Assignment
Name : Dabhi Vipul
Semester : 2
Roll no : 35
Enrollment no : 2069108420180009
Email : dabhivc04@gmail.com
Paper 7 : Literary Criticism
Topic : Differentiate the approach of Structuralist and Post Structuralist with appropriate examples.
Batch : 2017-2019
Submitted to : Department of English MKBU
Introduction
What is Structuralistic view :
Structuralism is the methodology that implies elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel.
List of Structuralist theorists
Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure.
Essais de linguistique générale, Roman Jakobson.
The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Structural Anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Mythologiques, Claude Lévi-Strauss.
The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Lacan.
What is Post structuralistic view :
Post-structuralism offers a way of studying how knowledge is produced and critiques Structuralist premises. It argues that because history and culture condition the study of underlying structures, both are subject to biases and misinterpretations. A Post-structuralist approach argues that to understand an object (e.g., a text), it is necessary to study both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object.
List of Post Structuralist theorists
Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault,
Gilles Deleuze,
Judith Butler,
Jean Baudrillard and
Julia Kristeva
although many theorists who have been called "post-structuralist" have rejected the label.
Difference between structuralism and Post structuralism :
The short answer is that structuralism looks at the relations or the structure present within phenomena, while poststructuralism takes into account the actual relations and structure present within the structuralist approach you employ to understand something. So it's a kind of meta.
The long answer is that philosophers have always been searching for some kind of core, meaning or answer. "God", "human", "being" etc. Then Heidegger came along and asked everybody a question: we're always searching for some kind of core, a center, but what about questioning our very need to search for the core and the center? (He wasn't the only one or the first one to ask this, but let's use him as a landmark, just to understand the timeline better.) Then there were a few others who started to question that need to find the answer to everything and connected it strongly to language, "the limits of our world", etc.
Long story short, gradually people shifted from trying to find the ultimate answer to studying the actual workings of this search for the ultimate answer. The structure of our thinking, the relations that define who we are and what we're thinking, how language (and other mediums we use) affect us, etc.
That's structuralism more or less. It doesn't attempt to give the ultimate answer anymore, it just admits that it proposes a way of looking at things through relations. But then if you start looking at things in this way you lose some kind of emotional attachment and poetry. So there was this resurrection of mystical and poetic in philosophy and let's use Derrida here as the main protagonist, why not. He was the one to say, ok, let's look at the structure of things, at all the relations and the dynamics of how things are to understand better, fine. He even did it himself quite a lot also. But then what you're left with is a whole disassembled in parts and that's not good, because it loses life. So to inject life again into the disassembled whole, we need to assemble it again. But in a way that will produce something new, like poetry or art.
This approach was then further developed (without using the "poststructuralism" monicker) by the likes of Agamben and Meillassoux – speculative realism perhaps being the latest attempt to do philosophy in a way that has a meaning but doesn't make logical sense although still provides for a very inspiring reading.
Structuralism was a literary movement primarily concerned with understanding how language works as a system of meaning production.
That is to say, structuralism asked the following question: How does language function as a kind of meaning machine?
To answer this question, structuralism turned its attention to form.
Focusing on the form or structure of the literary work, and the particular use of language in the work, would allow structuralists to think of language as a kind of science.
The primary theorist framing the ideas associated with structuralism was Ferdinand de Saussure, who developed the idea that language was composed of arbitrary units that were void of concept or meaning until they acquired meaning through a language system that relied on differences between terms within their larger linguistic and social contexts. Poststructuralism, on the other hand, is less singularly defined as a movement than structuralism.
A number of literary theories fall under the larger umbrella of
poststructuralism, including gender theory and reader-response theories. These theories recognize the overarching notion that meaning does not exist outside of the text and that meaning is not fixed but rather contingent and unstable.
Poststructuralism evolved alongside Jacques Derridas theory of deconstruction, which emphasized this concept of unstable, unfixed meaning as it functioned in language. According to Derrida, language is made up of units that do not contain inherent meaning and relate to other units (or signifiers) through their difference.
Meaning, in deconstructionist theory, is therefore constantly deferred, never landing in one place or becoming stable. Poststructuralism emerges in this context, recognizing this lack of fixed or inherent meaning and yet also acknowledging the need for language to acquire meaning.
Post-structuralism, on the other hand, cannot help viewing this pseudoscientific endeavor as futile and even ridiculous. The post-structuralists argue that truth and objective reality are not only inaccessible, but also altogether inexistent within language. Since physical reality can only be apprehended through language, and since our conscious self itself is a product of language, the quest for objective meanings and universal structures becomes therefore completely illusory. In the same way, the concept of nature, which was already very problematic within structuralism, becomes totally impossible with its counterpart. As Jacques Derrida demonstrates, this search for certainty, for a solid ground behind language, which he calls the metaphysics of presence, has been the ultimate quest of Western philosophy from Plato onwards, and can thus be perceived, under one form or another, throughout our philosophy. According to Derrida, structuralism falls prey to the same fallacy in its pursuit of universal and objective patterns. In that sense, as we will see, the French philosopher speaks of a perpetual absence, which can never be fulfilled. In the same way, he argues that meanings, which we are so certain of finding behind words, are actually never there, but continuously postponed, and accordingly always absent. Put very simply, we can say that, while structuralism separates the sign from physical reality in asserting that language can never grasp this reality, post-structuralism takes it a step further and disconnects the signifier from the signified within the sign itself. For post-structuralism, signifieds, or meanings can never be grasped behind the words in the same way as raw physical reality cannot be apprehended through language.
Structuralism, which can be seen either as a method or a world view, was born from linguistics, as Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics constitutes its real foundation. Later on, the American linguistic Roman Jakobson developed some of its aspects, such as phonology. After the Second War, structuralism expanded toward anthropology with Claude Lévi-Strauss, and literary criticism with, among others, Roland Barthes (the early Barthes), Tzvetan Todorov and Jonathan Culler. Eventually, this powerful intellectual current reached philosophy and all the spheres of social sciences. By the end of the sixties, structuralism reigned supreme as it had overthrown the so far prevalent world views of phenomenology, Marxism and existentialism. However, even as it achieved the peak of its popularity, it received a deadly blow from post-structuralism, and then quickly lost its appeal. Some critics (Murfin 363) have argued that modernist angst and alienation accounted for structuralism’s extraordinary success; similarly, its unifying impulse can be seen as a logical reaction against the increasing fragmentation of knowledge. However, such an effort failed in the end, and post-structuralism has only given us more reasons to feel alienated, and for knowledge to be fragmented.
Structuralism in Hamlet :
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a Structuralist’s dream come true. Read from the lens of a structuralist point of view, the story is perfectly woven in a literary structure of patterns, connections and motifs.
Hamlet is first and foremost, a tragedy. Structuralism values stories that connect to tropes and genres of the past, and Hamlet is no outlier to the tragedy formula. Tragedy requires the downfall of a character of high agency, and often involves death, and especially, death of the innocent. Hamlet as a character goes from a the strong figure of a prince on the path of revenge, to a character of murderous madness to falls from royalty and honor to his grave. The structuralist formula of tragedy is followed excellently by Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Structuralism also greatly values the “system of recurrent patterns or motifs.” Shakespeare’s play features many memorable motifs, such as the power of words, the idea of madness, imagery and allusion to poison, revenge and murder. Hamlet also features an incredibly strong structure of parallels.
Hamlet, is paralleled to both Laertes and Young Fortinbras in Shakespeare’s universe. All three young men of this play have lost their fathers to murder and seek revenge. Hamlet is paralleled to his father in his feelings of fury towards his Uncle, his feelings of apparent cuckolding in the loss of his mother to his Uncle, and most shallowly, in his name. Ophelia and Gertrude are often paralleled in both the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia and Hamlet and his mother, and their actions. The play features a play within the play, which directly parallels the murder of the late King Hamlet. And just as King Hamlet died by the work of poison, so did his murderer, his brother King Claudius.
Post Structuralism :
Poststructural Analysis of “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman
Grass offers new definitions of self, democracy, and nationhood. Whitman is not only the poem’s author, but also its speaker, a fact which challenges the reader to decenter Whitman’s assertions and meanings. While the poststructuralist temptation may be to ignore Whitman’s persistent first person viewpoint the reader can arrive at his or her own interpretation of the text by embracing it. By appropriating the “I," the reader challenges Whitman’s facile assumption that he speaks for every man. By rendering this poststructuralist reading, the reader forces to become a chorus of possibilities rather than Whitman’s solo.
When the reader becomes the narrator, Whitman is decentered .The reader does not have to accept Whitman’s observations and claims simply because he or she has appropriated Whitman’s identity and voice. Rather, the reader can—and should—pause to consider whether Whitman’s observations fit with his or her knowledge and experience. Readers can contest Whitman’s conclusions because they have claimed interpretive agency. Every time the reader utters “I" he or she is immediately called to question Whitman’s assertions. Whitman does not speak for every man. He articulates his own dream of America, but the very nature of America is its multiplicity of identities and differences of opinion. The poststructuralist reader understands that Whitman’s attempt to speak for all men is an impossible undertaking.
Work cited :
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-Post-structuralism-and-structuralism
https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/themes/Edu/curriculum/curriculumQAAJAX.php?action=getcourseunitqas&courseunitid=8341
http://www.articlemyriad.com/poststructural-analysis-leaves-grass-walt-whitman/
https://hamletstructuralism.wordpress.com
Name : Dabhi Vipul
Semester : 2
Roll no : 35
Enrollment no : 2069108420180009
Email : dabhivc04@gmail.com
Paper 7 : Literary Criticism
Topic : Differentiate the approach of Structuralist and Post Structuralist with appropriate examples.
Batch : 2017-2019
Submitted to : Department of English MKBU
Introduction
What is Structuralistic view :
Structuralism is the methodology that implies elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel.
List of Structuralist theorists
Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure.
Essais de linguistique générale, Roman Jakobson.
The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Structural Anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Mythologiques, Claude Lévi-Strauss.
The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Lacan.
What is Post structuralistic view :
Post-structuralism offers a way of studying how knowledge is produced and critiques Structuralist premises. It argues that because history and culture condition the study of underlying structures, both are subject to biases and misinterpretations. A Post-structuralist approach argues that to understand an object (e.g., a text), it is necessary to study both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object.
List of Post Structuralist theorists
Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault,
Gilles Deleuze,
Judith Butler,
Jean Baudrillard and
Julia Kristeva
although many theorists who have been called "post-structuralist" have rejected the label.
Difference between structuralism and Post structuralism :
The short answer is that structuralism looks at the relations or the structure present within phenomena, while poststructuralism takes into account the actual relations and structure present within the structuralist approach you employ to understand something. So it's a kind of meta.
The long answer is that philosophers have always been searching for some kind of core, meaning or answer. "God", "human", "being" etc. Then Heidegger came along and asked everybody a question: we're always searching for some kind of core, a center, but what about questioning our very need to search for the core and the center? (He wasn't the only one or the first one to ask this, but let's use him as a landmark, just to understand the timeline better.) Then there were a few others who started to question that need to find the answer to everything and connected it strongly to language, "the limits of our world", etc.
Long story short, gradually people shifted from trying to find the ultimate answer to studying the actual workings of this search for the ultimate answer. The structure of our thinking, the relations that define who we are and what we're thinking, how language (and other mediums we use) affect us, etc.
That's structuralism more or less. It doesn't attempt to give the ultimate answer anymore, it just admits that it proposes a way of looking at things through relations. But then if you start looking at things in this way you lose some kind of emotional attachment and poetry. So there was this resurrection of mystical and poetic in philosophy and let's use Derrida here as the main protagonist, why not. He was the one to say, ok, let's look at the structure of things, at all the relations and the dynamics of how things are to understand better, fine. He even did it himself quite a lot also. But then what you're left with is a whole disassembled in parts and that's not good, because it loses life. So to inject life again into the disassembled whole, we need to assemble it again. But in a way that will produce something new, like poetry or art.
This approach was then further developed (without using the "poststructuralism" monicker) by the likes of Agamben and Meillassoux – speculative realism perhaps being the latest attempt to do philosophy in a way that has a meaning but doesn't make logical sense although still provides for a very inspiring reading.
Structuralism was a literary movement primarily concerned with understanding how language works as a system of meaning production.
That is to say, structuralism asked the following question: How does language function as a kind of meaning machine?
To answer this question, structuralism turned its attention to form.
Focusing on the form or structure of the literary work, and the particular use of language in the work, would allow structuralists to think of language as a kind of science.
The primary theorist framing the ideas associated with structuralism was Ferdinand de Saussure, who developed the idea that language was composed of arbitrary units that were void of concept or meaning until they acquired meaning through a language system that relied on differences between terms within their larger linguistic and social contexts. Poststructuralism, on the other hand, is less singularly defined as a movement than structuralism.
A number of literary theories fall under the larger umbrella of
poststructuralism, including gender theory and reader-response theories. These theories recognize the overarching notion that meaning does not exist outside of the text and that meaning is not fixed but rather contingent and unstable.
Poststructuralism evolved alongside Jacques Derridas theory of deconstruction, which emphasized this concept of unstable, unfixed meaning as it functioned in language. According to Derrida, language is made up of units that do not contain inherent meaning and relate to other units (or signifiers) through their difference.
Meaning, in deconstructionist theory, is therefore constantly deferred, never landing in one place or becoming stable. Poststructuralism emerges in this context, recognizing this lack of fixed or inherent meaning and yet also acknowledging the need for language to acquire meaning.
Post-structuralism, on the other hand, cannot help viewing this pseudoscientific endeavor as futile and even ridiculous. The post-structuralists argue that truth and objective reality are not only inaccessible, but also altogether inexistent within language. Since physical reality can only be apprehended through language, and since our conscious self itself is a product of language, the quest for objective meanings and universal structures becomes therefore completely illusory. In the same way, the concept of nature, which was already very problematic within structuralism, becomes totally impossible with its counterpart. As Jacques Derrida demonstrates, this search for certainty, for a solid ground behind language, which he calls the metaphysics of presence, has been the ultimate quest of Western philosophy from Plato onwards, and can thus be perceived, under one form or another, throughout our philosophy. According to Derrida, structuralism falls prey to the same fallacy in its pursuit of universal and objective patterns. In that sense, as we will see, the French philosopher speaks of a perpetual absence, which can never be fulfilled. In the same way, he argues that meanings, which we are so certain of finding behind words, are actually never there, but continuously postponed, and accordingly always absent. Put very simply, we can say that, while structuralism separates the sign from physical reality in asserting that language can never grasp this reality, post-structuralism takes it a step further and disconnects the signifier from the signified within the sign itself. For post-structuralism, signifieds, or meanings can never be grasped behind the words in the same way as raw physical reality cannot be apprehended through language.
Structuralism, which can be seen either as a method or a world view, was born from linguistics, as Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics constitutes its real foundation. Later on, the American linguistic Roman Jakobson developed some of its aspects, such as phonology. After the Second War, structuralism expanded toward anthropology with Claude Lévi-Strauss, and literary criticism with, among others, Roland Barthes (the early Barthes), Tzvetan Todorov and Jonathan Culler. Eventually, this powerful intellectual current reached philosophy and all the spheres of social sciences. By the end of the sixties, structuralism reigned supreme as it had overthrown the so far prevalent world views of phenomenology, Marxism and existentialism. However, even as it achieved the peak of its popularity, it received a deadly blow from post-structuralism, and then quickly lost its appeal. Some critics (Murfin 363) have argued that modernist angst and alienation accounted for structuralism’s extraordinary success; similarly, its unifying impulse can be seen as a logical reaction against the increasing fragmentation of knowledge. However, such an effort failed in the end, and post-structuralism has only given us more reasons to feel alienated, and for knowledge to be fragmented.
Structuralism in Hamlet :
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a Structuralist’s dream come true. Read from the lens of a structuralist point of view, the story is perfectly woven in a literary structure of patterns, connections and motifs.
Hamlet is first and foremost, a tragedy. Structuralism values stories that connect to tropes and genres of the past, and Hamlet is no outlier to the tragedy formula. Tragedy requires the downfall of a character of high agency, and often involves death, and especially, death of the innocent. Hamlet as a character goes from a the strong figure of a prince on the path of revenge, to a character of murderous madness to falls from royalty and honor to his grave. The structuralist formula of tragedy is followed excellently by Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Structuralism also greatly values the “system of recurrent patterns or motifs.” Shakespeare’s play features many memorable motifs, such as the power of words, the idea of madness, imagery and allusion to poison, revenge and murder. Hamlet also features an incredibly strong structure of parallels.
Hamlet, is paralleled to both Laertes and Young Fortinbras in Shakespeare’s universe. All three young men of this play have lost their fathers to murder and seek revenge. Hamlet is paralleled to his father in his feelings of fury towards his Uncle, his feelings of apparent cuckolding in the loss of his mother to his Uncle, and most shallowly, in his name. Ophelia and Gertrude are often paralleled in both the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia and Hamlet and his mother, and their actions. The play features a play within the play, which directly parallels the murder of the late King Hamlet. And just as King Hamlet died by the work of poison, so did his murderer, his brother King Claudius.
Post Structuralism :
Poststructural Analysis of “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman
Grass offers new definitions of self, democracy, and nationhood. Whitman is not only the poem’s author, but also its speaker, a fact which challenges the reader to decenter Whitman’s assertions and meanings. While the poststructuralist temptation may be to ignore Whitman’s persistent first person viewpoint the reader can arrive at his or her own interpretation of the text by embracing it. By appropriating the “I," the reader challenges Whitman’s facile assumption that he speaks for every man. By rendering this poststructuralist reading, the reader forces to become a chorus of possibilities rather than Whitman’s solo.
When the reader becomes the narrator, Whitman is decentered .The reader does not have to accept Whitman’s observations and claims simply because he or she has appropriated Whitman’s identity and voice. Rather, the reader can—and should—pause to consider whether Whitman’s observations fit with his or her knowledge and experience. Readers can contest Whitman’s conclusions because they have claimed interpretive agency. Every time the reader utters “I" he or she is immediately called to question Whitman’s assertions. Whitman does not speak for every man. He articulates his own dream of America, but the very nature of America is its multiplicity of identities and differences of opinion. The poststructuralist reader understands that Whitman’s attempt to speak for all men is an impossible undertaking.
Work cited :
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-Post-structuralism-and-structuralism
https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/themes/Edu/curriculum/curriculumQAAJAX.php?action=getcourseunitqas&courseunitid=8341
http://www.articlemyriad.com/poststructural-analysis-leaves-grass-walt-whitman/
https://hamletstructuralism.wordpress.com
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