Routledge Companion to Critical Theory, Maplas,s. &Wake,
P.
Chapter Poststructuralism by Catherine Belsey. 2006.
An invitation to read differently.
What it proposes:
That meanings of words , images, stories or other texts are not to be found elsewhere, in the mind of the author or in the world depicted.
There are no external, extratextual guarentees. Meanings are unfixed, discontinuos and unstable. Poststructuralism is where the mind of the reader, writer, thinker etc… holds the interpretation of the subjective.
This allows text to give us back more than our own reflection. It offers a distinctive relationshipo between readers, viewers and texts.
Where did it come from:
It came after structuralism. The Routledge companion to critical theory p251 says that Postructuralism was born out of Saussures (1857-1913) and Derrida’s concepts of ‘Difference’ into ‘Difference’. Their reworking of philosophical linguistics went on to generate many discaplines within critical theory or critical theory itself, opened up where people began to rework other peoples concepts and began to explore of the gap between subject and language.
Kants ‘freeplay’:
Freeplay of the power of judgement – spontaneity and freedom. (p103ppoststructuralism and the question of history) History traces.
Misreading’s and misinterpretations don’t exist.
There is always one more account of reality.
Absence and presence parallels, Lacan loss of place.
Deconstructions – knowing it’s opposites, traces of opposites.
Meanings exist before language names them. Meanings belong to other people.
Poststucturalism is a process of posing alternatives. It
allows us to think differently.
In GLOBALIZATION, what are the differences we want to hold
on to in an increasingly homogenized world?
Even opting out, represents a choice to leave things as they
are.
Poststucturalism offers the possibility of a more culturaly
relative account of the pleasure of the text, and permits us to differentiate
between forms of pleasure without recourse to prior value judgements (p53).
…society itself requires us to make decisions in the world
that increasingly acknowledges undecidability in the areas that matter.
Meaning is not guaranteed, only interpretation.
Closure is ultimately withheld.
It obscures more than what it reveals.
There is no one way to think or look at work
anymore.(intertextuality)
Intertextual fairy tale. Free play of the signifier
Intertextual composition. Intertextual landscape.
Intertextual penscape.
INTERTEXTUAL:
STRUCTURALISM: ..focused on resemblances between stories,
reducing them, in effect, to variants of a single, endlessly repeated
narrative..(p47
P48
CLASSIC REALIST TEXT: offers the reader reassurance of
certain knowledge, it begins in enigma but promises closure. The sequence of
events will be made clear.
POSTMODERNIST TEXT in contrast to classic realist text,
withholds closure, gives false certainty, can be deceptive or Secret activities offer presidents the
alluring.
Catherine Belsey: Questions whether ideas come before words.
Key Postructuralist:
roland barthes, Lacan, freud, derrida, marx.
NEOLOGALISM
LOGOCENTRICISM:
A structuralist method of analysis, especially of literary
works, that focuses upon words and language to the exclusion of non-linguistic
matters, such as an author's individuality or historical context. Excessive attention paid to the meanings of
words or distinctions in their usage.
POSTRUCTURALISM
AND QUESTIONING HISTORY Derek Attridge,
Geof Bennington and Robert young.
‘DIFFERENCE’
AND ‘TRACE’ are Derrida’s terms. Derrida reduces everything we think as having
some ‘extra textual’ leverage (power to influence a person) . Derrida
points out local anchorage of the text he is operating on.
‘ESPACEMENT’
marks delay which is also moving away from trace. A movement in space-time
where the particles are left behind…
DIFFERENCE
AND ESPACEMENT show that no moment of experience can present itself except as
reference again to what it is not, what differs from it.
TRACE
ESPACEMENT DIFFERENCE form tracks which are concerned with the line your going
on somewhere like ‘RHIZOMES’ and ‘NOMADER’. ( Delueze and Guattari p104).
Prosper
experiment: fisherman and artist and sediments of
history, something is ventured sent out, on a meandering path of disappearance
and reappearance. Tracing the individual the personality of society- the
differing other in the effects of extreme capitalism. Tracing opposites. Parallels of gain and loss. A place of loss.
The adventure: a place of presence and gain.
Like the vase(p51) makes emptiness, without the boat, a substance that
surrounds lack, a material object with no centre. In the prosper adventure, the
boat could be a metaphor for not what is lost, or what remains, but of its
potential to nourish when it is used. It represents being part of culture,
filling a void, fill our desires to connect to the world. The boat keeps
returning, keeps us guessing what it may land. Never knowing what the catch
will be. A Poststucturalist perspective on this project would be to look
differently at what the boat signifies, what the beach, the shrimp, the people
of Deal, and what can this offer, what awareness, what things could it address,
what recognition does it give to he components of the project. What does it say
about life in this time of history.
Derrida
suggests there is no origin, nor proper direction of meaning from which history
can be measured (p109) P&QH. There is no tidy servility, but a complex
pattern of forward and recursive loops.
Edmund
Husserl (1859 – 1938) philosopher and mathematician. ‘Origin of Geometry’
EIDETIC
STRUCTURES: forms of experience which are prior to facticity (Facticity has a
multiplicity of meanings from factuality and contingency to the intractable
conditions of human existence, the quality or state of being
a fact).
Husserl
says… the present whole of culture implies a continuity of parts which entail
each other, each consisting a present for us of past cultures, a present which
is a sediment of originary sense which the act of understanding reactivates and
makes living. P110 P&QH, history traces.
A
METHODOLOGY POSSIBLE OF POSTSTUCTURALISM
- Do I want to focus on differences in emotions, opinions,
- Do I want to acknowledge undecidability in the world, culture, globally, artistically, socially through Multiculturism.
- Do I want to analyse, as this is unstable.
- Can I identify parallels.
- How does it relate to other things.
- Do I know and acknowledge there is no guaranteed meaning that will be passed on.
- Can I work with interpretations of my work, and that nothing is face value.
- Am I learning about the cultural context around the work I am looking at.
- Does my work deliver closure, do I want it to deliver closure on the question I am asking it. Discourse or resolution or do I want mystery.
- Do I believe the work reveals more than the authors/artists work or input.
- The artwork could offer an account of something.
- Will my work have a narrative closure, is this possible or in what way.
- Will my work lay bare its intertextual composition.
- Could my work pose alternatives.
- Do I want to ensure a specific reaction from my viewers? What would they be.
- What differences do I see or experience in the work.
- Could a contrary critic constitute a strength rather than a weakness.
- What absence is my work representing.
