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Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction
 VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS are for anyone wanting a stimulating and
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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
WORLD WAR II Gerhard L. Weinberg
WRITING AND SCRIPT Andrew Robinson
ZIONISM Michael Stanislawski
ÉMILE ZOLA Brian Nelson

Available soon:
HANNAH ARENDT Dana Villa
BRITISH CINEMA Charles Barr
THE NOVEL Robert Eaglestone
NEGOTIATION Carrie Menkel-Meadow
GÖDEL’S THEOREM Adrian Moore

For more information visit our website

www.oup.com/vsi/
 Catherine Belsey

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
A Very Short Introduction
SECOND EDITION
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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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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 At last Necessity, who is known to be the mother of Invention,
brought her ingenious child to his aid.
The Professor clapped his hands. He had discovered an hydraulic
process which would enable him to appease his thirst. How little is
required to give joy to poor humankind! Here is a man on a palm-tree
—a dying man who cannot escape from the jaws of a crocodile—and
because he has discovered a very equivocal means of obtaining a
few drops of brackish water with which to moisten his parched lips,
he is convulsed with delight.
Dummkopf was proud of competing with Defoe’s hero, and set to
work without delay. He began by breaking off from his palm-tree
several long branches, which he spliced together by means of fibres.
He then waited until the crocodile entered the water for a few
minutes—by way of keeping up its character as an amphibious
animal—and extended his apparatus towards the river. The leaves at
the extremity of the machine imbibed a considerable quantity of
water, and the Professor, drawing back his improvised pump,
refreshed his calcined lips by means of the saturated foliage. He
repeated the experiment several times, and, in fact, gave himself up
to all the excesses of intemperance. This was an ingenious device,
for which Tantalus would have given his eyes!
But, above all, Dummkopf was amused at the notion of mystifying
his crocodile, who, as for that, richly deserved it.
Having no longer any anxiety as to the means of satisfying the two
chief wants of existence—hunger and thirst—the Professor now
began to think how he should manage for his clothes. His aboriginal
costume was admirably suited to a tropical climate during the day,
but remembering that during the night he had felt rather chilly, he
resolved to make himself without delay a garment of green leaves.
Besides, how was he to appear before the public without clothes, if
by chance a boat should present itself?
Dummkopf accordingly gathered in his aërial alcove a certain
quantity of the largest leaves he could find, and crossing his legs like
a tailor, proceeded to make them into a vegetable paletôt, which
could not be said to belong to the latest fashion, but which, on the
other hand, had a primitive cut about it that was highly picturesque.
Two leaves sufficed for the nightcap, which, original or not as its
appearance may have been, at all events looked much better than
the hats we wear in open day.
Here was Dummkopf now lodged, fed, and clothed at the expense
of Nature. Happiness is altogether relative; and, for a time,
Dummkopf was happy indeed. He was proud of his inventions, and
from the height of his palm-tree looked down upon Robinson Crusoe
with contempt.
As he was reflecting calmly on his happiness he saw the monster,
no longer horizontal, at the foot of the tree. He was making one last
endeavour to take it by storm, but failing in the attempt had forthwith
recourse to sapping and mining. He went to work with the air of a
crocodile who had made up his mind, and who had said to himself,
“There must be an end to this.”
Dummkopf shuddered as he heard the teeth of the monster
grinding against the bark of the tree.
But the molars and incisors of the crocodile are so arranged that
they can do no serious harm to the palm-tree; they can tear the bark
off, but cannot pierce or crush the trunk. Dummkopf, however, was
ignorant of this fact, and expected every minute that his asylum
would fall to the ground, and leave him a prey to the horrid monster
into whose scaly body he would enter as into a tomb of shell, but
without the smallest epitaph to inform the world of the numerous
virtues he possessed.
The crocodile next attacked the tree with his tail as with a
battering-ram. How the Professor quivered when the tree shook! And
the worst of it was, that, independently of the most terrible result that
could possibly take place, there was the certainty that the Professor
would lose a large portion if not the whole of his provisions, unless
the monster desisted from his sanguinary assault; for with each blow
from the crocodile’s tail down came a bunch of dates, and when, as
often happened, the fruit fell on the animal’s back, his fury
redoubled.
 At last Dummkopf could stand it no longer. Convinced that life was
not worth defending at such a cost, he resolved to throw himself from
the top of the palm-tree in order to find repose in death. Full of this
desperate idea he stood up, put aside the branches which might
have kept him back at the edge of the precipice, and thrusting one
foot resolutely forward kept the other firmly in its place. An
honourable thought checked him on the very brink of the abyss.
Dummkopf had no family, no wife, no children, no nephews; it was
his duty then to remain in the world as the sole representative of the
Dummkopfs. Man is ingenious, even in the midst of his despair. If he
has a wife and children, he wants to live for their sake; if he is alone
in the world, he will live for his own benefit.
Dummkopf was very grateful to himself after coming to this heroic
resolution. He even called himself a coward for having entertained
for an instant the idea of offering himself up as a sacrifice to the
voracity of an amphibious monster.
As he was now determined not to die if he could by any means
avoid it, the Professor began to consider whether it would be
possible to enjoy, at the top of his palm-tree, that sort of happiness
which a civilised man has a right to expect. The crocodile had
expended all his force in vain. It was evident that the palm-tree was
an impregnable fortress as far as his attacks were concerned. The
climate was superb. At the foot of the house—that is to say, of the
palm-tree—ran a magnificent river. Thanks to the hydraulic
apparatus there could never be any want of water; and as for food,
there were dates in abundance. The crocodile instead of being
terrible was now only amusing, and as it was clearly proved that the
palm-tree could suffer no injury from the monster’s wrath, the
Professor, in his lively moments, sometimes went so far as to pelt
him with date-stones.
Every morning when the sun rose, Dummkopf bent his ear
towards the desert and listened to the cavatina of Memnon, the
colossal tenor. Then after breakfast, if he was pleased with the
crocodile, he threw him down a few rotten dates, and was amused to
see how voraciously the monster devoured them. Between breakfast
and dinner he read in the library of his memory, and studied the
mysterious monuments by which he was surrounded. When a
profound thought occurred to him, he took a stylus, formed out of a
twig, and jotted it down on a leaf which served as papyrus. Then he
read it over several times, and put it away in a place of safety.
There were no neighbours to watch his conduct, no journals to
criticise his thoughts, no tax-gatherers to trouble him about overdue
rates. He was as free as the air, and only wondered why the
misanthropes of society did not imitate Simon Stylites or himself, and
retire for the rest of their lives to the top of some column or palm-
tree.
We must now leave our anchorite in his palm-tree, and proceed to
the opposite bank of the Nile, where Herr von Thorigkeit, the
celebrated botanist of Berlin, was engaged in a hopeless search
after yellow lotuses. Herodotus, it is true, saw yellow lotuses, but
then Herodotus possessed the peculiarity of seeing things that did
not exist. At all events, since his time the yellow lotus has not been
met with, and for that reason conscientious botanists are perpetually
looking for it.
Herr von Thorigkeit, then, was searching for the yellow lotus, and
he was accompanied by two Arabs armed with carbines.
There are some things, ordinary enough in themselves, which
have an overpowering effect on the imagination when they are seen
in the desert. What, for instance, would be the feelings of a traveller
who should discover in the midst of the Sahara a neat little house
with the words—“Reading room, admission one penny,” over the
entrance? Von Thorigkeit was behaving naturally enough when he
uttered a cry of dismay which resounded along the left bank of the
Nile.
He had seen two boots, one proud and erect, the other bent down
as if with fatigue. Dummkopf’s clothes had disappeared, carried
away by the stream, or perhaps swallowed by some omnivorous
crocodile, but there were the boots standing on a ledge of rock.
The legitimate dismay of the botanist will now be understood. He
had seen two boots on the left bank of the Nile: one proud and erect,
the other bent down as if with fatigue.
The faithful Arabs, who had never seen a pair of boots in their
lives, became terrified with the terror of the botanist, and bravely
fired at the wellingtons, which fell riddled with balls.
From the top of his palm-tree the Professor heard the report, and
at first felt inclined to curse the troublesome individual who had come
to disturb him in his solitude and meditation. But human weakness at
last gained the day, and he resolved to make signals of distress to
the three men whom he now perceived on the left bank of the Nile.
He broke off a long branch from the palm-tree, stripped it of its
leaves everywhere but at the end, where he left a large tuft, and
waved it vigorously above his head with one hand, while with the
other he threw into the Nile a quantity of dates, the only projectiles at
his command.
The botanist, who was surrounded by that silence which is known
to aëronauts alone, turned round at the sound of the dates falling
into the water, and this time experienced a surprise which was
greater even than the former one. The apparition of the boots was
forgotten: he saw a palm-tree with a lofty crest, which waved to and
fro in the midst of a perfectly calm atmosphere! After the first shock,
this discovery caused him infinite delight, and he would have given
all the yellow lotuses in the world for this phenomenon of a palm-
tree.
Von Thorigkeit opened his note-book and wrote in it the following
lines: “In Upper Egypt there exists a kind of palm-tree, which
possesses the peculiarities of the aloe; with this difference, however,
that the stem of the aloe attains an elevation of twenty feet above the
level of the soil, and remains motionless, while the palm-tree of
Upper Egypt agitates the top of its stem vertically and with a
movement of prodigious regularity. We have named this tree the Von
Thorigkeit palm.”
Having written this, the botanist made a sketch of the palm-tree
and showed it to the two Arabs, having no other public to exhibit it to.
The children of the desert, with their lynx-like eyes, had just
discovered a human form beneath the thick foliage of the island
palm-tree, and they resorted to the most energetic gestures in order
to make the botanist see it too. But Von Thorigkeit could think of
nothing but the grandeur of his discovery and the beauty of his
drawing. He paid no attention to the gestures of the Arabs, and
thought only of the sensation that would be produced in the learned
world by the Von Thorigkeit palm.
The two Arabs persisted in their pantomime, which said as plainly
as possible: “Look there on that little island; there is a human being
there up in the palm-tree; he is in danger; he is making signals, and
we must go to his aid at once.”
Von Thorigkeit pulled out a pocket telescope, shrugging his
shoulders at the same time with the air of a man who makes a
concession merely from politeness, and looked carelessly towards
the Von Thorigkeit palm-tree. He had now his third surprise within
the hour—the last completely absorbing the two others. He had seen
distinctly a human face, and even a German face, surrounded by
leaves; and a human hand shaking a naked branch with a tuft of
foliage at the end. He replaced his telescope in his pocket with
regret, read his article again, cast another glance at his drawing, and
after reflecting, like Brutus, whether he should destroy his two
children or let them live, decided at length upon the latter course.
“Well, so much the worse,” he said to himself: “what is written is
written, and I shall not cut out a single word. Besides, as the aloe
exists the Von Thorigkeit palm-tree might have existed, if Nature had
only seen its utility; I see its utility, and I shall let it remain.”
This resolution having been taken, the three men held a council.
The first thing to do was to find a boat, which, after two hours’
walking, they met with. It was a fishing vessel, and the botanist had
only to hold out a piece of gold and to point to the river in order to
make the fisherman understand what was required of him. He then
pointed down the stream, and said, in a haughty voice, as if the
fisherman was likely to understand him—
“The island of the Von Thorigkeit palm-tree!”
The pantomimic direction would have sufficed.
 They descended the Nile. The island of the Von Thorigkeit palm-
tree was soon visible; and, as they approached it, the Arabs, with
their lynx-like eyes, manifested some uneasiness, and exchanged
signs of intelligence. After a quarter of an hour’s rowing, doubt was
no longer possible. They had really seen an enormous crocodile
keeping watch beneath the palm-tree.
They imparted their discovery to the botanist, who now received
his fourth surprise in the course of the day, and trembled with cold in
a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. However, for the honour
of his fatherland, the learned German endeavoured to conceal his
alarm, which, it must be admitted, was natural enough on the part of
a botanist, who was accustomed only to hunt for flowers, and who
had nothing whatever to say to the amphibious monsters of the Nile.
The Arabs were talking quietly among themselves, like men
accustomed to hunt crocodiles. They put fresh caps on the nipples of
their guns, stood up firmly in the fore part of the boat, and told the
fisherman to be careful with his oars.
The crocodile saw the boat approaching, but did not know whether
it brought prey or peril to his shore. In the meanwhile he made ready
either for defence or flight, according to the number and importance
of the invaders. He lay stretched out at the edge of the river, as
motionless as a crocodile in a museum; but he kept his mouth wide
open, ready to swallow the first enemy who landed.
The two Arabs, who were thoroughly acquainted with the habits
and manners of the animal, took aim, uttered a syllable at the same
moment, and their two shots sounded as one. The bullets entered, at
the only vulnerable spot, the open mouth, and went through the
whole length of the crocodile’s body.
The monster shook his head with contortions so comic, that they
called forth shouts of laughter from the first floor of the palm-tree.
Then, casting forth a torrent of blood upon the sand, he closed his
tearful eyes and moved no more.
Dummkopf arranged his vegetable costume the best way he
could, looked for his gloves merely through habit, and not finding
them, came down as he was. The Arabs, like all their race, were
grave men, but their seriousness disappeared in the wildest laughter
when they saw Dummkopf’s costume. The botanist himself, now
reassured by the death of the crocodile, could scarcely restrain his
hilarity; but he bit his lips, and after shaking hands with his fellow-
countryman, begged him to communicate his adventures. Dummkopf
commenced by requesting his learned friend to check the
unbecoming mirth of the Arabs, who were threatened with the
vengeance of the Prussian consul in case they did not instantly
desist.
Then Von Thorigkeit in the most generous manner offered
Dummkopf his paletôt, which Dummkopf naturally accepted, retiring
for some minutes behind the palm-tree in order to change his
clothes, as he expressed it, though he might have said to dress
himself.
Having taken a solemn farewell of his palm-tree, Dummkopf got
into the boat, taking with him the crocodile and the coat of leaves as
reminiscences of his adventures, and also as corroborative proofs.
These precious relics were destined for the “Neue Museum” at
Berlin, and Herr von Thorigkeit, who was attached to the Berlin
University, hastened to thank Herr Dummkopf in the name of the
Prussian capital.
Dummkopf was equally courteous to the worthy botanist. He
thanked him in the name of science for his discovery of the Von
Thorigkeit palm-tree, which added another member to the already
numerous family of palms. He even promised to write a notice in the
Weisstadt Review, to prove that the palm-tree just discovered
through the indefatigable zeal of Von Thorigkeit belonged to the
same species as the aloe of Ceylon.
At the nearest village a complete Arab costume was procured for
Dummkopf, who, with the honesty which always distinguishes true
science, restored the paletôt to Von Thorigkeit.
The two friends returned to Germany together, and soon
afterwards an article signed Dummkopf appeared in the Weisstadt
Review, in which full justice was done to the labours of the intrepid
botanist and traveller, Von Thorigkeit, who had discovered the Von
Thorigkeit palm-tree at the risk of his life, and not until he had killed
two black reptiles of the cobra capella species. The article was
illustrated with a wood-cut, which represented the new tree agitating
its tuft in the air.
Von Thorigkeit also did his duty, for as soon as he reached Berlin
he made known to the world that Herr Dummkopf, who had ventured
above the third cataract, had rectified the errors of all the previous
maps, and that in the course of his expedition he had killed two
crocodiles by means of electricity.
Those who have meditated on the nature of man will not be
astonished to hear the end of this true story. Dummkopf is at present
the proprietor of the Weisstadt Review. He is a lecturer in the
Weisstadt University, and in addition to all this, he has a wife and six
children. Well, in spite of the Review, in spite of the lectureship, in
spite even of his wife and six children, Dummkopf, at certain
moments, regrets the peaceful life he led in his aërial apartment at
the top of the palm-tree.
Such is man! a being full of contradictions!
TREE LIFE IN GENERAL, AND
MONKEYS IN PARTICULAR.
 TREE LIFE IN GENERAL, AND MONKEYS IN
PARTICULAR.

The world has scarcely seen a worthier traveller or better naturalist

than Charles Waterton. In an eminent degree he possessed the
qualities essential to the study of the animal world. A good eye, a
sympathy with moving nature, untiring patience, and a contempt for
the comfortable and luxurious things of the earth—endued with these
qualities, he had the necessary parts of a man who was sure to
observe and note the admirable works of the Creator. His
“Wanderings” in North and South America contain original
descriptions of the objects to be seen in that magnificent continent,
which have never been surpassed for their clearness and
distinctness. In this volume we shall only refer to a few of his notes,
which have more particular reference to those animals whose lives,
like the monkeys, are spent more or less in the branches or under
the leaves of the sheltering trees, the monarchs of the stupendous
forests. Of Guiana he writes that four-footed animals are scarce
there, considering how very thinly the forests are inhabited by man.
The leopard, who is very much in the trees, and is called there a
tiger, is found, and so are tiger-cats, fiercest and cruellest of all the
feline race. The red monkey, erroneously called the baboon, is heard
there oftener than he is seen; while the common brown monkey, the
bisa, and sacawinki rove from tree to tree and amuse the stranger as
he journeys. In the trees, too, you will see the polecat, the opossum,
and now and then you will find a porcupine on a branch above your
head. To some readers the famous story of the Coon may not be
known, so we will tell it. An American colonel had become very
famous for his skill in shooting the opossum, and it was said that the
knowledge of his prowess had extended even to the animals he shot
so well. It is very difficult for a novice to shoot opossum, because
they lie upon the branch so closely to it, that it is with great difficulty
an unpractised observer can see the animal. Nevertheless, the
marksman became so known to the coons, as opossum are vulgarly
called, that they gave themselves up as lost directly they espied him
on their trail. “Is that you, colonel?” “Yes,” would reply the great shot.
“Then I’ll come down,” rejoined the coon, who thought it more
prudent to be taken captive and have a chance hereafter of escape,
than to be shot there and then to death by the unerring tube of the
colonel’s rifle.
Now listen to Mr. Waterton, as he describes that extraordinary
animal, the sloth:—
“This, too, is the native country of the sloth. His looks, his
gestures, and his cries, all conspire to entreat you to take pity on
him. These are the only weapons of defence which nature hath given
him. While other animals assemble in herds, or in pairs range
through these boundless wilds, the sloth is solitary, and almost
stationary; he cannot escape from you. It is said, his piteous moans
make the tiger relent, and turn out of the way. Do not, then, level
your gun at him, or pierce him with a poisoned arrow; he has never
hurt one living creature. A few leaves, and those of the commonest
and coarsest kind, are all he asks for his support. On comparing him
with other animals, you would say that you could perceive deficiency,
deformity, and superabundance in his composition. He has no
cutting teeth, and, though four stomachs, he still wants the long
intestines of ruminating animals. He has only one inferior aperture,
as in birds. He has no soles to his feet, nor has he the power of
moving his toes separately. His hair is flat, and puts you in mind of
grass withered by the wintry blast. His legs are too short; they
appear deformed by the manner in which they are joined to the body;
and when he is on the ground, they seem as if only calculated to be
used in climbing trees. He has forty-six ribs, while the elephant has
only forty; and his claws are disproportionately long. Were you to
mark down, upon a graduated scale, the different claims to
superiority amongst the four-footed animals, this poor ill-formed
creature’s claim would be last upon the lowest degree. His native
haunts have hitherto been little known, and probably little looked
into. Those who have written on this singular animal have remarked
that he is in a perpetual state of pain, that he is proverbially slow in
his movements, that he is a prisoner in space, and that as soon as
he has consumed all the leaves of the tree upon which he had
mounted, he rolls himself up in the form of a ball, and then falls to
the ground. This is not the case.
“If the naturalists who have written the history of the sloth had
gone into the wilds, in order to examine his haunts and economy,
they would not have drawn the foregoing conclusions; they would
have learned, that though all other quadrupeds may be described
while resting on the ground, the sloth is an exception to this rule, and
that his history must be written while he is in the tree.
“This singular animal is destined by nature to be produced, to live,
and to die in the trees; and to do justice to him, naturalists must
examine him in this his upper element. He is a scarce and solitary
animal, and being good food, he is never allowed to escape. He
inhabits remote and gloomy forests, where snakes take up their
abode, and where cruelly-stinging ants and scorpions, and swamps,
and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes, obstruct the steps of
civilised man. Were you to draw your own conclusions from the
descriptions which have been given of the sloth, you would probably
suspect that no naturalist has actually gone into the wilds with the
fixed determination to find him out and examine his haunts, and see
whether nature has committed any blunder in the formation of this
extraordinary creature, which appears to us so forlorn and miserable,
so ill put together, and so totally unfit to enjoy the blessings which
have been so bountifully given to the rest of animated nature; for, as
it has formerly been remarked, he has no soles to his feet, and he is
evidently ill at ease when he tries to move on the ground, and it is
then that he looks up in your face with a countenance that says,
‘Have pity on me, for I am in pain and sorrow.’
“It mostly happens that Indians and negroes are the people who
catch the sloth, and bring it to the white man: hence it may be
conjectured that the erroneous accounts we have hitherto had of the
sloth have not been penned down with the slightest intention to
mislead the reader, or give him an exaggerated history, but that
these errors have naturally arisen by examining the sloth in those
places where nature never intended that he should be exhibited.
“However, we are now in his own domain. Man but little frequents
these thick and noble forests, which extend far and wide on every
side of us. This, then, is the proper place to go in quest of the sloth.
We will first take a near view of him. By obtaining a knowledge of his
anatomy, we shall be enabled to account for his movements
hereafter, when we see him in his proper haunts. His fore-legs, or,
more correctly speaking, his arms, are apparently much too long,
while his hind-legs are very short, and look as if they could be bent
almost to the shape of a corkscrew. Both the fore and hind-legs, by
their form, and by the manner in which they are joined to the body,
are quite incapacitated from acting in a perpendicular direction, or in
supporting it on the earth as the bodies of other quadrupeds are
supported, by their legs. Hence, when you place him on the floor, his
belly touches the ground. Now, granted that he supported himself on
his legs like other animals, nevertheless he would be in pain, for he
has no soles to his feet, and his claws are very sharp and long, and
curved; so that, were his body supported by his feet, it would be by
their extremities, just as your body would be, were you to throw
yourself on all fours, and try to support it on the ends of your toes
and fingers—a trying position. Were the floor of glass, or of a
polished surface, the sloth would actually be quite stationary; but as
the ground is generally rough, with little protuberances upon it, such
as stones, or roots of grass, &c., this just suits the sloth, and he
moves his fore-legs in all directions, in order to find something to lay
hold of; and when he has succeeded he pulls himself forward, and is
thus enabled to travel onwards, but at the same time in so tardy and
awkward a manner as to acquire him the name of sloth.
“Indeed, his looks and his gestures evidently betray his
uncomfortable situation; and as a sigh every now and then escapes
him, we may be entitled to conclude that he is actually in pain.
“Some years ago I kept a sloth in my room for several months. I
often took him out of the house and placed him upon the ground, in
order to have an opportunity of observing his motions. If the ground
were rough, he would pull himself forwards, by means of his fore-
legs, at a pretty good pace; and he invariably immediately shaped
his course to the nearest tree; but if I put him on a smooth and well-
trodden part of the road, he appeared to be in trouble and distress.
His favourite abode was the back of a chair; and after getting all his
legs in a line upon the topmost part of it, he would hang there for
hours together, and often, with a low and inward cry, would seem to
invite me to take notice of him.
“The sloth, in its wild state, spends its whole life in trees, and
never leaves them but through force, or by accident. An all-ruling
Providence has ordered man to tread on the surface of the earth, the
eagle to soar in the expanse of the skies, and the monkey and
squirrel to inhabit the trees: still these may change their relative
situations without feeling much inconvenience; but the sloth is
doomed to spend his whole life in the trees; and what is more
extraordinary, not upon the branches, like the squirrel and the
monkey, but under them. He moves suspended from the branch, he
rests suspended from it, and he sleeps suspended from it. To enable
him to do this, he must have a very different formation from that of
any other known quadruped.
“Hence his seemingly bungled conformation is at once accounted
for; and in lieu of the sloth leading a painful life, and entailing a
melancholy and miserable existence on its progeny, it is but fair to
surmise that it just enjoys life as much as any other animal, and that
its extraordinary formation and singular habits are but further proofs
to engage us to admire the wonderful works of Omnipotence.
“It must be observed that the sloth does not hang head
downwards like the vampire. When asleep he supports himself from
a branch parallel to the earth. He first seizes the branch with one
arm, and then with the other; and after that, brings up both his legs,
one by one, to the same branch, so that all four are in a line: he
seems perfectly at rest in this position. Now, had he a tail, he would
be at a loss to know what to do with it in this position: were he to
draw it up within his legs, it would interfere with them; and were he to
let it hang down, it would become the sport of the winds. Thus his
deficiency of tail is a benefit to him; it is merely an apology for a tail,
scarcely exceeding an inch and a half in length.
“I observed, when he was climbing, that he never used his arms
both together, but first one and then the other, and so on alternately.
There is a singularity in his hair, different from that of all other
animals, and, I believe, hitherto unnoticed by naturalists; his hair is
thick and coarse at the extremity, and gradually tapers to the root,
where it becomes fine as a spider’s web. His fur has so much the
hue of the moss which grows on the branches of the trees, that it is
very difficult to make him out when he is at rest.
“The male of the three-toed sloth has a longitudinal bar of very fine
black hair on his back, rather lower than the shoulder-blades; on
each side of this black bar there is a space of yellow hair, equally
fine; it has the appearance of being pressed into the body, and looks
exactly as if it had been singed. If we examine the anatomy of his
fore-legs, we shall immediately perceive, by their firm and muscular
texture, how very capable they are of supporting the pendent weight
of his body, both in climbing and at rest; and, instead of pronouncing
them a bungled composition, as a celebrated naturalist has done, we
shall consider them as remarkably well calculated to perform their
extraordinary functions.
“As the sloth is an inhabitant of forests within the tropics, where
the trees touch each other in the greatest profusion, there seems to
be no reason why he should confine himself to one tree alone for
food, and entirely strip it of its leaves. During the many years I have
ranged the forests, I have never seen a tree in such a state of nudity;
indeed, I would hazard a conjecture, that, by the time the animal had
finished the last of the old leaves, there would be a new crop on the
part of the tree he had stripped first, ready for him to begin again, so
quick is the process of vegetation in these countries.
“There is a saying amongst the Indians, that when the wind blows
the sloth begins to travel. In calm weather he remains tranquil,
probably not liking to cling to the brittle extremity of the branches,
lest they should break with him in passing from one tree to another;
but, as soon as the wind rises, the branches of the neighbouring
trees become interwoven, and then the sloth seizes hold of them,
and pursues his journey in safety. There is seldom an entire day of
calm in these forests. The trade-wind generally sets in about ten
o’clock in the morning, and thus the sloth may set off after breakfast,
and get a considerable way before dinner. He travels at a good
round pace; and were you to see him pass from tree to tree, as I
have done, you would never think of calling him a sloth.
“Thus it would appear that the different histories we have of this
quadruped are erroneous on two accounts: first, that the writers of
them, deterred by difficulties and local annoyances, have not paid
sufficient attention to him in his native haunts; and secondly, they
have described him in a situation in which he was never intended by
nature to cut a figure—I mean on the ground. The sloth is as much at
a loss to proceed on his journey upon a smooth and level floor as a
man would be who had to walk a mile in stilts upon a line of feather
beds.
“One day, as we were crossing the Essequibo, I saw a large two-
toed sloth on the ground upon the bank; how he had got there
nobody could tell: the Indian said he had never surprised a sloth in
such a situation before: he would hardly have come there to drink,
for both above and below the place the branches of the trees
touched the water, and afforded him an easy and safe access to it.
Be this as it may, though the trees were not above twenty yards from
him, he could not make his way through the sand time enough to
escape before we landed. As soon as we got up to him he threw
himself upon his back, and defended himself in gallant style with his
fore-legs. “Come, poor fellow,” said I to him, “if thou hast got into a
hobble to-day, thou shalt not suffer for it: I’ll take no advantage of
thee in misfortune; the forest is large enough both for thee and me to
rove in: go thy ways up above, and enjoy thyself in these endless
wilds: it is more than probable thou wilt never have another interview
with man. So fare thee well.” On saying this, I took a long stick which
was lying there, held it for him to hook on, and then conveyed him to
a high and stately mora. He ascended with wonderful rapidity, and in
about a minute he was almost at the top of the tree. He now went off
in a side direction, and caught hold of a branch of a neighbouring
tree; he then proceeded towards the heart of the forest. I stood
looking on, lost in amazement at his singular mode of progress. I
followed him with my eye till the intervening branches closed in
betwixt us: and then I lost sight for ever of the two-toed sloth. I was
going to add, that I never saw a sloth take to his heels in such
earnest; but the expression will not do, for the sloth has no heels.
“That which naturalists have advanced of his being so tenacious of
life is perfectly true. I saw the heart of one beat for half an hour after
it was taken out of the body. The wourali poison seems to be the
only thing that will kill it quickly. On reference to a former part of
these Wanderings, it will be seen that a poisoned arrow killed the
sloth in about ten minutes.
“So much for this harmless, unoffending animal. He holds a
conspicuous place in the catalogue of the animals of the New World.
Though naturalists have made no mention of what follows, still it is
not less true on that account. The sloth is the only quadruped known
which spends its whole life from the branch of a tree, suspended by
his feet. I have paid uncommon attention to him in his native haunts.
The monkey and squirrel will seize a branch with their fore-feet, and
pull themselves up, and rest or run upon it; but the sloth, after
seizing it, still remains suspended, and suspended moves along
under the branch, till he can lay hold of another. Whenever I have
seen him in his native woods, whether at rest, or asleep, or on his
travels, I have always observed that he was suspended from the
branch of a tree. When his form and anatomy are attentively
considered, it will appear evident that the sloth cannot be at ease in
any situation where his body is higher or above his feet.”
Another tree-inhabitant is that curious, almost fabulous, creature,
the vampire. Mr. Waterton says of them—“At the close of day, the
vampires leave the hollow trees, whither they had fled at the
morning’s dawn, and scour along the river’s banks in quest of prey.
On waking from sleep, the astonished traveller finds his hammock all
stained with blood. It is the vampire that hath sucked him. Not man
alone, but every unprotected animal, is exposed to his depredations;
and so gently does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood, that,
instead of being roused, the patient is lulled into a still profounder
sleep. There are two species of vampire in Demerara, and both suck
living animals: one is rather larger than the common bat; the other
measures about two feet from wing to wing extended. As there was
a free entrance and exit to the vampire, in the loft near the
Essequibo where I slept, I had many a fine opportunity of paying
attention to this winged lancer. He does not always live on blood.
When the moon shone bright, and the fruit of the banana-tree was
ripe, I could see him approach and eat it. He would also bring into
the loft, from the forest, a green round fruit, something like the wild
guava, and about the size of a nutmeg. There was something also,
in the blossom of the sawarri nut-tree, which was grateful to him; for
on coming up Waratilla creek, in a moonlight night, I saw several
vampires fluttering round the top of the sawarri-tree, and every now
and then the blossoms, which they had broken off, fell into the water.
They certainly did not drop off naturally, for on examining several of
them, they appeared quite fresh and blooming. So I concluded the
vampires pulled them from the tree, either to get at the incipient fruit,
or to catch the insects which often take up their abode in flowers.
“The vampire, in general, measures about twenty-six inches from
wing to wing extended, though I once killed one which measured
thirty-two inches. He frequents old abandoned houses and hollow
trees; and sometimes a cluster of them may be seen in the forest
hanging head downwards from the branch of a tree.
“Goldsmith seems to have been aware that the vampire hangs in
clusters; for in the Deserted Village, speaking of America, he says—

“‘And matted woods, where birds forget to sing,

But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling.’

“The vampire has a curious membrane, which rises from the nose,
and gives it a very singular appearance. It has been remarked
before, that there are two species of vampire in Guiana, a larger and
a smaller. The larger sucks men and other animals; the smaller
seems to confine himself chiefly to birds. I learnt from a gentleman,
high up in the river Demerara, that he was completely unsuccessful
with his fowls, on account of the small vampire. He showed me some
that had been sucked the night before, and they were scarcely able
to walk.
“Some years ago I went to the river Paumaron with a Scotch
gentleman, by name Tarbet. We hung our hammocks in the thatched
loft of a planter’s house. Next morning I heard this gentleman
muttering in his hammock, and now and then letting fall an
imprecation or two, just about the time he ought to have been saying
his morning prayers. ‘What is the matter, sir?’ said I, softly; ‘is
anything amiss?’ ‘What’s the matter!’ answered he, surlily; ‘why, the
vampires have been sucking me to death.’ As soon as there was
light enough, I went to his hammock, and saw it much stained with
blood. ‘There,’ said he, thrusting his foot out of the hammock, ‘see
how these infernal imps have been drawing my life’s blood.’ On
examining his foot, I found the vampire had tapped his great toe:
there was a wound somewhat less than that made by a leech; the
blood was still oozing from it; I conjectured he might have lost from
ten to twelve ounces of blood. Whilst examining it, I think I put him
into a worse humour by remarking that a European surgeon would
not have been so generous as to have blooded him without making a
charge. He looked up in my face, but did not say a word; I saw he
was of opinion that I had better have spared this piece of ill-timed
levity.
“I had often wished to have been once sucked by the vampire, in
order that I might have it in my power to say it had really happened
to me. There can be no pain in the operation, for the patient is
always asleep when the vampire is sucking him; and as for the loss
of a few ounces of blood, that would be a trifle in the long run. Many
a night have I slept with my foot out of the hammock to tempt this
winged surgeon, expecting that he would be there; but it was all in
vain; the vampire never sucked me, and I could never account for his
not doing so, for we were inhabitants of the same loft for months
together.”
The naturalist’s description of the river Demerara is a beautiful
piece of writing:—