This presentation is having the very basic view for the movements that is Structuralism and Poststructuralism.

1. STRUCTURALISM AND
POST-STRUCTURALISM
Presented by : Emisha Ravani

2. Sem 3 (M.A.)
Roll no. 7
Enrollment no. 4069206420210031
Paper code : 22410
Paper no. & paper name : Paper 205A: Cultural
Studies
Submitted to : Smt. S.B. Gardi, Department of
English,
MKBU
emisharavani3459@gmail.com

3. What Structuralism does?
How human behavior is determined by cultural, social and
psychological structures - A single unified approach to human life
that would embrace all disciplines.
Who are the literary figures in
structuralism?
Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida explored the possibilities of
applying structuralist principles to literature. Jacques Lacan studied
psychology in the light of structuralism,
blending Freud and Saussure. Michel Foucault‘s The Order of
Things examined the history of science to study the structures of
epistemology. Louis Althusser combined Marxism and Structuralism to
create his own brand of social analysis. (Mambrol)

4. Four major theories in the field of
structuralism :
1.Two terms that have become common currency in
linguistics—“parole(concrete),” or the speech of the
individual person, and “langue(abstract),” the system
underlying speech activity.
2.Signifier ( The physical existence ,sound, word,
image) + Signified ( The mental concept) = Sign (The
object)
3. Arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified
4. Binary relationship between words

5. - Work / Text (conflict of meaning by the changing
time)
According to Mambrol,
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.
- Unconsciousness in the structuralism
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 Americanization of psychoanalysis
with its emphasis on ego psychology. He emphasized the role of
the unconscious by showing that the ‘I’ is not a centralized core
‘ego’ but a dispersed, fragmented, interrelated unknown (the
unconscious). (Mann)

6. Poststructuralism
- Post-structuralism as a literary movement.(Time period)
- Poststructuralism as a theory. (aspects)
- Post-structuralism was reaction against structuralism
movement. And they tried to break all the aspects of
structuralism that is like,
Meaning is not constant, it is constantly changing. By Derridean
thought of différance. language is not a transparent medium that
connects one directly with a “truth” or “reality” outside it but
rather a structure or code, whose parts derive their meaning
from their contrast with one another and not from any
connection with an outside world. (Britannica)

7. What are the major claims of poststructuralism?
- Identity and meaning are based on difference.
- Identity and meaning are never stable or unified.
- Identity and meaning always depend on some other term
or concept which is nit 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.
(Nayar)

8. Let’s have a look to the activity :
Think of defining the inside of your house, of delimiting the
boundaries of the house. Can you define it without referring
to the outside world, the road side or the next house? Can
you draw the boundaries of your house without also marking
the boundaries of what is not inside your ‘territory’?
And now ask : how are we to distinguish between inside and
outside? Are inside and outside mutually dependent? (Nayar)
- No binary opposition
- Speech & writing are complimentary

9. • Work Cited :
• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Jacques Derrida". Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Oct. 2022,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Derrida.
• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "poststructuralism". Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Sep. 2022,
https://www.britannica.com/art/poststructuralism.
• Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Structuralism.” Literary Theory and Criticism, 15 July 2020,
https://literariness.org/2016/03/20/structuralism/.
• Mann, John. “A Gentle Introduction to Structuralism, Postmodernism and All That.” Philosophy Now: a
Magazine of Ideas,
https://philosophynow.org/issues/10/A_Gentle_Introduction_to_Structuralism_Postmodernism_And_All_
That.
• Nayar, Pramod. An Introduction to Cultural studies. second ed., New Delhi, Viva books private limited.

10. Thank you