Post-structuralism

This movement originated around 1967 in Paris from Structuralism, represented by JULIA KRISTEVA, and others. They did not believed in what JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD called grand narratives = an ideology/science according which people should behave because these lost their validity and been replaced by “micro stories.”

De-centralization = there is no longer any centre that would be a representative of majority but rather a set of small stories that have to find agreement to create a meaning but it does not have to be truth, rather a compromise. Post-structuralism tries to find textual sub-consciousness = text is including also meanings that are contrary to the surface meaning (silences, something repressed, not expressed). This approach shows disunity rather than unity of the text and often analyzes so much that it does not make sense anymore and cannot say what the passage is about.

JACQUES DERRIDA (also studied grammatology, how grammar influence the way we think) came up with the term deconstruction = a critical method focused on différance. He recalled Greek philosophers who stood outside the dominant Greek tradition of Aristotle and Plato. Derrida claimed that things do not have essence, there’s nothing stable. We don’t perceive things as they are and even words do not have fixed meaning.

When we see a pen, we know what it is but when we say a pen, everybody can imagine something different (ball pen, stylus, marker) -> a sign points to many different interpretations and we only know that something actually is because it is different from something else. This assumption is based on our previous knowledge, it points out to the past and the thing has its significance only if we are able to classify it. We can define a relationship but not things themselves - we think of a pen but what we really mean is a marker for a whiteboard.

All ideas work in the same way, there are no identities, nothing is fixed, there are only differences so ultimately you cannot say anything for sure and even when we say something it does not have universal validity for everything and everyone. We cannot say the truth because we do not have access to all possible information; there are endless nets of relations. It is an attack on metaphysical truth but at the same time whatever you say does not have to make sense. Since there is no essence, no identity, nothing fixed we cannot say what is normal because these terms keep shifting so we cannot create a set of norms.

The theory of signifier x signified is therefore destroyed because what is signified is in the same time signified – all at once as everything is only referring to something else. In addition, relationships are changing all the time. Queer meant originally “strange”, then it became “obscene, perverted” and later “homosexual”, then it included also transsexuals and now a queer is quite a positive word for gays. So now we do not really know to what it is referring to! We cannot really say what is queer unless we define it in a relationship.

ROLAND BARTHES in his essay The Death of the Author claimed that the text is not the property of its author. Once the text gets into the network of relationships, it gains its own life and the author has nothing to say about it anymore. Each reader has their own set of rules and each of them is equally valid because we cannot prescribe the interpretation of the work. The author is dead and cannot say that the text is about this or about that. An author becomes just another reader of the text.

The writing is the destruction of every voice, every point of origin, all identity is lost. There is no use giving importance to the biography of the author, the explanation of the work cannot be found in the author who produced it. Author was thought to nourish the books, he/she exists before it, thinks, suffers, desires. In complete opposite, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text and every text is eternally written here and now. The text is a multidimensional space in which variety of writings blend and clash, never original. The power of the author is only in mixing. The scriptor no longer bears the passions, feelings and impression of an author but rather dictionary from which he/she draws.

No reader, including critics, can say that this interpretation of the work is the one and only - death of the author is also death of a critic. The God-like figure of the author is dead. For Henry James, the beast in the jungle could mean oppression and he would be right but at the same time, for readers, it can be death and they would be equally right. If the author is dead, there is not higher authority that would state the definite meaning – an author is at the same level with readers. Nobody can dictate a fixed meaning because there is none! Also, the creative process is partly sub-conscious anyway. These ideas opened a new field to reception theory = focus on reader. Until 1960s, nobody counted the reader in.

Post-structuralist criticism on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter:

Genre: detective fiction. Characters: Dupin is an amateur detective, not professional and motivated for money and revenge, not justice as he should be. Prefect G is a good detective but very limited by his conformist views. The roles are constantly shifting. We know from the very beginning what was the crime, who did it and why – a letter was stolen from the queen by Minister D to give him power over her. It is so simple that it is actually hard. The queen is trying to hide the letter when the king comes into the room so she places it on the table like it is not important at all.

But Minister D recognises the handwriting and realizes it must be important for the queen so he grabs the letter. The king is there so the queen cannot openly stop the thief, the letter’s content would be exposed. The police fail at their investigation so Prefect G has to ask Dupin for help. They had a very detailed description of the letter and searched Minister’s house through roughly but could not find it. Dupin says that to understand a criminal one must go through identification - to be in his mind. Detective stories are based on repetition – a detective repeats the crime but only in the mind. Dupin repeats the crime in reality and breaks conventions.

The police looked for a certain letter and could not find it because what they were looking for did not exist since the criminal changed the letter entirely, making it dirty, with another address and placing it visibly so that it would seem insignificant. The identity of things depends on who sees them as they are not independent on the seeing eye. It is not an object that is important, it is what people believe it is. For Prefect the letter is only an object that can be changed for money, for Minister it is power, for the queen some important secret. The letter as object does not really exist.

The queen tried to hide the letter but then she informs the police and the secret is out. Is it still valid after several months that passed? The Minister cannot even use the letter. He is not able to carry it with him, it is no longer that much of a secret and he cannot really use the information since he would go to jail. He can just keep it in his room so it does not matter anymore what is inside, it has become totally useless, the letter’s meaning changed.

The second theft of the letter is just a small revenge and fun for Dupin, Minister G cannot use the letter anyway. Nobody gets punished, another break of conventions - no solution, no real ending. The quotation Dupin left in the letter is from an old tale about two brothers who were rivals. One of them married a princess and become a king but she loved the other brother. Dupin and Minister D knew each other from before, are very similar and also rivals. There are 3 types of people in the story: 1. People who see nothing (police, king). 2. People who know that the first group sees nothing and believe their hiding place is safe (the Queen, Minister D). 3. Somebody who sees that something is left exposed but should be hidden (Dupin, Minister D).