Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction
Catherine Belsey
Language: English
Pages: 128
ISBN: 0192801805
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Poststructuralism changes the way we understand the relations between human beings, their culture, and the world. Following a brief account of the historical relationship between structuralism and poststructuralism, this Very Short Introduction traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture. While the author discusses such well-known figures as Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan, she also draws pertinent examples from literature, art, film, and popular culture, unfolding the poststructuralist account of what it means to be a human being.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam
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Insists, hear the difference between ‘difference’ and ‘differance’ (or différence and différance). The only way to make the distinction evident in speech is to say ‘difference (with an a)’. Writing is triumphantly shown to invade the act of speaking. (Unfortunately, one of Derrida’s translators left the word in French. His English-speaking admirers miss the point, however, when they deliver the word in an imitation of French pronunciation.) Differance, neither a signifier (until Derrida used.
Titian 59–61 U unconscious 59, 64, 66, 67, 91, 94 W Warhol, Andy 87 Williams, William Carlos 16–18, 20, 22 Winterson, Jeanette 69, 71 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 97 Woolf, Virginia 49–50 Z Zizek, Slavoj 34–6, 89, 93–6, 111 Expand your collection of VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS 1. Classics 2. Music 3. Buddhism 4. Literary Theory 5. Hinduism 6. Psychology 7. Islam 8. Politics 9. Theology 10. Archaeology 11. Judaism 12.
Poststructuralism proposes that the distinctions we make are not necessarily given by the world around us, but are instead produced by the symbolizing systems we learn. How else would we know the difference between pixies and gnomes, or March Hares and talking eggs like Humpty Dumpty, come to that? 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,.
But ranges between ‘word’, ‘idea’, ‘meaning’, and ‘sense’. Changing the shape very slightly – and silently – by capitalizing the initial letter, we turn it into Λóγоς and the signified changes to something like ‘God’ or ‘Reason’. 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.