Morales
CLASSICS Mary Beard and John Henderson
CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard
CLIMATE Mark Maslin
CLIMATE CHANGE Mark Maslin
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY Susan Llewelyn and Katie Aafjes-van Doorn
COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY Freda McManus
COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE Richard Passingham
THE COLD WAR Robert J. McMahon
COLONIAL AMERICA Alan Taylor
COLONIAL LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE Rolena Adorno
COMBINATORICS Robin Wilson
COMEDY Matthew Bevis
COMMUNISM Leslie Holmes
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE Ben Hutchinson
COMPETITION AND ANTITRUST LAW Ariel Ezrachi
COMPLEXITY John H. Holland
THE COMPUTER Darrel Ince
COMPUTER SCIENCE Subrata Dasgupta
CONCENTRATION CAMPS Dan Stone
CONFUCIANISM Daniel K. Gardner
THE CONQUISTADORS Matthew Restall and Felipe Fernández-Armesto
CONSCIENCE Paul Strohm
CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore
CONTEMPORARY ART Julian Stallabrass
CONTEMPORARY FICTION Robert Eaglestone
CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY Simon Critchley
COPERNICUS Owen Gingerich
CORAL REEFS Charles Sheppard
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Jeremy Moon
CORRUPTION Leslie Holmes
COSMOLOGY Peter Coles
COUNTRY MUSIC Richard Carlin
CREATIVITY Vlad Glăveanu
CRIME FICTION Richard Bradford
CRIMINAL JUSTICE Julian V. Roberts
CRIMINOLOGY Tim Newburn
CRITICAL THEORY Stephen Eric Bronner
THE CRUSADES Christopher Tyerman
CRYPTOGRAPHY Fred Piper and Sean Murphy
CRYSTALLOGRAPHY A. M. Glazer
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION Richard Curt Kraus
DADA AND SURREALISM David Hopkins
DANTE Peter Hainsworth and David Robey
DARWIN Jonathan Howard
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Timothy H. Lim
DECADENCE David Weir
DECOLONIZATION Dane Kennedy
DEMENTIA Kathleen Taylor
DEMOCRACY Bernard Crick
DEMOGRAPHY Sarah Harper
DEPRESSION Jan Scott and Mary Jane Tacchi
DERRIDA Simon Glendinning
DESCARTES Tom Sorell
DESERTS Nick Middleton
DESIGN John Heskett
DEVELOPMENT Ian Goldin
DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY Lewis Wolpert
THE DEVIL Darren Oldridge
DIASPORA Kevin Kenny
CHARLES DICKENS Jenny Hartley
DICTIONARIES Lynda Mugglestone
DINOSAURS David Norman
DIPLOMATIC HISTORY Joseph M. Siracusa
DOCUMENTARY FILM Patricia Aufderheide
DREAMING J. Allan Hobson
DRUGS Les Iversen
DRUIDS Barry Cunliffe
DYNASTY Jeroen Duindam
DYSLEXIA Margaret J. Snowling
EARLY MUSIC Thomas Forrest Kelly
THE EARTH Martin Redfern
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE Tim Lenton
ECOLOGY Jaboury Ghazoul
ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta
EDUCATION Gary Thomas
EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch
EIGHTEENTH‑CENTURY BRITAIN Paul Langford
THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball
EMOTION Dylan Evans
EMPIRE Stephen Howe
EMPLOYMENT LAW David Cabrelli
ENERGY SYSTEMS Nick Jenkins
ENGELS Terrell Carver
ENGINEERING David Blockley
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Simon Horobin
ENGLISH LITERATURE Jonathan Bate
THE ENLIGHTENMENT John Robertson
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Paul Westhead and Mike Wright
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS Stephen Smith
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Robin Attfield
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW Elizabeth Fisher
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS Andrew Dobson
ENZYMES Paul Engel
EPICUREANISM Catherine Wilson
EPIDEMIOLOGY Rodolfo Saracci
ETHICS Simon Blackburn
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY Timothy Rice
THE ETRUSCANS Christopher Smith
EUGENICS Philippa Levine
THE EUROPEAN UNION Simon Usherwood and John Pinder
EUROPEAN UNION LAW Anthony Arnull
EVANGELICALISM John Stackhouse
EVOLUTION Brian and Deborah Charlesworth
EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn
EXPLORATION Stewart A. Weaver
EXTINCTION Paul B. Wignall
THE EYE Michael Land
FAIRY TALE Marina Warner
FAMILY LAW Jonathan Herring
MICHAEL FARADAY Frank A. J. L. James
FASCISM Kevin Passmore
FASHION Rebecca Arnold
FEDERALISM Mark J. Rozell and Clyde Wilcox
FEMINISM Margaret Walters
FILM Michael Wood
FILM MUSIC Kathryn Kalinak
FILM NOIR James Naremore
FIRE Andrew C. Scott
THE FIRST WORLD WAR Michael Howard
FLUID MECHANICS Eric Lauga
FOLK MUSIC Mark Slobin
FOOD John Krebs
FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY David Canter
FORENSIC SCIENCE Jim Fraser
FORESTS Jaboury Ghazoul
FOSSILS Keith Thomson
FOUCAULT Gary Gutting
THE FOUNDING FATHERS R. B. Bernstein
FRACTALS Kenneth Falconer
FREE SPEECH Nigel Warburton
FREE WILL Thomas Pink
FREEMASONRY Andreas Önnerfors
FRENCH LITERATURE John D. Lyons
FRENCH PHILOSOPHY Stephen Gaukroger and Knox Peden
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION William Doyle
FREUD Anthony Storr
FUNDAMENTALISM Malise Ruthven
FUNGI Nicholas P. Money
THE FUTURE Jennifer M. Gidley
GALAXIES John Gribbin
GALILEO Stillman Drake
GAME THEORY Ken Binmore
GANDHI Bhikhu Parekh
GARDEN HISTORY Gordon Campbell
GENES Jonathan Slack
GENIUS Andrew Robinson
GENOMICS John Archibald
GEOGRAPHY John Matthews and David Herbert
GEOLOGY Jan Zalasiewicz
GEOMETRY Maciej Dunajski
GEOPHYSICS William Lowrie
GEOPOLITICS Klaus Dodds
GERMAN LITERATURE Nicholas Boyle
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY Andrew Bowie
THE GHETTO Bryan Cheyette
GLACIATION David J. A. Evans
GLOBAL CATASTROPHES Bill McGuire
GLOBAL ECONOMIC HISTORY Robert C. Allen
GLOBAL ISLAM Nile Green
GLOBALIZATION Manfred B. Steger
GOD John Bowker
GOETHE Ritchie Robertson
THE GOTHIC Nick Groom
GOVERNANCE Mark Bevir
GRAVITY Timothy Clifton
THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE NEW DEAL Eric Rauchway
HABEAS CORPUS Amanda Tyler
HABERMAS James Gordon Finlayson
THE HABSBURG EMPIRE Martyn Rady
HAPPINESS Daniel M. Haybron
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE Cheryl A. Wall
THE HEBREW BIBLE AS LITERATURE Tod Linafelt
HEGEL Peter Singer
HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood
THE HELLENISTIC AGE Peter Thonemann
HEREDITY John Waller
HERMENEUTICS Jens Zimmermann
HERODOTUS Jennifer T. Roberts
HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson
HINDUISM Kim Knott
HISTORY John H. Arnold
THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin
THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY William H. Brock
THE HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD James Marten
THE HISTORY OF CINEMA Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
THE HISTORY OF LIFE Michael Benton
THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS Jacqueline Stedall
THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE William Bynum
THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS J. L. Heilbron
THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT Richard Whatmore
THE HISTORY OF TIME Leofranc Holford‑Strevens
HIV AND AIDS Alan Whiteside
HOBBES Richard Tuck
HOLLYWOOD Peter Decherney
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE Joachim Whaley
HOME Michael Allen Fox
HOMER Barbara Graziosi
HORMONES Martin Luck
HORROR Darryl Jones
HUMAN ANATOMY Leslie Klenerman
HUMAN EVOLUTION Bernard Wood
HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY Jamie A. Davies
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Adrian Wilkinson
HUMAN RIGHTS Andrew Clapham
HUMANISM Stephen Law
HUME James A. Harris
HUMOUR Noël Carroll
THE ICE AGE Jamie Woodward
IDENTITY Florian Coulmas
IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden
THE IMMUNE SYSTEM Paul Klenerman
INDIAN CINEMA Ashish Rajadhyaksha
INDIAN PHILOSOPHY Sue Hamilton
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Robert C. Allen
INFECTIOUS DISEASE Marta L. Wayne and Benjamin M. Bolker
INFINITY Ian Stewart
INFORMATION Luciano Floridi
INNOVATION Mark Dodgson and David Gann
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Siva Vaidhyanathan
INTELLIGENCE Ian J. Deary
INTERNATIONAL LAW Vaughan Lowe
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION Khalid Koser
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Christian Reus-Smit
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY Christopher S. Browning
INSECTS Simon Leather
IRAN Ali M. Ansari
ISLAM Malise Ruthven
ISLAMIC HISTORY Adam Silverstein
ISLAMIC LAW Mashood A. Baderin
ISOTOPES Rob Ellam
ITALIAN LITERATURE Peter Hainsworth and David Robey
HENRY JAMES Susan L. Mizruchi
JESUS Richard Bauckham
JEWISH HISTORY David N. Myers
JEWISH LITERATURE Ilan Stavans
JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves
JAMES JOYCE Colin MacCabe
JUDAISM Norman Solomon
JUNG Anthony Stevens
KABBALAH Joseph Dan
KAFKA Ritchie Robertson
KANT Roger Scruton
KEYNES Robert Skidelsky
KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner
KNOWLEDGE Jennifer Nagel
THE KORAN Michael Cook
KOREA Michael J. Seth
LAKES Warwick F. Vincent
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE Ian H. Thompson
LANDSCAPES AND GEOMORPHOLOGY Andrew Goudie and Heather Viles
LANGUAGES Stephen R. Anderson
LATE ANTIQUITY Gillian Clark
LAW Raymond Wacks
THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS Peter Atkins
LEADERSHIP Keith Grint
LEARNING Mark Haselgrove
LEIBNIZ Maria Rosa Antognazza
C. S. LEWIS James Como
LIBERALISM Michael Freeden
LIGHT Ian Walmsley
LINCOLN Allen C. Guelzo
LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews
LITERARY THEORY Jonathan Culler
LOCKE John Dunn
LOGIC Graham Priest
LOVE Ronald de Sousa
MARTIN LUTHER Scott H. Hendrix
MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner
MADNESS Andrew Scull
MAGIC Owen Davies
MAGNA CARTA Nicholas Vincent
MAGNETISM Stephen Blundell
MALTHUS Donald Winch
MAMMALS T. S. Kemp
MANAGEMENT John Hendry
NELSON MANDELA Elleke Boehmer
MAO Delia Davin
MARINE BIOLOGY Philip V. Mladenov
MARKETING Kenneth Le Meunier-FitzHugh
THE MARQUIS DE SADE John Phillips
MARTYRDOM Jolyon Mitchell
MARX Peter Singer
MATERIALS Christopher Hall
MATHEMATICAL FINANCE Mark H. A. Davis
MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers
MATTER Geoff Cottrell
THE MAYA Matthew Restall and Amara Solari
THE MEANING OF LIFE Terry Eagleton
MEASUREMENT David Hand
MEDICAL ETHICS Michael Dunn and Tony Hope
MEDICAL LAW Charles Foster
MEDIEVAL BRITAIN John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths
MEDIEVAL LITERATURE Elaine Treharne
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY John Marenbon
MEMORY Jonathan K. Foster
METAPHYSICS Stephen Mumford
METHODISM William J. Abraham
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION Alan Knight
MICROBIOLOGY Nicholas P. Money
MICROECONOMICS Avinash Dixit
MICROSCOPY Terence Allen
THE MIDDLE AGES Miri Rubin
MILITARY JUSTICE Eugene R. Fidell
MILITARY STRATEGY Antulio J. Echevarria II
JOHN STUART MILL Gregory Claeys
MINERALS David Vaughan
MIRACLES Yujin Nagasawa
MODERN ARCHITECTURE Adam Sharr
MODERN ART David Cottington
MODERN BRAZIL Anthony W. Pereira
MODERN CHINA Rana Mitter
MODERN DRAMA Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr
MODERN FRANCE Vanessa R. Schwartz
MODERN INDIA Craig Jeffrey
MODERN IRELAND Senia Pašeta
MODERN ITALY Anna Cento Bull
MODERN JAPAN Christopher Goto-Jones
MODERN LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE Roberto González Echevarría
MODERN WAR Richard English
MODERNISM Christopher Butler
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY Aysha Divan and Janice A. Royds
MOLECULES Philip Ball
MONASTICISM Stephen J. Davis
THE MONGOLS Morris Rossabi
MONTAIGNE William M. Hamlin
MOONS David A. Rothery
MORMONISM Richard Lyman Bushman
MOUNTAINS Martin F. Price
MUHAMMAD Jonathan A. C. Brown
MULTICULTURALISM Ali Rattansi
MULTILINGUALISM John C. Maher
MUSIC Nicholas Cook
MYTH Robert A. Segal
NAPOLEON David Bell
THE NAPOLEONIC WARS Mike Rapport
NATIONALISM Steven Grosby
NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE Sean Teuton
NAVIGATION Jim Bennett
NAZI GERMANY Jane Caplan
NEOLIBERALISM Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy
NETWORKS Guido Caldarelli and Michele Catanzaro
THE NEW TESTAMENT Luke Timothy Johnson
THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE Kyle Keefer
NEWTON Robert Iliffe
NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner
NINETEENTH‑CENTURY BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and H. C. G. Matthew
THE NORMAN CONQUEST George Garnett
NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green
NORTHERN IRELAND Marc Mulholland
NOTHING Frank Close
NUCLEAR PHYSICS Frank Close
NUCLEAR POWER Maxwell Irvine
NUCLEAR WEAPONS Joseph M. Siracusa
NUMBER THEORY Robin Wilson
NUMBERS Peter M. Higgins
NUTRITION David A. Bender
OBJECTIVITY Stephen Gaukroger
OCEANS Dorrik Stow
THE OLD TESTAMENT Michael D. Coogan
THE ORCHESTRA D. Kern Holoman
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY Graham Patrick
ORGANIZATIONS Mary Jo Hatch
ORGANIZED CRIME Georgios A. Antonopoulos and Georgios Papanicolaou
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY A. Edward Siecienski
OVID Llewelyn Morgan
PAGANISM Owen Davies
PAKISTAN Pippa Virdee
THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT Martin Bunton
PANDEMICS Christian W. McMillen
PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close
PAUL E. P. Sanders
PEACE Oliver P. Richmond
PENTECOSTALISM William K. Kay
PERCEPTION Brian Rogers
THE PERIODIC TABLE Eric R. Scerri
PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD Timothy Williamson
PHILOSOPHY Edward Craig
PHILOSOPHY IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD Peter Adamson
PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY Samir Okasha
PHILOSOPHY OF LAW Raymond Wacks
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND Barbara Gail Montero
PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS David Wallace
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Samir Okasha
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Tim Bayne
PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards
PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY Peter Atkins
PHYSICS Sidney Perkowitz
PILGRIMAGE Ian Reader
PLAGUE Paul Slack
PLANETARY SYSTEMS Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
PLANETS David A. Rothery
PLANTS Timothy Walker
PLATE TECTONICS Peter Molnar
PLATO Julia Annas
POETRY Bernard O’Donoghue
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY David Miller
POLITICS Kenneth Minogue
POLYGAMY Sarah M. S. Pearsall
POPULISM Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser
POSTCOLONIALISM Robert Young
POSTMODERNISM Christopher Butler
POSTSTRUCTURALISM Catherine Belsey
POVERTY Philip N. Jefferson
PREHISTORY Chris Gosden
PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY Catherine Osborne
PRIVACY Raymond Wacks
PROBABILITY John Haigh
PROGRESSIVISM Walter Nugent
PROHIBITION W. J. Rorabaugh
PROJECTS Andrew Davies
PROTESTANTISM Mark A. Noll
PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns
PSYCHOANALYSIS Daniel Pick
PSYCHOLOGY Gillian Butler and Freda McManus
PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
PSYCHOPATHY Essi Viding
PSYCHOTHERAPY Tom Burns and Eva Burns-Lundgren
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Stella Z. Theodoulou and Ravi K. Roy
PUBLIC HEALTH Virginia Berridge
PURITANISM Francis J. Bremer
THE QUAKERS Pink Dandelion
QUANTUM THEORY John Polkinghorne
RACISM Ali Rattansi
RADIOACTIVITY Claudio Tuniz
RASTAFARI Ennis B. Edmonds
READING Belinda Jack
THE REAGAN REVOLUTION Gil Troy
REALITY Jan Westerhoff
RECONSTRUCTION Allen C. Guelzo
THE REFORMATION Peter Marshall
REFUGEES Gil Loescher
RELATIVITY Russell Stannard
RELIGION Thomas A. Tweed
RELIGION IN AMERICA Timothy Beal
THE RENAISSANCE Jerry Brotton
RENAISSANCE ART Geraldine A. Johnson
RENEWABLE ENERGY Nick Jelley
REPTILES T.S. Kemp
REVOLUTIONS Jack A. Goldstone
RHETORIC Richard Toye
RISK Baruch Fischhoff and John Kadvany
RITUAL Barry Stephenson
RIVERS Nick Middleton
ROBOTICS Alan Winfield
ROCKS Jan Zalasiewicz
ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway
THE ROMAN EMPIRE Christopher Kelly
THE ROMAN REPUBLIC David M. Gwynn
ROMANTICISM Michael Ferber
ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler
RUSSELL A. C. Grayling
THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY Richard Connolly
RUSSIAN HISTORY Geoffrey Hosking
RUSSIAN LITERATURE Catriona Kelly
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION S. A. Smith
SAINTS Simon Yarrow
SAMURAI Michael Wert
SAVANNAS Peter A. Furley
SCEPTICISM Duncan Pritchard
SCHIZOPHRENIA Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone
SCHOPENHAUER Christopher Janaway
SCIENCE AND RELIGION Thomas Dixon and Adam R. Shapiro
SCIENCE FICTION David Seed
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION Lawrence M. Principe
SCOTLAND Rab Houston
SECULARISM Andrew Copson
SEXUAL SELECTION Marlene Zuk and Leigh W. Simmons
SEXUALITY Véronique Mottier
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Stanley Wells
SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES Bart van Es
SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS AND POEMS Jonathan F. S. Post
SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES Stanley Wells
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Christopher Wixson
MARY SHELLEY Charlotte Gordon
THE SHORT STORY Andrew Kahn
SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt
SILENT FILM Donna Kornhaber
THE SILK ROAD James A. Millward
SLANG Jonathon Green
SLEEP Steven W. Lockley and Russell G. Foster
SMELL Matthew Cobb
ADAM SMITH Christopher J. Berry
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY John Monaghan and Peter Just
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Richard J. Crisp
SOCIAL WORK Sally Holland and Jonathan Scourfield
SOCIALISM Michael Newman
SOCIOLINGUISTICS John Edwards
SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce
SOCRATES C. C. W. Taylor
SOFT MATTER Tom McLeish
SOUND Mike Goldsmith
SOUTHEAST ASIA James R. Rush
THE SOVIET UNION Stephen Lovell
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR Helen Graham
SPANISH LITERATURE Jo Labanyi
THE SPARTANS Andrew Bayliss
SPINOZA Roger Scruton
SPIRITUALITY Philip Sheldrake
SPORT Mike Cronin
STARS Andrew King
STATISTICS David J. Hand
STEM CELLS Jonathan Slack
STOICISM Brad Inwood
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING David Blockley
STUART BRITAIN John Morrill
THE SUN Philip Judge
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY Stephen Blundell
SUPERSTITION Stuart Vyse
SYMMETRY Ian Stewart
SYNAESTHESIA Julia Simner
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY Jamie A. Davies
SYSTEMS BIOLOGY Eberhard O. Voit
TAXATION Stephen Smith
TEETH Peter S. Ungar
TELESCOPES Geoff Cottrell
TERRORISM Charles Townshend
THEATRE Marvin Carlson
THEOLOGY David F. Ford
THINKING AND REASONING Jonathan St B. T. Evans
THOUGHT Tim Bayne
TIBETAN BUDDHISM Matthew T. Kapstein
TIDES David George Bowers and Emyr Martyn Roberts
TIME Jenann Ismael
TOCQUEVILLE Harvey C. Mansfield
LEO TOLSTOY Liza Knapp
TOPOLOGY Richard Earl
TRAGEDY Adrian Poole
TRANSLATION Matthew Reynolds
THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES Michael S. Neiberg
TRIGONOMETRY Glen Van Brummelen
THE TROJAN WAR Eric H. Cline
TRUST Katherine Hawley
THE TUDORS John Guy
TWENTIETH‑CENTURY BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan
TYPOGRAPHY Paul Luna
THE UNITED NATIONS Jussi M. Hanhimäki
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES David Palfreyman and Paul Temple
THE U.S. CIVIL WAR Louis P. Masur
THE U.S. CONGRESS Donald A. Ritchie
THE U.S. CONSTITUTION David J. Bodenhamer
THE U.S. SUPREME COURT Linda Greenhouse
UTILITARIANISM Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer
UTOPIANISM Lyman Tower Sargent
VETERINARY SCIENCE James Yeates
THE VIKINGS Julian D. Richards
VIOLENCE Philip Dwyer
THE VIRGIN MARY Mary Joan Winn Leith
THE VIRTUES Craig A. Boyd and Kevin Timpe
VIRUSES Dorothy H. Crawford
VOLCANOES Michael J. Branney and Jan Zalasiewicz
VOLTAIRE Nicholas Cronk
WAR AND RELIGION Jolyon Mitchell and Joshua Rey
WAR AND TECHNOLOGY Alex Roland
WATER John Finney
WAVES Mike Goldsmith
WEATHER Storm Dunlop
THE WELFARE STATE David Garland
WITCHCRAFT Malcolm Gaskill
WITTGENSTEIN A. C. Grayling
WORK Stephen Fineman
WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman
THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION Amrita Narlikar
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 Catherine Belsey

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
A Very Short Introduction
SECOND EDITION
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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This edition published 2022
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Contents

Foreword by Neil Badmington

List of illustrations

1 Creatures of difference

2 Difference and culture

3 The differed subject

4 Difference or truth?

5 Difference in the world

6 Dissent

Glossary

References

Further reading

Index
Foreword

Catherine Belsey was making her final alterations to this second

edition of Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction in October
2020 when she suffered a stroke at home in Cambridge. She spent
the next few months in hospital before being moved to a hospice,
where she died on the morning of 14 February 2021.

Eighteen months earlier, Kate asked me out of the blue if I would

oversee her literary affairs following her death. I protested that an
immortal had no need of such an earthly arrangement, but she took
from my hands the copy of Tales of the Troubled Dead with which
she had just presented me. Retrieving a pen from her handbag, she
wrote a message inside the cover of the book: ‘For Neil, my literary
executor—for the record—from Kate.’ She assured me that she
would haunt me if I didn’t do my job properly.

For the record, I finalized the present text for publication at the
request of Kate’s family, using two sources: a file from Kate’s
computer and a typescript with handwritten annotations that was
found on her desk. ‘I know that I can no longer reach her’, writes
Joan Didion towards the end of Blue Nights, her memoir about the
death of her daughter. I knew—obviously, painfully, daily—that I
could no longer reach Kate while I was settling her sentences for
print, so I turned at times for advice to Julia Thomas, Irene Morra,
Laurence Totelin, Kim Gilchrist, and Becky Munford. Kate’s words can
now reach their readers in the form, I believe, that she desired. I
hope that she has no need to haunt me.

Neil Badmington,
Cardiff, July 2021
List of illustrations

1 Alice and Humpty Dumpty

Illustration by John Tenniel in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (Macmillan,
1940). Morphart Creation/Shutterstock

2 Linear A. Ancient Minoan script discovered by Sir Arthur Evans

From Scripta Minoa: The Written Documents of Minoan Crete. With Special Reference
to the Archives of Knossos Vol. 1, Oxford 1909

3 René Magritte, The Key to Dreams (1935)

© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2021

4 Detail from Titian, Venus Blindfolding Cupid

Galleria Borghese, Rome

5 Jacques Derrida, Glas

© Jacques Derrida (University of Nebraska Press, 1986), trans. by John Leavey and
Richard Rand

6 Marcel Duchamp, Fountain

Tate Gallery, London. Ian Dagnall Computing/Alamy Stock Photo

7 Chappatte, Carbon Footprint

© Chappatte, The New York Times, <www.chappatte.com>

8 Pieter de Hooch, A Courtyard of a House in Delft

National Gallery, London. World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

9 M. C. Escher, Belvedere
The M. C. Escher Company. All M. C. Escher works © Cordon Art-Baarn-the
Netherlands. Used by permission. All rights reserved
Chapter 1
Creatures of difference

When Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty discusses the question of

meaning with Alice, which one of them is right?

In Through the Looking Glass Humpty Dumpty engages Alice in one

argument after another, just as if dialogue were a competition (see
Figure 1). Having demonstrated to his own satisfaction, if not Alice’s,
that unbirthday presents are to be preferred because people can
have them more often, he adds triumphantly, ‘There’s glory for you!’
1. Alice and Humpty Dumpty. Which of them is right?

Torn between the desire to placate him and good common sense,
Alice rejoins, ‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”.’ So Humpty
Dumpty explains:

‘I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’

‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it
means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’
 ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many
different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be Master—that’s all.’

Alice’s scepticism is surely justified? Meaning is not at our disposal,

or we could never communicate with others. We learn our native
language and, in the process, internalize the meanings other people
exchange. Small children find out from those who already know how
to distinguish ducks from squirrels: ducks are the ones that fly. And
children make mistakes: aeroplanes fly, but they are not ducks. Glory
is not a nice knock-down argument.

Language makes conversation possible, but only to the degree that

we use it appropriately, reproducing the meanings already in
circulation. As this dialogue demonstrates, there is no such thing as
a private language. Humpty Dumpty has to ‘translate’ his before he
can communicate with Alice.

Language and knowledge

Understood in the broad sense of the term to embrace all signifying
systems, including images and symbols, language gives us access to
information. Command of a new knowledge very often amounts to
learning the appropriate use of a new vocabulary and syntax. To the
extent that people understand economics, they demonstrate the fact
by using its terms and arranging them in an appropriate order. A
grasp of psychoanalysis means the ability to exchange words like
‘unconscious’, ‘repression’, or ‘transference’. Mathematics, science,
and logic have their own symbolic systems, and qualified
practitioners are those who know how to inhabit them. The
examination system is above all a way of policing the profession,
making sure that those who qualify to join it know how its language
or symbols are conventionally deployed.
Film directors and advertisers, meanwhile, know the meanings
conveyed by pictures of cute children or sleek kitchens. Language in
this broad sense is also a source of social values. In learning to use
words like ‘democracy’ and ‘dictatorship’ appropriately, for instance,
Western children learn about political systems, but they also absorb
as they do so the value their culture invests in these respective
forms of government. For better or worse, Western children learn
early on, without having to be explicitly taught, that dictatorship is
oppressive and democracy so precious that it is worth fighting for. In
many cultures, the flag is the visual indicator of a national identity
that must be defended—by force, if necessary.

Language and cultural change

If language, broadly understood, transmits the knowledges and
values that constitute a culture, it follows that the existing meanings
are not ours to command. And yet is it possible that the disdainful
Humpty Dumpty has a point after all? To reproduce existing
meanings exactly is also to reaffirm the knowledges our culture
takes for granted, and the values that precede us—the norms,
therefore, of the previous generation. Examination papers in
economics, mathematics, or media studies are set and marked by
existing practitioners, experts in the field, whose job it is to mark
down misunderstandings and misuses of the conventional
vocabulary.

In that respect, meanings exercise a degree of control when they

inculcate obedience to the discipline inscribed in them. And this is by
no means purely institutional, or confined to the educational
process. A generation ago campaigners for women’s rights
recognized (not for the first time) the degree to which ‘woman’
meant domesticity, nurturing, dependence, and the ways in which
anti-feminist jokes, for instance, reproduced the stereotypes of the
helpless little girl or the ageing harridan. The question feminists
confronted was precisely who was to be Master, as Humpty Dumpty
puts it.

In this particular case, however, his formulation was self-evidently

not one we could adopt. The term ‘Master’ would hardly help the
feminist cause, but ‘Mistress’ would not easily take its place, since it
carried sexual connotations that detracted from the authority we
were looking for. The right word in a new situation does not always
readily present itself. Language sometimes seems to lead a life of its
own. Words are unruly: ‘They’ve a temper, some of them,’ Humpty
Dumpty goes on to observe.

In this case the masculine and feminine values were not symmetrical
—and nor, of course, was the culture. Without supposing this was
the only change necessary, we set out to modify the language,
annoying conservatives with coinages like ‘spokesperson’ and ‘s/he’.
We refused to laugh at misogyny, and ignored the taunts that we
had no sense of humour.

Campaigners against racism, too, know that dialogue can become

the kind of competition Humpty Dumpty’s words parodied. Perhaps
in a way it always is. We rightly reproach our politicians when their
chosen vocabulary inflames existing conflicts.

Language is not in any sense personal or private. But it offers

options and individuals can alter it, as long as others adopt their
changes. What, after all, do great poets, philosophers, and scientists
do, but change our vocabulary? Shakespeare invented hundreds of
words. Developing disciplines do the same. In the course of the 20th
century, science progressively named ‘electrons’, ‘protons’, ‘neutrons’,
and ‘quarks’, not to mention dark matter and black holes. A new
pandemic appears and, in no time, native speakers of English find
themselves discussing ‘social distancing’ and ‘self-isolation’, as well
as Covid-19.
Poststructuralism is difficult to the extent that its practitioners use
old words in unfamiliar ways, or fresh terms to say what cannot be
said otherwise. This novel vocabulary still elicits some resistance, but
the issue we confront is how far we should let the existing language
impose limits on what it is possible to think.

Poststructuralism and language

Poststructuralism groups a number of disparate theories concerning
the relationship between human beings, the world, and the practice
of making, reproducing, and challenging meanings. While these
speculations differ from one another in important respects, they
begin from certain common assumptions. On the one hand,
poststructuralists affirm, consciousness is not the origin of the
language we speak and the images we recognize, so much as the
product of the meanings we learn and reproduce. On the other
hand, communication changes all the time, with or without
intervention from us, and we can choose to intervene with a view to
altering the meanings—which is to say the norms and values—our
culture takes for granted. The question is the one Humpty Dumpty
poses: who is to be in control?

This very short introduction will trace some of the arguments that
have led poststructuralists to question traditional theories of
language and culture, and with them customary accounts of what it
is possible to know, as well as what it is to be a human being.
Poststructuralism offers a range of ways to consider our place in the
world that compete with conventional explanations.

The importance of language

Most of the time the language we speak is barely visible to us. We
are more concerned with what it can do: describe our symptoms;
induce the neighbours to keep the noise down; get us off the hook
when we’ve done something bad. And yet few issues are more
important in human life. After the food and shelter that are
necessary to survival, language and its visual analogues exercise the
most crucial determinations in our social relations, our thought
processes, and our understanding of who and what we are.

Even food and shelter themselves do not come into our lives
undefined. Menus that offer ‘luscious, slow-roasted aubergine,
infused with zingy tamarind sauce’ may take this principle to
extremes, but for me, I remember, ‘scrag end stew’ was a lost cause
from the beginning.

Houses, too, are characterized in language, and not only by estate

agents. We might want to live in one we could justifiably call old or
quaint, modern or minimalist, but might feel less enthusiastic once
we had thought of it as decrepit, poky, brash, or bleak. Paint
manufacturers know that we are more likely to coat our walls in a
colour marketed as ‘Morning Sun’ than one called ‘Custard’, even if
the pigmentation is exactly the same.

In this sense language intervenes between human beings and their

world. A party game involves blindfolding one player as a prelude to
guessing what foods are placed on his or her tongue. Whether
consciously or not, guessing means classifying in accordance with
the system of differences the language already provides: is it sweet
or savoury? hot or cold? bland or bitter?

Poststructuralists share the view that the distinctions we make are

not necessarily given by the world around us, but are instead
produced by the symbolic systems we learn. How else would we
know the difference between pixies and gnomes, or March Hares,
Cheshire Cats, and talking eggs? But we learn our native tongue at
such an early age that it seems transparent, a window onto a world
of things, even if some of those things are in practice imaginary, no
more than ideas of things, derived from children’s stories.
Are ideas the source of meaning, then? That was once the
conventional view, but our ideas are not, poststructuralists believe,
the origin of the language we speak. Indeed, the reverse is the case.
Ideas are the effect of the meanings we learn and reproduce. We
learned our idea of Humpty Dumpty (if we did) from nursery
rhymes, Lewis Carroll, and John Tenniel, who illustrated the Alice
books. In its account of how we become meaning animals, and the
role meaning plays in our understanding of the world,
poststructuralism represents a modern challenge to traditional
beliefs.

Meaning
What is meaning? Where do meanings came from? Perhaps the
question finds more focus in relation to a specific instance. What,
then, does the word ‘modern’ mean in the sentence at the end of
the last section? What precise timespan does ‘modern’ cover?

The answer seems to vary with the context. As a description of the

poststructuralist resistance to inherited convictions, it may mean
nothing much more specific than ‘new’. Modern history, on the other
hand, generally concerns the period since the 17th century. And yet
we think of modern languages as distinct from Latin and Greek,
while modern furniture almost certainly belongs to the 20th century
or later. In these instances ‘modern’ defines no common
chronological period: modern history belongs to about the last 400
years, modern languages to perhaps the last thousand, and modern
furniture to no more than the last hundred or so. The modern
challenge of poststructuralism itself is a product of roughly the last
half-century.

The term ‘modern’, in other words, has no positive content, but owes
its meaning to difference. What is modern is in these instances
respectively ‘not medieval’, ‘not ancient’, ‘not antique’, or simply ‘not
traditional’. But at least in all these cases ‘modern’ distinguishes a
period that is more recent than another. Modernism, however,
denoting a style in art and literature, and associated with the first
half of the 20th century, is probably no longer the latest thing, while
in the compound ‘postmodern’, sometimes used to define our own
era, modernity has explicitly become, paradoxically, a thing of the
past.

Nevertheless, although it seems to refer to no constant period, we

are usually able to understand and use the word ‘modern’ without
difficulty. How? In the Course in General Linguistics, first published
in 1916, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that ‘in
language there are only differences without positive terms’, and this
observation initiated a train of thought that would be taken up by a
succession of figures in a range of disciplines during the course of
the following century. Poststructuralism begins from Saussure’s
account of how we are able to exchange meanings, and goes on to
conceive of human beings as animals possessing this capability to an
exceptional degree. Insofar as language is formative, we are
creatures of difference.

In the book that did most to provide a starting point for the theories
that will be our concern, Saussure proposed that meaning did not
depend on reference to the world, or even to ideas. On the contrary.
He argued that, if the things or concepts language named already
existed outside it, words would have exact equivalents from one
language to another, and translation would be easy. But as all
translators know, nothing could be further from the case. ‘Toto, sois
sage,’ we dutifully intoned in my French class when I was 11, ‘Toto,
be good.’ But even at that early stage we sensed that sage and
‘good’ were not always interchangeable. ‘A good time’ in French, we
knew, would not be sage at all, since the term implied sense or
wisdom. We were, in addition, using a mode of address that had no
English translation. The second person singular that exists in so
many European languages (tu, Du) can cause native speakers of
English embarrassment when we try to communicate in other
tongues, since it carries values of intimacy or hierarchy which may
give offence in the wrong places.

Genders and tenses do not necessarily correspond from one

language to another. The morning is masculine in French (le matin),
feminine in Italian (la mattina). French has the past historic, a
special tense for telling stories. Some languages have more than one
plural form. Differences that are given in one language have to be
mastered, often with difficulty, by those whose mother tongue
divides up the world in another way.

We are compelled to conclude either that some languages

misrepresent the way things are, while our own describes the world
accurately, or that language, which seems to name units given in
nature, does not in practice depend on reference to things, or even
to our ideas of things. Instead, the units that seem to exist so
unproblematically may be differentiated from one another by
language itself, so that we think of them as natural, just as we may
perceive the continuous spectrum of the rainbow in terms of seven
distinct colours.

A century ago many European nations were ready to impose their

own classifications on other cultures, where imperial conquest made
this possible. But the multicultural societies that have resulted from
the decline of empire are willing to be more generous in their
recognition of other accounts of the world, which is to say, other
networks of differences.

A mother tongue represents a way of understanding the world, of

differentiating between things and relating them to one another.
Culture is inscribed in language. The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa
Thiong’o wrote his first works of fiction in English. Later, it came to
seem to him that this practice conceded too much to the influence of
the former colonial power, and the continued economic and cultural
neo-colonialism of the West. However African the content and
themes of his early novels, the novel itself was a European genre, its
structure reproducing a Western pattern of thought. Moreover, the
English language could not do justice to Kenyan perceptions of the
world. He then began to write in Gikuyu, drawing on indigenous
forms of narrative and drama.

Difference, not reference

People fluent in more than one language tend to agree that each
tongue offers a distinctive take on things. The simple inference that
meaning is differential, not referential, has profound implications for
our understanding of the relations between human beings and the
world. Poststructuralism evolved as Saussure’s account of meaning
was taken up by later generations, especially in France when, after
the Second World War, the history of Nazism—and of collaboration
with it in occupied France—seemed to demand an explanation that
existing theories of culture were unable to provide. The key term in
the development of poststructuralism is Saussure’s ‘difference’.

Saussure and the sign

Traditionally, words had been thought of as signs. The sign seemed
to represent (re-present) a presence that existed elsewhere, to
stand as the sign of something. In everyday English we still refer to
the meaning ‘behind’ the words, as if meaning existed somewhere
on the other side of speech or writing. Saussure’s work changed
that. For him meaning resides in the sign and nowhere else.

In order to make the point clear, he divided the sign in two: on the
one hand, the signifier, the sound or the visual appearance of the
word, phrase, or image in question; on the other, the signified, its
meaning. In ordinary circumstances the distinction is purely
methodological. We rarely see a signifier which does not signify, or
mean something. But an unknown language consists entirely of
signifiers in isolation. We hear sounds and assume that they signify,
since we see native speakers apparently conversing, but to us they
mean nothing. Or we see a page of impenetrable written characters.
Ancient artefacts unearthed in the 1890s at Knossos on Crete bore
Minoan writings that no one at the time could read. In the 1950s,
the latest script, known as Linear B, was deciphered, invested with
meaning. But Linear A still consists mainly of signifiers that no longer
signify to us (see Figure 2).

2. Ancient signifiers that mostly no longer signify.

If you don’t happen to know Greek, this is a pure signifier:

λóγος
In its written form it makes this shape; spoken aloud, it makes a
particular sound: logos. And if you do know Greek, it brings with it a
signified that has no exact equivalent in English, but ranges between
‘word’, ‘account’, ‘meaning’, and ‘thought’. Changing the shape very
slightly—and silently—by capitalizing the initial letter, we turn it into
Λóγος and the signified changes to something like ‘God’ or ‘Reason’.

Signifiers

Q. Why use the jargon term, ‘signifier’? Why not just say ‘word’?

A. Because words are not the only signifiers. Traffic lights, arrows, and
crossing indicators signify. So do gestures: pointing, shaking hands,
punching the air. Yawns, gasps, and screams are all signifiers—in the
sense that they may be interpreted by those around us, even if that was
not what we intended. Paintings signify. Sometimes a group of words
constitutes one signifier: ‘How are you?’ is not most usefully broken down
into its component words; rather, it represents a single greeting, registers
an interest—and probably doesn’t in practice invite a list of symptoms,
except in the doctor’s surgery.

Neither element of the sign determines the other: the signifier does
not ‘express’ the meaning, nor does the signified ‘resemble’ the form
or sound. On the contrary, the relationship between signifier and
signified is arbitrary. There is nothing doggy about the word ‘dog’.
There can’t be, since the French recognize much the same
characteristics in un chien. Even in languages with a shared
European history, Schwein, maiale, porc, and pig have more or less
the same signified. Children learn to distinguish the meaning when
they learn the signifier. To use a term appropriately is to know what
it means.

Grown-ups go on learning new signifiers, and the process is

nowhere clearer than in the realm of ideas. Most people do not have
the idea of poststructuralism first, and then go on to discover the
name. Instead, now that the term exists, we learn how to use it
appropriately in the course of internalizing its meaning. ‘Whether we
take the signified or the signifier’, Saussure argues, ‘language has
neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system,
but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from
the system.’

Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857–1913

Professor of Linguistics in Paris, he moved to the University of Geneva in

1906, where he began to give the lectures that would constitute the
Course in General Linguistics (1916). Dissatisfied with the conventional
historical (diachronic) character of the discipline, Saussure chose to
analyse the workings of language in its existing (synchronic) form. If
objects or ideas were knowable outside the signifiers that distinguished
them from each other, Saussure argued, terms would have exact
equivalents from one language to another, but since translation is so often
a quest for approximations, meaning must depend on difference, not on
reference to things or concepts. The Course was put together by his
students after his death. Ironically, one of the figures who exerted the
most influence on what would evolve as poststructuralism was thus not in
the conventional sense the author of his own book.

René Magritte’s word-paintings wittily exploit the arbitrariness of the

relationship between the signifier and meaning. Children used to
learn to read from primers that showed pictures of things with their
names underneath, to teach them what the written signifier meant.
Magritte’s The Key to Dreams (1935) shows four such pictures, but
only the last, ‘the valise’, is appropriately labelled (see Figure 3).
3. René Magritte’s The Key to Dreams parodies a reading primer. Is it
also a visual-verbal ‘poem’?

Suppose ‘bird’ really signified ‘jug’. What difference would it make?

Any, or none? Magritte places his misnamed objects against what
the frame indicates are window panes. But these panes are painted
black; the window is opaque; it does not allow us to see a world of
things on the other side of it. Both name and object are on the same
side of the glass, if glass it is. Here language is not a window onto
the world.
Or perhaps, instead, Magritte’s window should be seen as a
blackboard, traditional source of instruction about the world, where
the words are chalked below the images? If so, it is surely an ironic
one: the children in this class are being grossly misled. While it
parodies a reading lesson, does The Key to Dreams also offer a
sideways glance at Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams? The
French titles of the painting and the book differ but Freud’s work
promises to unlock unexpected meanings for the objects that appear
in sleep.

But then again, is there irony here at all? Common sense would say
so, but common sense did not do justice to Humpty Dumpty, who
turned out to have a point, however improbably. Perhaps The Key to
Dreams treats its words and images as two kinds of signifiers, one
textual, the other pictorial? Isolated visual signifiers are familiar to
us, after all, in the form of road signs or brand logos. What are
paintings themselves, but assemblages of visual signifiers?

If we read the picture that way, we could create our own

connections between the sets of signifiers in Magritte’s painting. Is
there an unforeseen parallel between time and the wind, both in
flight, both imperceptible? Or could this door, half-enclosing a wistful
horse, be a stable door? Is there an untold story here? The painting
does not answer either question; instead, it keeps its options open
or, in poststructuralist terms, doesn’t close down on a final signified.

The primacy of the signifier

Poetry, too, works by proposing parallels, inviting the reader to make
unexpected connections between apparently distinct signifiers. Amy
Lowell’s Imagist poem ‘Wind and Silver’ draws an analogy that
depends on the conjunction of unpredictability with visual
appropriateness:

Greatly shining,
The Autumn moon floats in the thin sky;
And the fish-ponds shake their backs and flash their dragon scales
As she passes over them.

And yet, you might object, this moon and these fish-ponds are more
than signifiers. Surely they exist, as things? We ‘see’ their referents
in their absence, in our mind’s eye, and that is the source of any
pleasure we derive from the poem.

Yes, in a way. But what the poem does is isolate these images from
the ‘noise’ that would surround them in actuality, pausing them for
contemplation. The signifier condenses and separates off the
comparison it creates from the distinct experience as it might exist in
a world of reference, and in the process generates an association—
the ethereal effect of the extra-bright harvest moon moving above
water—that surely relegates the ponds themselves to the very edges
of our interest. The uncanny impression depends (of course) on
differences—between night and day, the heavens and the earth—
brought into question, as the strange light transforms the mundane.
There is nothing referential about a sky described as ‘thin’ or pools
of water rendered as creatures from an ancient mythology stirred
into vivid life.

That haunting quality is also an effect of the fact that we read these
words as poetry: the four lines isolated on the white space of the
page; the sound patterns made up of successive monosyllables, and
the near-rhymes, ‘shining’ and ‘sky’, ‘shake’ and ‘scales’, ‘backs’ and
‘flash’. Rhythm plays its part too, the two short lines enclosing the
long ones, the longest alone devoted to the surprise transformation
of the ponds. While the modernist poem breaks with traditional
English metres, its own smooth flow, anything but prosaic, owes a
debt to Japanese haiku.

Julia Kristeva calls this signifying capability that is not derived from
the meanings of the words ‘the semiotic’. It evokes, she maintains,
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GREAT LOBELIA.—L. syphilitica.

The genus is named after an early Flemish herbalist, de l’Obel.

Indian Tobacco.
Lobelia inflata. Lobelia Family.

One to two feet high. Stem.—Branching from the root. Leaves.—Alternate,

ovate, or oblong, somewhat toothed. Flowers.—Blue or purple, small, growing in a
loose raceme, resembling in structure those of the great lobelia. Pod.—Much
inflated.
During the summer we note in the dry, open fields the blue
racemes of the Indian tobacco, and in the later year the inflated pods
which give it its specific name. The plant is said to be poisonous if
taken internally, and yields a “quack-medicine” of some notoriety.
The Indians smoked its dried leaves, which impart to the tongue a
peculiar tobacco-like sensation.
There are other species of lobelia which may be distinguished by
their narrower leaves and uninflated pods, and by their choice of
moist localities.

Hog Pea-nut.
Amphicarpæa monoica. Pulse Family (p. 16).

Stem.—Climbing and twining over plants and shrubs. Leaves.—Divided into

three somewhat four-sided leaflets. Flowers.—Papilionaceous, pale lilac, or
purplish, in nodding racemes. Pod.—One inch long.
Along the shadowy lanes which wind through the woods the
climbing members of the Pulse family are very abundant. During the
late summer and autumn the lonely wayside is skirted by
 Vines, with clust’ring bunches growing;
Plants, with goodly burden bowing.

And in and out among this luxuriant growth twist the slender stems
of the ill-named hog pea-nut, its delicate lilac blossoms nodding
from the coarse stalks of the golden-rods and iron-weeds or blending
with the purple asters.
This plant bears flowers of two kinds: the upper ones are perfect,
but apparently useless, as they seldom ripen fruit; while the lower or
subterranean ones are without petals or attractiveness of
appearance, but yield eventually at least one large ripe seed.
 PLATE XCVI

INDIAN TOBACCO.—L. inflata.

Beach Pea.
Lathyrus maritimus. Pulse Family (p. 16).

About one foot high, or more. Stem.—Stout. Leaves.—Divided into from three
to five pairs of thick oblong leaflets. Flowers.—Papilionaceous, large, purple,
clustered.
The deep-hued flowers of this stout plant are commonly found
along the sand-hills of the seashore, and also on the shores of the
Great Lakes, blooming in early summer. Both flowers and leaves are
at once recognized as belonging to the Pulse family.
 ——— ———
Strophostyles angulosa. Pulse Family (p. 16).

Stems.—Branched, one to six feet long, prostrate or climbing. Leaves.—

Divided into three leaflets, which are more or less prominently lobed toward the
base, the terminal two-lobed; or some or all without lobes. Flowers.—Purplish or
greenish, on long flower-stalks. Pod.—Linear, straight, or nearly so.
This somewhat inconspicuous plant is found back of the sand-
hills along the coast, often in the neighborhood of the beach pea, and
climbing over river-banks, thickets, and fences as well. It can usually
be identified by its oddly lobed leaflets.

Blue Vetch.
Vicia cracca. Pulse Family (p. 16).

Leaves.—Divided into twenty to twenty-four leaflets, with slender tips.

Flowers.—Papilionaceous, blue turning purple, growing in close, many-flowered,
one-sided spikes.
This is an emigrant from Europe which is found in some of our
eastern fields and thickets as far south as New Jersey. It usually
climbs more or less by means of the tendril at the tip of its divided
leaves, and sometimes forms bright patches of vivid blue over the
meadows.
Another member of this genus is V. sativa, the common vetch or
tare, with purplish or pinkish flowers, growing singly or in pairs from
the axils of the leaves, which leaves are divided into fewer and
narrower leaflets than those of the blue vetch. This species also takes
possession of cultivated fields as well as of waste places along the
roadside.
 PLATE XCVII

BEACH PEA.—L. maritimus.

Chicory. Succory.
Cichorium Intybus. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stems.—Branching. Leaves.—The lower oblong or lance-shaped, partly

clasping, sometimes sharply incised, the floral ones minute. Flower-heads.—Blue,
set close to the stem, composed entirely of strap-shaped flowers; opening at
different times.

Oh, not in Ladies’ gardens,

My peasant posy!
Smile thy dear blue eyes,
Nor only—nearer to the skies—
In upland pastures, dim and sweet,—
But by the dusty road
Where tired feet
Toil to and fro;
Where flaunting Sin
May see thy heavenly hue,
 Or weary Sorrow look from thee
Toward a more tender blue![12]

This roadside weed blossoms in late summer. It is extensively

cultivated in France, where the leaves are blanched and used in a
salad which is called “Barbe des Capucins.” The roots are roasted and
mixed with coffee both there and in England.
Horace mentions its leaves as part of his frugal fare, and Pliny
remarks upon the importance of the plant to the Egyptians, who
formerly used it in great quantities, and of whose diet it is still a
staple article.

Blue and Purple Asters.

Aster. Composite Family (p. 13).

Flower-heads.—Composed of blue or purple ray-flowers, with a centre of

yellow disk-flowers.
 PLATE XCVIII

CHICORY.—C. Intybus.

As about one hundred and twenty different species of aster are

native to the United States, and as fifty-four of these are found in
Northeastern America, all but a dozen being purple or blue (i.e., with
purple or blue ray-flowers), and as even botanists find that it
requires patient application to distinguish these many species, only a
brief description of the more conspicuous and common ones is here
attempted.
Along the dry roadsides in early August we may look for the
bright blue-purple flowers of A. patens. This is a low-growing
species, with rough, narrowly oblong, clasping leaves, and widely
spreading branches, whose slender branchlets are usually terminated
by a solitary flower-head.
 Probably no member of the group is more striking than the New
England aster, A. Novæ Angliæ, whose stout hairy stem (sometimes
eight feet high), numerous lance-shaped leaves, and large violet-
purple or sometimes pinkish flower-heads, are conspicuous in the
swamps of late summer.
A. puniceus is another tall swamp-species, with long showy pale
lavender ray-flowers.
One of the most commonly encountered asters is A. cordifolius,
which is far from being the only heart-leaved species, despite its title.
Its many small, pale blue or almost white flower-heads mass
themselves abundantly along the wood-borders and shaded
roadsides.
Perhaps the loveliest of all the tribe is the seaside purple aster,
A. spectabilis, a low plant with narrowly oblong leaves and large
bright heads, the violet-purple ray-flowers of which are nearly an
inch long. This grows in sandy soil near the coast and may be found
putting forth its royal, daisy-like blossoms into November.
Great Britain can claim but one native aster, A. Trifolium, or
sea-starwort as it is called. Many American species are cultivated in
English gardens under the general title of Michaelmas daisies. The
starwort of Italy is A. amellus. The Swiss species is A. Alpinum.
This beautiful genus, like that of the golden-rod, is one of the
peculiar glories of our country. Every autumn these two kinds of
flowers clothe our roadsides and meadows with so regal a mantle of
purple and gold that we cannot but wonder if the flowers of any other
region combine in such a radiant display.

Iron-weed.
Vernonia Noveboracensis. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stem.—Leafy, usually tall. Leaves.—Alternate, somewhat lance-oblong.

Flower-heads.—An intense red-purple, loosely clustered, composed entirely of
tubular flowers.
Along the roadsides and low meadows near the coast the iron-
weed adds its deep purple hues to the color-pageant of late August.
By the uninitiated the plant is often mistaken for an aster, but a
moment’s inspection will discover that the minute flowers which
compose each flower-head are all tubular in shape, and that the ray
or strap-shaped blossoms which an aster must have are wanting.
These flower-heads are surrounded by an involucre composed of
small scales which are tipped with a tiny point and are usually of a
purplish color also.

Blue Curls. Bastard Pennyroyal.

Trichostema dichotomum. Mint Family (p. 16).

Stem.—Rather low, branching, clammy. Leaves.—Opposite, narrowly oblong

or lance-shaped, glutinous, with a balsamic odor. Flowers.—Purple, occasionally
pinkish, not usually clustered. Calyx.—Five-cleft, two-lipped. Corolla.—Five-lobed,
the three lower lobes more or less united. Stamens.—Four, very long and curved,
protruding. Pistil.—One, with a two-lobed style.
In the sandy fields of late summer this little plant attracts notice
by its many purple flowers. Its corolla soon falls and exposes to view
the four little nutlets of the ovary lying within the enlarged calyx like
tiny eggs in their nest. Its aromatic odor is very perceptible, and the
little glands with which it is covered may be seen with the aid of a
magnifier. The generic name, Trichostema, signifies hairy stamens
and alludes to the curved hair-like filaments.

Sea Lavender. Marsh Rosemary.

Statice Caroliniana. Leadwort Family.

Stems.—Leafless, branching. Leaves.—From the root, somewhat oblong, thick.

Flowers.—Lavender-color or pale purple, tiny, scattered or loosely spiked along
one side of the branches. Calyx.—Dry, funnel-form. Corolla.—Small, with five
petals. Stamens.—Five. Pistil.—One, with five, rarely three, styles.
In August many of the salt marshes are blue with the tiny
flowers of the sea lavender. The spray-like appearance of the little
plant would seem to account for its name of rosemary, which is
derived from the Latin for sea-spray, but Dr. Prior states that this
name was given it on account of “its usually growing on the sea-
coast, and its odor.”
Blossoming with the lavender we often find the great rose
mallows and the dainty sea pinks. The marsh St. John’s-wort as well
is frequently a neighbor, and, a little later in the season, the salt
marsh fleabane.

Blazing Star.
Liatris scariosa. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stem.—Simple, stout, hoary, two to five feet high. Leaves.—Alternate,

narrowly lance-shaped. Flower-heads.—Racemed along the upper part of the stem,
composed entirely of tubular flowers of a beautiful shade of rose-purple.
These showy and beautiful flowers lend still another tint to the
many-hued salt marshes and glowing inland meadows of the falling
year. Gray assigns them to dry localities from New England to
Minnesota and southward, while my own experience of them is
limited to the New England coast, where their stout leafy stems and
bright-hued blossoms are noticeable among the golden-rods and
asters of September. The hasty observer sometimes confuses the
plant with the iron-weed, but the two flowers are very different in
color and in their manner of growth.

Common Dittany.
Cunila Mariana. Mint Family (p. 16).

About one foot high. Stem.—Much branched, reddish. Leaves.—Opposite,

aromatic, dotted, smooth, ovate, rounded or heart-shaped at base, set close to the
stem. Flowers.—Small, purple, lilac or white, clustered. Calyx.—Five-toothed.
Corolla.—Small, two-lipped, the upper lip erect, usually notched, the lower three-
cleft. Stamens.—Two, erect, protruding. Pistil.—One, with a two-lobed style.
In late August or early September the delicate flowers of the
dittany brighten the dry, sterile banks which flank so many of our
roadsides. At a season when few plants are flowering save the
omnipresent members of the great Composite family these dainty
though unpretentious blossoms are especially attractive. The plant
has a pleasant fragrance.
 PLATE XCIX

BLAZING STAR.—L. scariosa.

Closed Gentian.
Gentiana Andrewsii. Gentian Family.

Stem.—One to two feet high, upright, smooth. Leaves.—Opposite, narrowly

oval or lance-shaped. Flowers.—Blue to purple, clustered at the summit of the
stem and often in the axils of the leaves. Calyx.—Four or five-cleft. Corolla.—
Closed at the mouth, large, oblong. Stamens.—Four or five. Pistil.—One, with two
stigmas.
Few flowers adapt themselves better to the season than the
closed gentian. We look for it in September when the early waning
days and frost-suggestive nights prove so discouraging to the greater
part of the floral world. Then in somewhat moist, shaded places
along the roadside we find this vigorous, autumnal-looking plant,
with stout stems, leaves that bronze as the days advance, and deep-
tinted flowers firmly closed as though to protect the delicate
reproductive organs within from the sharp touches of the late year.
To me the closed gentian usually shows a deep blue or even
purple countenance, although like the fringed gentian and so many
other flowers its color is lighter in the shade than in the sunlight. But
Thoreau claims for it a “transcendent blue,” “a splendid blue, light in
the shade, turning to purple with age.” “Bluer than the bluest sky,
they lurk in the moist and shady recesses of the banks,” he writes.
Mr. Burroughs also finds it “intensely blue.”

Five-flowered Gentian.
Gentiana quinqueflora. Gentian Family.

Stem.—Slender, branching, one or two feet high. Leaves.—Opposite, ovate,

lance-shaped, partly clasping. Flowers.—Pale blue, smaller than those of the closed
gentian, in clusters of about five at the summit of stems and branches. Calyx.—
Four or five-cleft, small. Corolla.—Funnel-form, four or five-lobed, its lobes
bristle-pointed. Stamens.—Four or five. Pistil.—One, with two stigmas.
Although the five-flowered gentian is far less frequently
encountered than the closed gentian, it is very common in certain
localities. Gray assigns it to “moist hills” and “along the mountains to
Florida.” I have found it growing in great abundance on the
Shawangunk Mountains in Orange County, N. Y., where it flowers in
September.
 PLATE C

CLOSED GENTIAN.—G. Andrewsii.

Fringed Gentian.
Gentiana crinita. Gentian Family.

Stem.—One to two feet high. Leaves.—Opposite, lance-shaped or narrowly

oval. Flowers.—Blue, large. Calyx.—Four-cleft, the lobes unequal. Corolla.—
Funnel-form, with four fringed, spreading lobes. Stamens.—Four. Pistil.—One,
with two stigmas.
In late September when we have almost ceased to hope for new
flowers we are in luck if we chance upon this
—blossom bright with autumn dew
whose
—sweet and quiet eye
Looks through its fringes to the sky,
Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall,
A flower from its cerulean wall;[13]

for the fringed gentian is fickle in its habits, and the fact that we have
located it one season does not mean that we will find it in the same
place the following year; being a biennial, with seeds that are easily
washed away, it is apt to change its haunts from time to time. So our
search for this plant is always attended with the charm of
uncertainty. Once having ferreted out its new abiding-place,
however, we can satiate ourselves with its loveliness, which it usually
lavishes unstintingly upon the moist meadows which it has elected to
honor.
Thoreau describes its color as “such a dark blue! surpassing that
of the male bluebird’s back!” My experience has been that the flowers
which grow in the shade are of a clear pure azure, “Heaven’s own
blue,” as Bryant claims; while those which are found in open, sunny
meadows may be justly said to vie with the back of the male bluebird.
If the season has been a mild one we shall perhaps find a few
blossoms lingering into November, but the plant is probably blighted
by a severe frost, although Miss Emily Dickinson’s little poem voices
another opinion:
· · · · ·

But just before the snows

There came a purple creature
That ravished all the hill:
And Summer hid her forehead,
And mockery was still.
The frosts were her condition:
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North evoked it,
“Creator! shall I bloom?”
 PLATE CI

FRINGED GENTIAN.—G. crinita.

 VI
MISCELLANEOUS

Skunk Cabbage. Swamp Cabbage.

Symplocarpus fœtidus. Arum Family.

Leaves.—Large, becoming one or two feet long; heart-shaped, appearing later

than the purple-mottled spathe and hidden flowers. Flowers.—Small and
inconspicuous; packed on the fleshy spike which is hidden within the spathe.
If we are bold enough to venture into certain swampy places in
the leafless woods and brown cheerless meadows of March, we notice
that the sharply pointed spathes of the skunk cabbage have already
pierced the surface of the earth. Until I chanced upon a passage in
Thoreau’s Journal under date of October 31st, I had supposed that
these “hermits of the bog” were only encouraged to make their
appearance by the advent of those first balmy, spring-suggestive days
which occasionally occur as early as February. But it seems that
many of these young buds had pushed their way upward before the
winter set in, for Thoreau counsels those who are afflicted with the
melancholy of autumn to go to the swamps, “and see the brave
spears of skunk-cabbage buds already advanced toward a new year.”
“Mortal and human creatures must take a little respite in this fall of
the year,” he writes. “Their spirits do flag a little. There is a little
questioning of destiny, and thinking to go like cowards to where the
weary shall be at rest. But not so with the skunk-cabbage. Its
withered leaves fall and are transfixed by a rising bud. Winter and
death are ignored. The circle of life is complete. Are these false
prophets? Is it a lie or a vain boast underneath the skunk-cabbage
bud pushing it upward and lifting the dead leaves with it?”
 PLATE CII

SKUNK CABBAGE.—S. fœtidus.

The purplish shell-like leaf, which curls about the tiny flowers
which are thus hidden from view, is a rather grewsome-looking
object, suggestive of a great snail when it lifts itself fairly above its
muddy bed. When one sees it grouped with brother-cabbages it is
easy to understand why a nearly allied species, which abounds along
the Italian Riviera, should be entitled “Cappucini” by the neighboring
peasants, for the bowed, hooded appearance of these plants might
easily suggest the cowled Capuchins.
It seems unfortunate that our earliest spring flower (for such it
undoubtedly is) should possess so unpleasant an odor as to win for
itself the unpoetic title of skunk cabbage. There is also some
incongruity in the heading of the great floral procession of the year
by the minute hidden blossoms of this plant. That they are enabled to
survive the raw March winds which are rampant when they first
appear is probably due to the protection afforded them by the
leathery leaf or spathe. When the true leaves unfold they mark the
wet woods and meadows with bright patches of rich foliage, which
with that of the hellebore, flash constantly into sight as we travel
through the country in April.
It is interesting to remember that the skunk cabbage is nearly
akin to the spotless calla lily, the purple-mottled spathe of the one
answering to the snowy petal-like leaf of the other. Meehan tells us
that the name bear-weed was given to the plant by the early Swedish
settlers in the neighborhood of Philadelphia. It seems that the bears
greatly relished this early green, which Meehan remarks “must have
been a hot morsel, as the juice is acrid, and is said to possess some
narcotic power, while that of the root, when chewed, causes the
eyesight to grow dim.”

Wild Ginger.
Asarum Canadense. Birthwort Family.

Leaves.—One or two on each plant, kidney or heart-shaped, fuzzy, long-

stalked. Flower.—Dull purplish-brown, solitary, close to the ground on a short
flower-stalk from the fork of the leaves. Calyx.—Three-cleft, bell-shaped. Corolla.
—None. Stamens.—Twelve. Pistil.—One, with a thick style and six thick, radiating
stigmas.
 PLATE CIII

WILD GINGER.—A. Canadense.

Certain flowers might be grouped under the head of “vegetable

cranks.” Here would be classed the evening primrose, which only
opens at night, the closed gentian, which never opens at all, and the
wild ginger, whose odd, unlovely flower seeks protection beneath its
long-stemmed fuzzy leaves, and hides its head upon the ground as if
unwilling to challenge comparison with its more brilliant brethren.
Unless already familiar with this plant there is nothing to tell one
when it has reached its flowering season; and many a wanderer
through the rocky woods in early May quite overlooks its shy,
shamefaced blossom.
The ginger-like flavor of the rootstock is responsible for its
common name. It grows wild in many parts of Europe and is
cultivated in England, where at one time it was considered a remedy
for headache and deafness.