{"id":18201,"date":"2016-06-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2985"},"modified":"2016-06-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T00:00:00","slug":"what-happened-to-post-structuralism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to Post-structuralism?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

W<\/span>hatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS<\/em>. Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of Saussure and the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, post-structuralism presented itself as a liberation movement: \u201cStructures were to be unmasked as less stable than they seemed, lacking in solid grounds and arbitrary in their exclusions. There was always that which eluded their authority, from the floating signifier to the feminine body. Works of literature were to be scanned for those slippages and moments of hesitancy which defeated any \u2018totalized\u2019 reading of them. Multiplicity was to be released from the tyranny of unity, and difference set free from the despotism of identity.\u201d <\/p>\n

It was a sober libertarianism, \u201cone which dreams of a world free from the constraints of norms and institutions, but which is not so incorrigibly naive as to imagine that it could ever come about.\u201d And it was a parasitic liberation, dependent \u201con codes and systems as the most hidebound bureaucrat. Without them, after all, there is nothing to subvert or transgress. . . . The brand of post-structuralist theory patented by Derrida seeks to deconstruct both texts and institutions; but it can perform this operation only from within, clinging tenaciously to the inner logic of the systems it examines in order to expose their ultimate incoherence.\u201d Eagleton criticizes post-structuralists for failing or refusing to recognize the good of institutions, norms, and authority. The best they could do was acknowledge that norms are inevitable, while celebrating \u201cthe marginal and aberrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Derrida and others were quite aware of this dependence doesn\u2019t impress Eagleton, but did lend an air of wry pessimism to their work. Eagleton insightfully notes that the post-structuralsts were \u201climinal figures themselves\u2014either literal \u00e9migr\u00e9s to France, or what one might call internal exiles. The doyen of structuralism proper, Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss, was a marxisant Belgian Jew who taught in S\u00e3o Paulo and New York. A list of some his major (post-)structuralist successors\u2014Barthes, Greimas, Todorov, Kristeva, Foucault, Cixous, Derrida, Irigaray\u2014contains not a single male, French-born, heterosexual gentile. It is not surprising, then, that the theory should focus with such perverse persistence on what doesn\u2019t quite fit in.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Eagleton\u2019s view, many of the habits of post-structuralism persist in what he calls \u2018postmodernism: \u201cplay, style, form, pleasure, difference, jouissance, the body, madness, sexuality and the unconscious.\u201d So post-structuralism lives on, but not as theory. And that\u2019s the heart of the answer to his question: \u201cwhat died was not so much the movement itself as \u2018theory\u2019 in general, which in any case posed a problem for those more used to texting than textuality.\u201d Postmodernism doesn\u2019t have time for theory: \u201cWhereas post-structuralism is a set of ideas, postmodernism is an actual culture. Instead of engaging in an arcane philosophical discourse of difference and identity, it takes to the town centres with gay rights placards. It is more concerned with disability than with the decentring of the humanist subject. Post-structuralists speak of the cultural inscription of the body, while postmodernists tattoo their forearms and dye their hair purple.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And for all his sharp opposition to post-structuralism, Eagleton the Marxist can\u2019t help but be a bit wistful about its demise as theory. Post-structuralism \u201cwas one of the last intellectual gasps of pre-technocratic academia\u2014of an intelligentsia whose job was to be critical of rather than complicit with the idols of the marketplace. It had survived the so-called de Man affair, in which the distinguished Yale deconstructionist was revealed in 1987, not long after his death, to have published anti-Semitic, collaborationist journalism during the German occupation of Belgium. Around this time, a whole school of post-structuralism at Cornell seemed to fall mostly silent, but the exposure of the young de Man\u2019s pro-fascist sentiments failed to strike the coup de gr\u00e2ce to the movement of which he was the American cynosure.\u201d Theory is \u201cis too recondite an affair for many of the cheerleaders for postmodernism, for whom what matters is less ideas than images. For all its blind spots, post-structuralism is also too critical an outlook, too much a hermeneutic of suspicion, for those for whom the whole concept of critique can now be classified with male sideburns and denim suits as irretrievably pass\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS. Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of Saussure and the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, post-structuralism presented itself as a liberation movement: \u201cStructures were to be unmasked as less stable than they seemed, lacking in solid grounds and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[485,904],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post-structuralism","category-postmodernism"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Happened to Post-structuralism?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Whatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS. Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Happened to Post-structuralism?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Whatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS. Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Leithart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-20T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter Leithart\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@PLeithart\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Peter Leithart\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/\",\"name\":\"What Happened to Post-structuralism?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-06-20T00:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-06-20T00:00:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d\"},\"description\":\"Whatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS. Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"What Happened to Post-structuralism?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/\",\"name\":\"Leithart\",\"description\":\"My blog is a public notebook, featuring essays, notes, and explorations on Scripture, theology, literature, politics, culture.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d\",\"name\":\"Peter Leithart\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Peter Leithart\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PLeithart\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/author\/pleithart\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Happened to Post-structuralism?","description":"Whatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS. Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What Happened to Post-structuralism?","og_description":"Whatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS. Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/","og_site_name":"Leithart","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/","article_published_time":"2016-06-20T00:00:00+00:00","author":"Peter Leithart","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@PLeithart","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Peter Leithart","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/","name":"What Happened to Post-structuralism?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-06-20T00:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2016-06-20T00:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d"},"description":"Whatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS. Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/what-happened-to-post-structuralism\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What Happened to Post-structuralism?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/","name":"Leithart","description":"My blog is a public notebook, featuring essays, notes, and explorations on Scripture, theology, literature, politics, culture.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d","name":"Peter Leithart","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Peter Leithart"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/","https:\/\/twitter.com\/PLeithart"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/author\/pleithart\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3021"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}