Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction

Julluell M. Marin
11 – HUMSS – AM3
What is Structuralism ?
• It is the offshoot of certain developments in
linguistics and anthropologists .Saussure's
mode of the synchronic study of language was
an attempt to formulate the grammar of a
language from a study of parole.

• Using the Saussurian linguistic model, Claude

Levi-Strauss examined the customs and
conventions of some cultures with a view of
arriving at the grammar of those cultures.
Structuralism aims at forming a poetics or
the science of literature from a study of
literary works.
What is Post structuralism ?

Post structuralism designates a broad

variety of critical perspectives and
producers that in the 1970s displaced
structuralism from its prominence as
the radically innovative way of dealing
with language and other signifying
systems.
Writers of Post-Structuralism

• Roland Barthes
• Jacques Derrida
Differences between the Structuralism and Post
structuralism

Structuralism and post structuralism have a great deal

in common. Post structuralism retains structuralism’s
emphasis on language; furthermore, they retain the
structuralist belief that all cultural systems can be
represented as “coded systems of meaning rather than
direct transactions with reality.”

Moreover, many of the individuals commonly associated

with post structuralism Foucault, Baudrillard, even
Barthes—began as structuralists and moved in the course
of their thought in a poststructuralist direction.
However, there are some key differences that help us to
define the terms, even though we should understand
them not as strict categories but as positions along a
spectrum.
What is Deconstruction ?
• Deconstruction is a form of philosophical and literary
analysis derived principally from Jacques Derrida's
1967 work Of Grammatology. In the 1980s it
designated more loosely a range of theoretical
enterprises in diverse areas of the humanities and
social sciences, including—in addition to philosophy
and literature.

• Deconstruction is philosophy of meaning; free play

of meaning. The word Bet and Bat - a bird have a
lot of meanings and those meanings play into our
mind. To identify the meaning and true meaning of
words is deconstruction. Language always
empowers us. Words control us. We do not go
beyond the words
If we consider one superior then it means we have
already considered one inferior. Superiority of one thing
and inferiority of that thing always come together and
questions of ethics, morality too. It always goes on
changing. We do not have general view. There are
differences. Majority and Minority always come together.

Binary Opposition
Superiority Inferiority
Being - Non-being
Reality - Appearance
Good - Bad
Virtue - Vice
Day - Night
Light - Darkness
Male - Female
White - Black
Colonizer - Colonized Minority
Majority -
Majority has power position and controls others
and minority suffers, Faces many problems. Their
desires and ambitions have been suppressed. The
way people use words becomes more important.
Deconstruction helps us understand silence voices,
ignored things which are left out. Deconstruction
changes our way of looking towards different
things and our perspectives.

The thing which arrives after the first thing

redefines the previous and the first thing. Idea
becomes ideology. Meaning are given in the
context. The idea of signifier and signified comes.
Words have different meanings. In written words
meaning dies. The spoken words are more
contextualized. Written things are judged and
examined by readers.
Deconstruction :Derrid's Concept

In the criticism of literature, Deconstruction is

a theory and practice of reading. Which
questions and claims to 'subvert' or 'undermine'
The assumption that the system of language
provides grounds that are adequate to
establish the boundaries.

The coherence or unity, and determine meaning

of a literary text. Typically, a deconstructive
reading sets out to show the conflicting forces
within the text itself to dissipate the seeming
definiteness of its structure and meaning into
indefinite array of incompatibility and
undividable possibilities.