Culture studies

1. Cultural studies
Assignment
Name: Alisha Vaghasiya
M.A. Sem: 2
Paper No. (8-c) Cultural
Studies
Assignment Topic:
Post structuralism and
Deconstruction-Jacques
Derrida-Michel Foucault-
Gayatri Spivak

2. Introduction
Post structuralism and Deconstruction terms are mainly associated with the work of the French
philosopher Jacques Derrida. Deconstruction and Post structuralism provided a radically new
approach to language, narratives and interpretation.
Derrida and difference
For, Post structuralism
‘language is never stable’.
Meaning is the result of the difference, and this process of differentiation is endless.
Meaning is never present in the sign, simply because the sign refers to (yet) another sign, which is
not here.
For example:-
In order to understand the term ‘cat’, we need more words like ‘animal’, or ‘four-legged’, or
‘organism’.
Then we need to understand ‘animal’, ‘organism’ using words like ‘living’ or ‘non-human’,
which in turn requires an explanation and understanding of ‘human’ and ‘life’.
Notice how each term can be explained through newer terms.
Thus reading or interpretation is the movement through the chain of signs, seeking a temporary
meaning from/at halt.
This suggests that Every signifier (word/sign) leads not to a stable end- signified, but to more
signifiers.
This implies that Meaning is never fully graspable, and the final meaning is always postponed
(differed).
A sign may be reproduced any time any place ( the iterability or repeatability of sign).
Thus it can be made to mean differently each time it repeats in a different context.
It is never absolutely same sign that we encounter at each moment of its repetition.

3. It follows that if meaning is never fully present then human identity- which is the result and the
product of the language- is also never stable or unified.
The ‘presence’ of identities or meaning is an illusion, for all presence is tainted with the impurity
of the absent and the excluded.
The very term ‘ Structure’ presupposes a Unity, a centre and the margin.
‘there is never centre without margin’
In fact, if we did not have margins, we cannot locate a centre.
This means the existence of the centre is never definite and unified: it depends on the existence of
the margin.
The centre is identified in its difference from the margin.
And in order to understand/ explain centre we need to refer to the margin.
That is, the meaning of the term ‘centre’ is differed (postponed) until we explain the term
‘margin’.
Hence meaning is available only difference and diference. To suggest the togetherness of these
two features of the sign and meaning Derrida coins the term differAnce.
For Derrida the entire field of signs of ‘writing’ or, ecriture. Here writing is not restricted to the
graphic sense of the word, but refers to the Figural sense: writing is the term used to denote any
system that Is based on difference and diference (differAnce).
To study such writings, Derrida terms ‘ Grammatology’, the very science of ‘difference’.
In short.. his key ideas are…..
• Identity and meaning are never stable or unified.
• Identity and meaning are based on difference.
• Identity and meaning always depend on some other term or concept which is not present in
this term.
• There is no final meaning because each time you arrive at a ‘set of key terms’, or
meanings, you discover that you need to move on to more words.

4. MICHEL FOUCAULT
• Michel Foucault and power/ knowledge
Michel Foucault was interested in the way power structures depends upon structures of knowledge. (
arts, science, medicine, demography) and how,Once they acquire knowledge, creates subjects to be
controlled.
Foucault’s methodology seeks to understand how some sections of the population have been classified
as criminals or insane.
That is, he is interested in understanding the processes of classification that helped exclude some people
from society.
Foucault argues that certain authorities who possess power in society produce knowledge about those
who lack power. Such a system of knowledge is called ‘Discourse’The arts, religion, science and the
law are discourses that produces particular subjects.
Let us look at a concept- map of designation of deviance and their remedies inn histories as produced
by specific ‘authorities’.
Category Discourse Authority ‘Corrective’

5. Immortality Religion Priest Penitence
Vagrancy Economics Economist/ Social
commentator
Forced
Employment
Criminal Law Police/ Jury Imprisonment
Insane Psychiatry Psychiatrist/
Psychoanalyst
Asylum
Sick Medicine Physician Hospital
The last column, ‘corrective’ marks the actual enforcement of power or process/ act, where the
‘authorities’ ensures that the deviance is rectified according to what they think is right.
Discourse and Knowledge produce certain category of ‘subjects’ (people) who are then treated in
particular ways:
the immoral are ‘remedied’ by priests, criminals are jailed by thelaw, the sick are treated by the doctors
and insane shut away in asylums by Psychiatrist.
What happens, therefore, is that the production of knowledge about those who lack power leads to very
effective practices of power on the part of the authorities.Knowledge and classification systems such as
medicine, law, or religion are therefore modes of social control. Power and knowledge help to
identify and classify individual subjects as mad or ill.The task is to analyze the working of the power and
knowledge within a social set-up.These can be at the level of the family or at the level of the nation-
state.
There is therefore,
No such things as neutral or objective knowledge because knowledge is always used to serve the
interests of the Dominant group. Now after Foucault we know that discourse produce particular
subject, who are subjects to no control.*concept of Subaltern:-People who lack the power to determine
their lives and future are said to lack agency. They are called ‘Subaltern’.Every social formation has its

6. own social subalterns.The dominant groups in social structures that construct subalterns also use
particular modes to ensure that the subalterns remain powerless.
*Ideology:-One such means of keeping the power relation in favor of dominant category is ideology.-
ideology is a system of belief and ideas that permeates social formationsIdeology justifies oppressions
and social inequalities by suggesting that the lower classes have always been inferior and persuades
them of the validity of this belief.That is, ideology circulates as a system of representation and images
that ‘naturalizes’ oppressions and creates the illusion that oppression is natural.
GAYATRI SPIVAK
Gayatri Spivak and the Subaltern
A distinguished literary and cultural critic Gayatri Spivak utilizes methods and approach from
Marxism, Feminism and Deconstruction. Her work in postcolonial studies, especially those
dealing with formerly colonized nations. The ‘Subalterns’ is a term Spivak borrows from the
Italian Marxist ANTONIO GRAMSCI to signify the oppressed class
Spivak’s well known (and controversial) argument is that “ the Subalterns cannot speak for
him/herself because the very ‘structures’ of colonized power prevents the speaking”
For the colonized woman speaking is even more impossible because both colonialism and
patriarchy ensure that she keeps quite. The Subaltern therefore cannot represent herself.Spivak
argues that the work of intellectuals is to make visible the position of the marginalized. The
Subalterns must be ‘Spoken For’.Spivak points out that during colonialism the British assumed
the authority and prerogative to speak for the oppressed native women.The construction of the
oppressed native woman was necessary to justify the presence of the modernizing, savior
Britisher. The native woman apparently ‘called out’ for liberation, which the white colonial
master was supposed to provide.The nationalists also resurrected the voice of the native woman
for their own ends, but as Spivak points out , the voice of the woman is effaced in the discourse of
both nationalism and colonialism: she is only spoken for.Building on this notion of the Subaltern
a new mode of writing history, the subaltern studies project, was launched in 1982, under the
leadership of Ranajit Guha.This project argued that traditional historiography only celebrated
the actions of the Elite.Thus, the ‘freedom struggle’, in traditional history was represented as
the story of the actions of the selected leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Tilak. It is ignored the
peasant and tribal rebellions that preceded the formation of the Indian National Congress.That
is , such an elitist history ignored or marginalized certain kinds of revolt against the British in
favors of the Dominant.The project therefore, explored and recorded smaller rebellions and tried
to redress this balance. It gave voice to the subalterns within the freedom struggle.Let us look at

7. another concept- map of various kinds of social formations(Context) and the subalterns they
construct.
Social Formation Subalterns Dominant Group Ideology
Class Working class Capitalist-
bourgeois
Capitalism
Empire Natives Europeans
Colonialism
Patriarchy Women Men
Gender
Nation Ethnic minorities Majority Homogenization
and
Nationalism
In a capitalist society THE CAPITALISTS HOLDS THE POWER. The working class, toiling
to generate profits for the capitalists, locks any agency, but is made to believe it is happy
because Capitalism is an ideology spreads the illusion that the exploitative capitalist system is
actually generous, benevolent and caring patron of the working class.
In Patriarchal society the women is assigned particular roles – as wife, as mother, as
daughter. All of which make her dependent upon the male, and reduce her identity to her
relationship within men.
The ideology of gender is such that the woman is trained, right from childhood, to believe that
motherhood and wifely roles are the goals to aspire to. IT NATURALIZES THE UNEQUAL
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GENDERS.

8. In a nation- state, the minorities are asked to believe in the ideal of the nation, even when the
nation does not respect their cultural rights, or to solve their problems. Any attempt to seek
cultural right or protection or recognitions seen and treated as a threat to the nation itself.
Further, the nation is supposedly unified an ideology that ignores through a process of
homogenization, all cultural, ethnic and regional differences.
POST STRUCTURALISM AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROPOSES:
difference as intrinsic to identity, the contingency of meaning, and the linkage of all knowledge
with the exercise of power where the dominant group generates the meaning and knowledge in
order to keep sections of people under control through ideology’s system of representation