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STRUCTURALISM AND POST-
STRUCTURALISM
Saturday, 8 November, 14
Structuralism• An intellectual movement from early to
mid-20th century• Human culture may be understood by
means of studying underlying structures in texts (cultural products)• Ferdinand de Saussure-founder (studied
linguistics) • Semiotics: the study of signs (words/
meaning)• Signifier-spoken word, written word• Signified-the concept that the signifier
Saturday, 8 November, 14
• The word “cat” is the signifier• The concept of a “cat” is the signified• The two make up a sign• There is a connection between the
sign and the signifier albeit arbitrary• Eventually becomes “fixed” a
community of consensus, agree upon• Binary (know “cat” only because of
what is “not a cat”)
Saturday, 8 November, 14
Structuralism•Binaries• Informed by the idea of an underlying structure•Works on the premise that the “truth” or the “real” structure can be found•Focus on the author/producer of the text
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Post-structuralism• A response to structuralism• Critique of the binaries so often
characteristic of structuralism• Questions what can be seen as the
rigidities of structuralist systems of thought
• Questions the idea of a distinct structure
• Move away from individualism to relational
• Critical of some of the scientific pretenses of structuralism
• More playful enterprise/project• More concerned with the way in
which versions of truth are produced in texts through interpretation
• Which are always in dispute and can never be resolved
• In order to understand a text (or subject, object) is it necessary to study both the text itself and the systems of knowledge that produced
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Post-structuralism• Post-structuralist theorists question the
search for meaning and coherence• Derrida-texts that make up culture can
never be pinned down• Disconnection between the signifier and
the signified• “Empty” or “floating signifier”-vague
highly variable• Means different things to different
people
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Post-structuralism•Task-not to understand culture, but to deconstruct meaning in culture•Not looking for underlying structure or systems • Instead, noticing the gaps, discontinuities, and inconsistencies in texts
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Post-structuralism• Always partiality and subjectivity in understanding•Multiple realities which can never be understood in their entirety either by the sender or the receiver• Texts are subject to interpretation, doubt and dispute whatever the attempts of the author to exercise control
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Traditional View of Identity
•Fixed and true •Essence •qualities beneath the surface which determine who that person really 'is'.
•People have power •Are able to achieve what they want in their relationships with others, and society as a
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Post-structuralist View of Identity• Do not have a 'real' identity within
themselves• just a way of talking about the self -- a discourse. • An 'identity' is communicated trough
interactions with others• not a fixed thing within a person. • It is a shifting, temporary construction
•Michel Foucault-identity is a form of subjugation and operation of power that prevents them from moving outside fixed boundaries.
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Sovereign/Traditional Power• Rulers exercised power over their subjects
• Traditional notion of power• Overt coercion of power; power
over• Publicly punished that directly assaulted the body of the wrongdoer•Whipping
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Foucault’s View of Power• People do not 'have' power implicitly• Power is a technique or action which individuals can engage in• Power is not exercised over; not possessed• Power is constituted • Power is decentered and "taken up", rather than centralized and exercised from the top down
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Traditional vs. Modern • Establishes social
control through a system of obedience to the law of the king or central authority figure or representatives of the state and of institutions of the
• Establishes social control through a system of normalising judgment that is exercised by people in the evaluation of their own and each others’ lives.
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Modern/Disciplinary Power•Has its basis in the knowledges and technologies produced by the new sciences• Foucault’s Project: Expose the operations of power at the micro level: • Prisons• Clinics • Families
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Modern/Disciplinary Power
•With disciplinary power, each person disciplines him or herself. •The goal of disciplinary power is to produce a person who is docile.
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Panopticon
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•persons are subject to the "gaze" and to "normalizing judgment",• it is impossible for persons to determine when they are the subject of surveillance and scrutiny and when they are not•assume it must always be the case•persons are incited to perpetually evaluate themselves
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Operations of Power•A ruse that disguises what is actually taking place• “Are actually specifying of persons' lives and of relationships…•…those correct outcomes are particular ways of being that are prescribed ways of
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Possible Effects of• self-surveillance• fear • negative comparison• Not ‘measuring up’ • guilt • hopelessness• perfection • judging others
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“Difficult for many persons to entertain for it suggests that many of the aspects of our individual modes of behavior that we assume to be an expression of our free will are not what they might at first appear. In fact, this analysis would suggest that many of our modes of behavior reflect our collaboration in the control or the policing of our own lives, as well as the lives of others; our collusion in the specification of lives according to the dominant knowledges of our culture. “(Michael White)
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Foucauldian Tenets: Recipe for Social Transformation• Be skeptical of essentialist notions of the
self• Reveal techniques that discipline and
produce the body• Expose the panoptic gaze• Be skeptical of the process of
normalisation• Resurrect subordinated/marginalized
forms of knowledge• Acknowledge that humans have ability to
reflect on change themselvesSaturday, 8 November, 14
The Therapy Project• Expose and deconstruct these taken-for-granted practices of power• Achieved by engaging persons in externalizing conversations about these practices. • As these practices of power are unmasked, it becomes possible for persons to take a position on them..• ..and to counter the influence of these practices in their lives and relationships.• Foucault- “where there is power there is
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Therapy Project• Take up a stance of “curiosity in regard to those alternative versions of who these persons might be• This is not just any curiosity. • It is a curiosity about how things might be otherwise, a curiosity about that which falls outside of the totalizing stories that persons have about their lives, and outside of those dominant practices of self and of relationship.” (Michael White)
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“Curiosity is a vice that has been stigmatized in tum by Christianity, by philosophy, and even by a certain conception of science. Curiosity, futility. The word, however, pleases me. To me it suggests something altogether different: it evokes "concern"; it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; a readiness to find strange and singular what surrounds us; a certain relentlessness to break up our familiarities and to regard otherwise the same things; a fervor to grasp what is happening and what passes; a casualness in regard to the traditional hierarchies of the important and the Saturday, 8 November, 14
CURIOSITY DIDN’T KILL THE CAT!
Saturday, 8 November, 14
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