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Chapter 5 - Post Structuralists

The document discusses post-structuralism and its key theorists and concepts. It analyzes Roland Barthes' approach to textual analysis and how it focuses on the reader over the author. It also compares structuralism and post-structuralism, outlining some of their differences in areas like origin, tone, and fundamental aims.

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241 views6 pages

Chapter 5 - Post Structuralists

The document discusses post-structuralism and its key theorists and concepts. It analyzes Roland Barthes' approach to textual analysis and how it focuses on the reader over the author. It also compares structuralism and post-structuralism, outlining some of their differences in areas like origin, tone, and fundamental aims.

Uploaded by

Apenton Mimi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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EL109 LITERARY CRITICISM

CHAPTER 5: POST STRUCTURALISTS

Objectives:

a.) Define the characteristics of post structuralists.


b.) Analyze how it affects the reader’s interpretation of the text.

Roland Barthes (1915-1980)

- was a prolific French literary critic whose eclectic


interests led him to write on topics as diverse as
photography, advertising, film and even fashion. Although
regarded as a semiologist, Barthe's method goes far
beyond semiology and is difficult to categorize into
anyone trend of literary criticism. The analytical technique
with which the present study is concerned comes from his
large 1970 essay S/Z, an exhaustive analysis of Horone
de Balzac's novella Sarrasine. 4 Barthes sections the text
of the novella into 561 segments, or "lexias" which vary in length from one word ( as in
the case of the title) to several sentences. Barthes works with one lexia at a time but
creates a system of cross-references among different lexias.

Through this method, Barthes tracks linearly all of the various processes involved in the
reader's interpretation of a narrative text. After presenting each segment of text, Barthes
identifies which of the codes are operative in that segment, that is, by means of which
codes the reader processes the story to derive meaning from it. Barthes formulates five
codes, each of which has root in a different aspect of literary analysis. The first of these
codes is the

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EL109 LITERARY CRITICISM

Hermeneutic Code, which governs the


proposing, sustaining and resolution of enigmas.
Small enigmas might be solve quickly, while
major enigmas, those which are integral to
maintaining suspense in the text's plot, are
prolonged through various means.

The Semic Code is the code of the character.


Through it, the writers unfold the personalities of
the character of the story.

The Symbolic Code refers to the symbolic antithesis which is so prevalent in classical
literature: for example, references to life and death, hot and cold, youth and age, etc.

The Proairetic Code is the most basic of the codes: it is the sequence of the events
and actions that make up the plot of the story as it unfolds.

Hermeneutic Code (the voice of truth) - the code of enigmas or puzzles

Semic Code (the voice of a person) - The accumulation of connotations. Semes,


sequential thoughts, traits and actions constitute character. "The proper noun
surrounded by connotations."

Symbolic Code (the voice of empirics) - The code of actions. Any action initiated must
be completed. The cumulative actions constitute the plot events of the text.

Cultural Code (the voice of science or knowledge) - Though all codes are cultural we
reserve this designation for the storehouse of knowledge we use in interpreting
everyday experience.

Post-Structuralism

Rejects the idea of a literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning or
one single existence. Instead every individual reader creates a new and individual

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EL109 LITERARY CRITICISM

purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text. Hold that language is not a
transparent medium that connects one directly with a "truth" or "reality" outside it but
rather a structure of code, whose part derive their meaning from their contrast with one
another and not from any connection with an outside work. May we understood as a
critical response to the basic assumptions of structuralism but there are differences:

STRUCTURALIST POST- STRUCTURALIST

Origin derives ultimately from derives ultimately from


linguistic philosophy. Nietzsche- "
There are facts, only
interpretations."

Tone and Style Structuralist writings tend Post-structuralist writing by


towards abstraction and contrast, tends to be much
generalization: it aims for a more emotive. Often the
detached, scientific tone is urgent and euphoric,
coolness of tone. and the style flamboyant
and self-consciously showy.
Attitude to the language

Attitude to the language Structuralists accept that Post-structuralism is much


the world is constructed more fundamentalist in
through language in the insisting upon the
sense that we do not have consequences of the view
access to the reality other that, in effect, reality itself is
than through the linguistic textual. Post-structuralism
medium. develops what threaten to
become terminal anxieties
about the possibility of
achieving any knowledge

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EL109 LITERARY CRITICISM

through language.

Fundamental Aims Questions are way of It distrust the very notion of


structuring and categorizing reason, and the idea of the
reality and prompts us to human being as an
break free of habitual independent entity,
modes of perception or preferring the notion of the
categorization, but we "dissolved or constructed"
believes that we can subject, whereby what we
thereby attain a more may think of as the
reliable view of things. individual is really a product
of social social and
linguistic forces that is, not
an essence at all, merely a
tissue of textualities.

In the Post-structuralist approach to


textual analysis, the reader replaces the
author as the primary subject of inquiry and
without central fixation on the author. Post-
structuralist examine other sources for
meaning (e.g. readers, cututal norms, other
literature etc.) which are therforenever
authoritative, and promise no consistency. A
reader's culture and society, then, share at
least an equal part in the interpretation of a piece to the cultural and social
circumstances of the author. Writers whose work is often characterized as post-
structuralist include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Bulter,

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EL109 LITERARY CRITICISM

Jean Baudrillard and Julia Kristeva, although many theorist who have been called "post-
structuralist" have rejected the label.

Some Proponent of Post Structuralism

Jacques Derrida

- was one of the first to propose some theoretical


limitations to Structuralism, and identified as apparent de-
stabilizing or de-centring in intellectual life ( referring to
the displacement of the author of a text as having the
greatest effect on a text itself, in favour of the various
readers of the text), which came to be known as Post-
Structuralism. - argued that meaning has a performative,
practical dimension not associated with an originating
subjectivity. Meaning is renewed or transformed through
such performances.

Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author"

- assert, rhetorically, the independence of the literary text and it's immunity to have
possibility of being unified or limited by any notion of what the author might have
intended or crafted into the work. The death of the author is the birth of the reader.

Key Assumptions Underlying Post-Structuralism Include

- The concept of "self" as a singular and coherent entity is a fictional construct and an
individual rather comprises conflicting tensions and knowledge claims (e.g. gender,
class, profession etc.) The interpretation of meaning of a text is therefore dependent on
a reader's own personal concept of self.

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EL109 LITERARY CRITICISM

What Post-Structuralists Critics Do?

- The read the text against itself, where meanings are expressed which maybe directly
contrary to the surface meaning. - Gives importance to words similarities in sound, the
root meaning of words, added metaphor. - The text is characterized by disunity rather
than unity. Concentrated on a single passage and analyses it so intensively results into
multiplicities of meaning.

For More Knowledge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woQEXuH_0GA


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aai-gKwtAsQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhOrLG0Fk_s

Reference:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introliterature/chapter/introduction-to-critical-
theory/

https://iep.utm.edu/literary/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CLiterary%20theory%E2%80%9D%20is
%20the%20body,reveal%20what%20literature%20can%20mean.

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