Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

    • 98 views

    Structuralist Criticism and Deconstruction

    Uploaded by

    Syed Haider Ali
    Structuralist Criticism analyzes elements of culture, including literature, as parts of a sign system. It seeks to discover the codes, structures, and processes that produce meaning. Structuralism views human culture itself as a language system of concepts (signifieds) and their verbal or nonverbal signifiers. Structuralists would break down myths into their smallest units and realign corresponding units, with opposite terms modulating until resolved by a third intermediary term. Structuralism reacted against modern alienation by seeking to understand literature as part of universal sign systems like clothing and body language.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Structuralist Criticism and Deconstruction

    Uploaded by

    Syed Haider Ali
    98 views1 page
    Structuralist Criticism analyzes elements of culture, including literature, as parts of a sign system. It seeks to discover the codes, structures, and processes that produce meaning. Structuralism views human culture itself as a language system of concepts (signifieds) and their verbal or nonverbal signifiers. Structuralists would break down myths into their smallest units and realign corresponding units, with opposite terms modulating until resolved by a third intermediary term. Structuralism reacted against modern alienation by seeking to understand literature as part of universal sign systems like clothing and body language.

    Original Description:

    a

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Structuralist Criticism analyzes elements of culture, including literature, as parts of a sign system. It seeks to discover the codes, structures, and processes that produce meaning. Structuralism views human culture itself as a language system of concepts (signifieds) and their verbal or nonverbal signifiers. Structuralists would break down myths into their smallest units and realign corresponding units, with opposite terms modulating until resolved by a third intermediary term. Structuralism reacted against modern alienation by seeking to understand literature as part of universal sign systems like clothing and body language.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    98 views1 page

    Structuralist Criticism and Deconstruction

    Uploaded by

    Syed Haider Ali
    Structuralist Criticism analyzes elements of culture, including literature, as parts of a sign system. It seeks to discover the codes, structures, and processes that produce meaning. Structuralism views human culture itself as a language system of concepts (signifieds) and their verbal or nonverbal signifiers. Structuralists would break down myths into their smallest units and realign corresponding units, with opposite terms modulating until resolved by a third intermediary term. Structuralism reacted against modern alienation by seeking to understand literature as part of universal sign systems like clothing and body language.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 1

    Structuralist Criticism

    Structuralism is concerned not so much with what things mean, but how they mean; it is a science designed
    to show that all elements of human culture, including literature, are understandable as parts of a system of
    signs. This science of signs is called "semiotics" or "semiology." The goal is to discover the codes,
    structures, and processes involved in the production of meaning. "Structuralism claims that human culture
    itself is fundamentally a language, a complex system of signifieds (concepts) and signifiers. These signifiers
    can be verbal (like language itself or literature) or nonverbal (like face painting, advertising, or fashion)"
    (Biddle 80). Thus, linguistics is to language as structuralism is to literature.

    Structuralists often would break myths into their smallest units, and realign corresponding ones. Opposite
    terms modulate until resolved or reconciled by an intermediary third term.

    Structuralism was a reaction to modern alienation and despair; it sought to recover literature from the
    isolation in which it had been studied, since laws governing it govern all sign systems -- clothing, food,
    body 'language,' etc.

    What quickly became apparent, though, was that signs and words don't have meaning in and of themselves,
    only in relations to other signs and entire systems. Hence, post-structuralism.

    Post-Structuralism

    Post-structuralism contests and subverts structuralism and formalism. Structuralists are convinced that
    systematic knowledge is possible; post-structuralists claim to know only the impossibility of this
    knowledge. They counter the possibility of knowing systematically a text by revealing the "grammar"
    behind its form and meaning. Texts contradict not only the structuralist accounts of them, but also
    themselves. All signifieds are also signifiers (a car symbolizes achievement).

    Deconstruction

    Deconstructive criticism posits an undecidability of meaning for all texts. The text has intertwined and
    contradictory discourses, gaps, and incoherencies, since language itself is unstable and arbitrary. The critic
    doesn't undermine the text; the text already dismantles itself. Its rhetoric subverts or undermines its
    ostensible meaning.

    Jacques Derrida opposed the "metaphysics of presence, . . . the claim in literature or philosophy that we can
    find some full, rich meaning outside of or prior to language itself." The hierarchy of binaries on which this
    assertion rests is untenable. Privileging speech over writing = logocentrism; spoken or written words have
    meaning only by "difference" from other words. Deconstructive critics focus on the text like the formalists,
    but direct attention to the opposite of the New Critical "unities." Instead, they view the "decentering" of
    texts and point out incompatibilities, rhetorical grain-against-grain contradictions, undecidability within
    texts. There is often a playfulness to deconstruction, but it can be daunting to read too.

    You might also like