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A Gentle Introduction to

Structuralism, Postmodernism

And All ThatJohn Mannexplains what the Continentals are up to these days.

In the 1980s there was a lot of excitement about postmodernism, deconstruction,structuralism and post-structuralism. This flood of theory appeared to offer a radical new

perspective for understanding and experiencing the world. It was an enlightenment whichleft all those who rejected it cursed with still being stuck in the murky mire of the oldways of thinking which had dominated western thought for 2000 years and which at lastwe could escape. Such religious fervour with its condemnation of heretics andestablishment of new messiahs has softened, and it is now possible to look quietly and

calmly at what was going on.

Structuralism

Structuralism arose on the continent, in particular in France, in the early 60s. The firstbig name was Claude Lvi-Strauss, an anthropologist, who took on Jean-Paul Sartre, theleading French intellectual and philosopher of the time, and d idnt so much win, as wentunanswered (which from Sartres point of view was worse). Here was Frances mainphilosopher, Sartre, who usually had something to say about everything, being attackedin Lvi-StraussThe Savage Mind, and yet not replying! The implication was that hecouldnt reply, and the intellectual mood began to move towards Lvi-Strauss intellectual

position, which he called structuralism.

A simple explanation of structuralism is that it understands phenomena using themetaphor of language. That is, we can understand language as a system, or structure,which defines itself in terms of itself. There is no language behind language with whichwe understand it, no metalanguage to explain what language means. Instead it is a self-referential system. Words explain words explain words (as in a dictionary), and meaningis present as a set of structures.

Such an approach was an attack on other types of philosophy which claim that there is acore of truth which is reality, something behind the world of appearance. For exampleMarxists might argue that we can understand the world (appearance) by examining the

relations of production (reality), or some fundamentalist Christians might argue that weshould understand the world as a battle of God against Satan, so this truth is hidden,but in fact it explains the world.

Another structuralist was Roland Barthes, who claimed the term for a while, who was aliterary critic and wrote about the Death of the Author. He argued the author could notclaim to know what his/her book was about any more than the reader. Again, the ideathat there was a hidden reality (hidden to the reader but known to the author) waschallenged, and instead a view of the text presented which was available to all equally.

Michel Foucault, a philosopher and historian, argued that science has to be understoodsocially before it can be understood intellectually for example he showed how

madness is primarily a social invention, rather than a medical discovery. He claimedthat the analysis of systems of thought required analysis of the detail, to show how each

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part interacted with other parts. It wasnt enough to simply identify a core (such as theevolution of scientific knowledge) and to ignore all other aspects of science.

Jacques Lacan, a psychoanalyst who claimed that the unconscious is structured like alanguage, is widely seen as a major structuralist thinker. He claimed to be returning toFreud and be working against the Americanisation of psychoanalysis with its emphasis

on egopsychology. He emphasised the role of the unconscious by showing that the I isnot a centralised core ego but a dispersed, fragmented, interrelated unknown (theunconscious).

So we can see that a primary feature of the structuralists is their attack onfoundationalism, attacking any thought that claims to have found a Firm Foundation onwhich we can construct beliefs. Instead they emphasise the relatedness of truth, howTruth is not something we discover, or can own, or can start from, but a structurewhich society invents.

Deconstruction

Moving on from the structuralists we come to Derrida and deconstruction. I come toJacques Derrida next since his first three important books were published in 1967, whichis ahead of the main post-structuralist bookAnti-Oedipuswhich came out in the early1970s.

Derrida can be called a post-structuralist in a sense, since he moves on fromstructuralism, taking some of it for granted, and challenging other parts of it. Where thestructuralists constructeda system, a structure, Derrida deconstructsit, that is, he takesit apart. However, the disconcerting thing is that he does so from the inside. Histechnique of deconstruction shows how structures or systems of thought contain theseeds of their own downfall.

Derrida does not have a system of thought as such, instead he simply reads an author,for example Rousseau or Lvi-Strauss or Hegel, and shows how their thought containscontradictions. And further, these contradictions are not something which can becorrected, as if the author had errors in an argument which, once corrected, couldproduce a better argument, no rather the contradictions were conditions of the systemof thought existing in the first place!

Derrida shows each system of thought to be necessarilycontradictory. How he does thisis quite technical, but the idea is to show how the system (1) creates binary pairs forexample good and bad, male and female, black and white, writing and speaking, madand sane etc, (2) prioritises one term over another, and indeed defines one in terms ofthe other for example male over female (what Derrida calls Phallocentrism), sane overmad, good over bad etc. (3) then show that in fact you may as well prioritise the secondterm over the first show how the first term is dependent on the second, (4) finallyshow how the system is dependent on this marginalising of the second term, when in factit relies on the second term (the marginal) also, in some sense, being at the centre.

Jacques Derrida has gained a strong group of followers in the USA, particularly amongstliterary critics, who take literally his phrase there is nothing outside the text to treatanything as a text and so subject to literary interpretation.

Post-Structuralism

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Post-structuralisms main book,Anti-Oedipusby Deleuze and Guattari, is in fact anattempt to combine Marx and Freud (the subtitle is Capitalism and Schizophrenia) byliberation through free desire. Post-structuralism is really a cultural movement more thanan intellectual movement. Structuralism in the 60s was at least in part an intellectualprogramme, and it was possible to analyse phenomena by treating them as being partsof a system. Post-structuralism moved beyond this, questioning the very notions of

Truth, Reality, Meaning, Sincerity, Good etc. It regarded allabsolutes as constructions,truth was created, it was an effect, it wasnt present in something. Similarly there wasno authority, no Real, everything was defined in terms of everything else, and that

process itself was relative and constructed.

The main philosopher for the poststructuralists was the nineteenth century philosopherFriedrich Nietzsche, whose main thought began with the realisation that if God is dead,anything is possible everything is permitted, everything is relative. There are noabsolutes anymore. Nietzsche also wrote in a style similar to an Old Testament prophet(see for example his Thus Spoke Zarathustra) his style is full of such phrases as weare living among the ruins of God and post-structuralists tend to follow this poeticstyle.

The Origins of Postmodernism

As this movement was growing in popularity in the 70s some other important things werehappening. The radical political groups from the 60s (for example the Maoists) werecoming to an ideological dead-end. Solzhenitsyn was being translated, and revealing indetail the horrors of Eastern Europe. The importance of the media as an agent for socialchange was being realised and media saturation of life was becoming an importantcultural phenomenon. These trends now mixed with the philosophical currents justdescribed with the following effects.

Firstly, there was a large backlash against Marxism and socialism. It was argued thatMarxism was a totalizing system, whose intellectual totalitarianism moved necessarily tothe Gulag, and instead liberalism and capitalism were embraced as being more open andrelative. Secondly there was a move of intellectuals away from political engagement(Sartre for example had always been out marching with the students, and Foucault wasoften in demonstrations for prison rights, amongst other things), and back to intellectualwork. Finally there was great interest in the role of the media in defining reality for us,and an analysis of society as fragmentary, full of images, saturated by the media,making everything relative, ephemeral and short-lived: in other words, postmodern.

Criticism and Evaluation

People are now criticising post-structuralism and deconstruction as providingphilosophical justification for conservatism, reaction, depoliticising society andencouraging an irresponsible, hedonistic lifestyle (for example, did Foucault still haveunsafe sex when he knew he had AIDS? Should Derrida have tried to defend his fellowphilosopher Paul de Mans Nazi record? What of Heideggers Nazi past? What ofBaudrillards claim that the Gulf War never happened?)

As a result of these criticisms, some of the excesses of post-structuralism anddeconstruction are now over. Currently there appears to be a more sober mood amongContinental philosophers as they try to re-position these intellectual movements withinthe fight for human rights, and to create better human values.

Recommended Reads:

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Structuralism and SinceJohn Sturrock (ed.)(published by Oxford University Press) Introduction to various thinkers such as Derrida,Foucault, Barthes etc.

Against PostmodernismAlex Callinicos(Polity Press) Marxist criticism of structuralism, deconstruction and post-structuralism

clearly written and well argued.

The Transparency of EvilJean Baudrillard(Verso) Baudrillard is the postmodern author, writing about how the media has takenover.

DeconstructionChristopher Norris(Methuen, 1982) Norris is a critical supporter of deconstruction, generally in favour of it or at least in favour of what it is capable of but his book on Baudrillard and the GulfWar, Uncritical Theory shows that he is certainly against its excesses.

Contingency and IronyRichard Rorty(Cambridge University Press) Rorty is an American liberal who takes arguments fromDerrida and others and uses them to defend his relativist views very readable andenjoyable.

J. Mann 1994

John Mann is a Software Engineer and lives in Hadleigh, Suffolk