Structuralism and post-structuralism are not defined by what they are, but what they are not. Structuralism is not post-structuralism because it is not philosophical; it is a scientific approach through linguistics to find meaning in texts. Post-structuralism disregards scientific reasoning for finding meaning and relies on a philosophical approach.I feel like binary opposition is similar to Saussure’s view of language. Binary opposition relies on a word finding its meaning from what it is not, rather than what it is. Terms are associated with a positive or negative. For example, take the words good and evil. We would not know what good is without evil to compare it against. And our society considers good to be positive and evil to be negative.
Meanings of words are based on relationships they have with their opposites, therefore, meanings are not fixed because they are arbitrary and contradict each other (I think). Because meanings are arbitrary they are not permanent. This is why deconstruction rejects binary opposition. Deconstruction assumes that meanings are fluid and not fixed.
Structuralism implies that there is a center because it revolves around systems and structures; and systems have a point of origin. But deconstruction points out the lack of a center. This makes sense because structuralism is scientific; therefore it needs boundaries in order to preserve the meaning it gives to things. Without boundaries, the meaning and authenticity would be questionable because it would be unstable. But with post-structuralism and deconstruction, because there is no point of origin in a system, there are no boundaries. That is why meaning is fluid and not fixed. There is nothing holding the meanings of terms back, like in structuralism.
I understand post-structuralism and deconstruction, or at least I’m pretty sure I do. But what is really frustrating about it is that nothing is conclusive (or so it seems). Structuralism believes in structures and systems, but post-structuralism and deconstruction do not because they believe in the “decentered universe.” According to post-structuralism/deconstruction that means nothing is fixed; there is no origin. But, in a sense, isn’t post-structuralism’s structure, not following a structure? Post-structuralism still follows a method, even though it seems to claim not to.
I guess what’s most difficult is that the conclusion I come to is that there is no conclusion. Well, at least to me there seems to be, even though deconstruction says there really isn’t. Unless I’m interpreting it completely wrong.
A question I’ve thought of and can’t come to a decision about is that in structuralism if the system of language constructs reality, then in post-structuralism/deconstruction, is there no reality at all? Since there is no point of origin or center in a system, how is reality constructed?
Structuralism and post-structuralism are not defined by what they are, but what they are not. Structuralism is not post-structuralism because it is not philosophical; it is a scientific approach through linguistics to find meaning in texts. Post-structuralism disregards scientific reasoning for finding meaning and relies on a philosophical approach.
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One thing to think about, something that kind of blows the mind, is to realize how relatively new is these questions of "well, where is the reality? Is there a reality?" and so on. Plato was the first to argue that folks have been duped into thinking that debased imitations were reality itself, and that there had to be some ideal reality that transcended and made possible those imitations, but today part of the larger scientific narrative, the one we grow up in, like it or not, is that we spend time wanting to verify that what is around us is really, really real.
So the fascinating thing about post-structuralism isn't that it says there's no verifiable reality, but rather that for the most part, the folks who we think of as being post-structuralists wouldn't even ask the question, since the question itself concedes ground they find contentious.
Which kind of points us back to Gorgias, who famously said: Being doesn't exist, if it did we wouldn't know it, and if we knew it we couldn't communicate it.
Incidentally, this isn't to say that post-structuralism is the same as nihilism, that all meanings are fluid and there's consequently no real meanings, it's just that for them meaning is structured by the various textual and discursive constraints rather than some essential or universally appreciable order of things.
When it comes to the whole reality question I posed, I think what was difficult for me to understand was the concept of the decentered universe and how it plays a role in defining meaning. I assumed that if there is no center there is no meaning. I was so hooked on the idea that a system is needed to find meaning and a system without a center isn't really a system therefore there is no "real" meaning. I'm still pretty insecure about structuralism and post-structuralism.
I wish I had something more insightful to say because your comments have been very helpful. So, thank you.
Don't worry too much about it - the insecurity is a good sign. These theories are the product of a very long and very varied intellectual history. Derrida is heavily informed by Heidegger, and had an almost encyclopedic grasp of much of Western philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Neitzsche, Kierkegaards, Husserl, Foucault, Levinas, and on and on and on, and I'm not even mentioning some of the more obscure ones), and a heavy investment in a lot of literary debates, reading and commenting on Celan, Joyce, Blanchot, and countless others. So to "get it" means getting a lot besides the "it" and that's a lifelong project and then some.
But regardless, think of the absence of the center as meaning nothing more than this: the certainty we attach to any particular meaning, when we call it true, or right, or real, requires us to take on faith some other precept. Like Goedel and his incompleteness theorem, post-structuralists tend to believe that the real and the true require something besides the real and the true in order to be called as such. So sometimes it's the use of some belief in "structure," sometimes it's the use of binaries that govern certain relationships, sometimes it's the assumption that things should be "present." Whatever the situation, the point post-structuralism tries to make is that the language in which arguments for truth and reality are made always influence and determine the viability of those arguments.
So it's not just, as some of your classmate's blogs have suggested, drawing on the Barry reading, that two different cars are moving at the same speed, and so assessments of movement are relative, but rather that from the beginning, the very possibility of something like movement requires a host of assumptions that then help "movement" make sense. For example, we're assuming that movement means the traversing of space during a discrete period of time, but that means we need to be able to measure that travel and measure the passage of time. How are we going to do that? Well maybe we'll use miles per hour or some other formula, say kilometers per hour. And using these formula we can compare the question of movement and relativity and show that our perceptions change based on our subject-position, and we'll even have math to prove it. This is true, but this whole line of questioning and answering relies on a sense of movement as a measurement, rather than say, an experience, which would be a fundamentally different way of thinking movement. If movement was the experience, in the moment, of some affect in the body that senses being in motion, and if visual cues played an important part in that affect, well maybe how we think movement is different. Or what if we really took relativity seriously, and recognized that the faster we move through space, the slower we move through time (which is one of the first conclusions of Einstein's general relativity)? Could we really trust our perception of movement, given that the amount of time you might measure while driving really, really, quickly and the amount of time I measure while just sitting still are actually different times?
Anyway, it gets a bit confusing after a while, but the point is this: post-structuralism is less concerned with whether or not we're moving, and more concerned with what sort of assumptions are built into our use of language as a signifying system (which each time may be different, or different for each person) that help us make sense of movement and to thus answer a question like "are we moving?".
Of course, movement is a silly example, but when you start thinking about other concepts, like: "self," "experience," "literature," well you move into some pretty fascinating territory.
Incidentally, I'm reminded of an account I read of how European explorers, when they encountered the maps of some of the North American native inhabitants, mocked the natives for their stupidity. See the maps were all "wrong," in that they would show different villages along the river as being very close, and villages that were inland as being very far away, even when the "reality" was that it was much farther in terms of miles to travel down river than it was to travel over land. Stupid natives!
Of course, it was the Europeans who were stupidly entrapped by their own assumptions about what a map measured - the maps they were maligning measured not space traveled, but the amount of time it took for travel, and river travel was faster, hence the villages appeared closer on the map, despite the longer distance. The land-locked villages, by contrast, required ground travel, and was much slower, even if the distance was comparatively less.
I'm slowly starting to understand a little better now.
The whole point of not having a center does not mean that there is no reality or meaning, but to open it up and put it in motion. One part of this would be that the boundary between signifier and signified can be taken away. This makes it possible for one word to to be many different signifiers.
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