Post-structuralism is a school of thought that emerged in response to structuralism’s perceived essentialism. It rejects the idea of an essential form to cultural products and believes that biases exist even in examining underlying structures. Post-structuralism is different from postmodernism, which seeks to identify a contemporary state of the world.
Post-structuralism is a modern school of philosophical thought. It was born of and in response to the philosophy of structuralism, of which many of post-structuralism’s pivotal thinkers were extremely critical. This school of thought is a major driving force in today’s philosophy and is closely connected to postmodern thought.
Structuralism as a school of thought took its toll during the radical movements of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in France, although it had its roots in the early 20th century. Structuralists look at the fundamental structures implicit in all the productions of a culture and undertake an analysis of the many parts that create something, to gain a better understanding of creation. Linguistics was one of the first fields to exploit structuralism to its advantage, and its application quickly spread to other fields. The basic premise of structuralism is that all things have structure below the level of meaning, and that this structure constitutes the reality of that thing.
Post-structuralism arose as a response to structuralism’s perceived assumption that its system of analysis was in some way essentialist. Post-structuralists believe that indeed even in examining the underlying structures there is a slew of biases, based on the conditioning of the examiner. At the root of the philosophy is the rejection of the idea that there is a truly essential form to a cultural product, since all cultural products are by their very nature formed, and therefore artificial.
This notion of nonessentialism was famously expanded upon by Foucault in his History of Sexuality, in which he argues that gender and sexual orientation are also contrived formations, and that our concept of essentialist notions of gender or sexuality is flawed. For example, he argues that the whole class of homosexuality is actually quite recent, built out of cultural norms and an interaction between different groups in society, but without a more essential quality than, say, the idea of beauty.
One of the pivotal moments in the history of philosophy occurred in 1966 when Derrida gave a speech at John Hopkins University. Derrida was respected as one of structuralism’s great thinkers, and therefore was invited to speak at length on the subject, as he was just beginning to receive much attention in the American intellectual community. Derrida’s lecture, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences,” was a trenchant critique of structuralism, pointing out its intrinsic limitations and exposing some basic principles for a new language of discourse.
Post-structuralism is markedly different from postmodernism, although the two are often considered to be the same by the general subject. While there are some areas of overlap, thinkers of one school almost never identify with the other school of thought. Postmodernism seeks above all to identify a contemporary state of the world, the period following the modernist period. Postmodernism tries to identify a certain conjuncture and to work within the new period. Post-structuralism, on the other hand, can be seen as a more explicitly critical view, which aims to deconstruct the ideas of essentialism across various disciplines to allow for more accurate discourse.
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