A Gentle Introduction to

Structuralism, Postmodernism
And All That
John Mann explains 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 which
left all those who rejected it cursed with still being stuck in the murky mire of the old
ways of thinking which had dominated western thought for 2000 years and which at last
we could escape. Such religious fervour with its condemnation of heretics and
establishment 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 first
big name was Claude Lvi-Strauss, an anthropologist, who took on Jean-Paul Sartre, the
leading French intellectual and philosopher of the time, and didnt so much win, as went
unanswered (which from Sartres point of view was worse). Here was Frances main
philosopher, Sartre, who usually had something to say about everything, being attacked
in Lvi-Strauss The Savage Mind, and yet not replying! The implication was that he
couldnt 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 the
metaphor 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 which
we 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 meaning
is present as a set of structures.
Such an approach was an attack on other types of philosophy which claim that there is a
core of truth which is reality, something behind the world of appearance. For example
Marxists might argue that we can understand the world (appearance) by examining the
relations of production (reality), or some fundamentalist Christians might argue that we
should 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 a
literary critic and wrote about the Death of the Author. He argued the author could not
claim to know what his/her book was about any more than the reader. Again, the idea
that there was a hidden reality (hidden to the reader but known to the author) was
challenged, 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 understood
socially before it can be understood intellectually for example he showed how
madness is primarily a social invention, rather than a medical discovery. He claimed
that the analysis of systems of thought required analysis of the detail, to show how each
part interacted with other parts. It wasnt enough to simply identify a core (such as the
evolution of scientific knowledge) and to ignore all other aspects of science.
Jacques Lacan, a psychoanalyst who claimed that the unconscious is structured like a
language, is widely seen as a major structuralist thinker. He claimed to be returning to
Freud 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 is
not a centralised core ego but a dispersed, fragmented, interrelated unknown (the
unconscious).
So we can see that a primary feature of the structuralists is their attack on
foundationalism, attacking any thought that claims to have found a Firm Foundation on
which we can construct beliefs. Instead they emphasise the relatedness of truth, how
Truth is not something we discover, or can own, or can start from, but a structure
which society invents.
Deconstruction
Moving on from the structuralists we come to Derrida and deconstruction. I come to
Jacques Derrida next since his first three important books were published in 1967, which
is ahead of the main post-structuralist book Anti-Oedipus which came out in the early
1970s.
Derrida can be called a post-structuralist in a sense, since he moves on from
structuralism, taking some of it for granted, and challenging other parts of it. Where the
structuralists constructed a system, a structure, Derrida deconstructs it, that is, he takes
it apart. However, the disconcerting thing is that he does so from the inside. His
technique of deconstruction shows how structures or systems of thought contain the
seeds 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 contains
contradictions. And further, these contradictions are not something which can be
corrected, as if the author had errors in an argument which, once corrected, could
produce a better argument, no rather the contradictions were conditions of the system
of thought existing in the first place!
Derrida shows each system of thought to be necessarily contradictory. How he does this
is quite technical, but the idea is to show how the system (1) creates binary pairs for
example good and bad, male and female, black and white, writing and speaking, mad
and sane etc, (2) prioritises one term over another, and indeed defines one in terms of
the other for example male over female (what Derrida calls Phallocentrism), sane over
mad, good over bad etc. (3) then show that in fact you may as well prioritise the second
term over the first show how the first term is dependent on the second, (4) finally
show how the system is dependent on this marginalising of the second term, when in fact
it 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 amongst
literary critics, who take literally his phrase there is nothing outside the text to treat
anything as a text and so subject to literary interpretation.
Post-Structuralism
Post-structuralisms main book, Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari, is in fact an
attempt to combine Marx and Freud (the subtitle is Capitalism and Schizophrenia) by
liberation through free desire. Post-structuralism is really a cultural movement more than
an intellectual movement. Structuralism in the 60s was at least in part an intellectual
programme, and it was possible to analyse phenomena by treating them as being parts
of a system. Post-structuralism moved beyond this, questioning the very notions of
Truth, Reality, Meaning, Sincerity, Good etc. It regarded all absolutes as constructions,
truth was created, it was an effect, it wasnt present in something. Similarly there was
no 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 philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche, whose main thought began with the realisation that if God is dead,
anything is possible everything is permitted, everything is relative. There are no
absolutes 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 we
are living among the ruins of God and post-structuralists tend to follow this poetic
style.
The Origins of Postmodernism
As this movement was growing in popularity in the 70s some other important things were
happening. The radical political groups from the 60s (for example the Maoists) were
coming to an ideological dead-end. Solzhenitsyn was being translated, and revealing in
detail the horrors of Eastern Europe. The importance of the media as an agent for social
change was being realised and media saturation of life was becoming an important
cultural phenomenon. These trends now mixed with the philosophical currents just
described with the following effects.
Firstly, there was a large backlash against Marxism and socialism. It was argued that
Marxism was a totalizing system, whose intellectual totalitarianism moved necessarily to
the Gulag, and instead liberalism and capitalism were embraced as being more open and
relative. Secondly there was a move of intellectuals away from political engagement
(Sartre for example had always been out marching with the students, and Foucault was
often in demonstrations for prison rights, amongst other things), and back to intellectual
work. 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 providing
philosophical justification for conservatism, reaction, depoliticising society and
encouraging an irresponsible, hedonistic lifestyle (for example, did Foucault still have
unsafe sex when he knew he had AIDS? Should Derrida have tried to defend his fellow
philosopher Paul de Mans Nazi record? What of Heideggers Nazi past? What of
Baudrillards claim that the Gulf War never happened?)
As a result of these criticisms, some of the excesses of post-structuralism and
deconstruction are now over. Currently there appears to be a more sober mood among
Continental philosophers as they try to re-position these intellectual movements within
the fight for human rights, and to create better human values.
Recommended Reads:
Structuralism and Since John Sturrock (ed.)
(published by Oxford University Press) Introduction to various thinkers such as Derrida,
Foucault, Barthes etc.
Against Postmodernism Alex Callinicos
(Polity Press) Marxist criticism of structuralism, deconstruction and post-structuralism
clearly written and well argued.
The Transparency of Evil Jean Baudrillard
(Verso) Baudrillard is the postmodern author, writing about how the media has taken
over.
Deconstruction Christopher 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 Gulf
War, Uncritical Theory shows that he is certainly against its excesses.
Contingency and Irony Richard Rorty
(Cambridge University Press) Rorty is an American liberal who takes arguments from
Derrida and others and uses them to defend his relativist views very readable and
enjoyable.
J. Mann 1994
John Mann is a Software Engineer and lives in Hadleigh, Suffolk