Structuralist and Post-Structuralist Criticism

0.1: Introduction:

The history of criticism and that of literary theory is as old as literature is. The Greeks were, in the recorded history, the first to have a literary theory and to practice criticism of literature. Plato, being a moralist, called ‘instruction’ to be the purpose of literature so as to bring moral amelioration through literature. On the other hand, his pupil, Aristotle, emphasized form as opposed to content.

In the history of the English literature, literary criticism started with the Renaissance. Sir Philip Sidney, in that age, came up with his ‘Defence of Poesy’. Then history witnessed Addison and Steele and Dryden from the age of Reason. They were followed by the Romantic critics who, instead of passing judgments on the authors, studied their works in the light of their (authors’) social, historical and cultural background. They would relate the work to the author and concentrated on meaning rather than form.

The Romantic emphasis on content was followed by yet another approach towards form in the form of Formalism also called Russian Formalism. It was followed by the New Criticism (school of thought that emerged in America and believed that meaning and form are inseparable). I.A. Richards and F.R.Leavis were the major proponents of this school in England. Afterwards, the arena of literary theory witnessed the rise of ‘hermeneutics’ (that believed in the interpretation of texts so as to construct the original meaning and that the parts must be understood in order to understand the whole). In 1960s, hermeneutics gave way to Structuralism, the movement that brought revolution in the history of literary theory and literary criticism by focusing on language and its underlying structure and by applying Linguistics to the study of literature and the literary texts.

This paper deals with structuralism and its child, Post-structuralism, their salient features, their effects on literary theory and their significance in the canon of literary theory and criticism. It also highlights the major proponents of the two schools of thought.

0.2: Structuralism:

Structuralism is a literary theory that emerged in 1960s. It was based on Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralist approach to language. Saussure , in 1916, in his book , Course in General Linguistics, gave the concepts of ‘langue’ and ‘parole’. For him, langue is the underlying structure of language while ‘parole’ is the use of ‘langue’ that is manifest in speech. He called his approach ‘semiotics’ as it was concerned with the use and the study of signs. According to Saussure, a sign has two parts_____ a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the sound or the written form of a sign while the concept (in the mind) of that form is the signified. He stated that the relationship between a signified and its signifier is arbitrary. In other words, there is no causal or natural relationship between the two and that they have been agreed upon by a society unanimously. For him, language is a sum of signs where the relation between the signs is also arbitrary. It is the relation of binary opposition that gives rise to meaning. A sign has meaning because of its difference from another sign in a sentence. For him, it is the arrangement of words (syntax) that gives rise to meaning. So, language is a signifying system of signs.

Saussure’s concept of sign was a revolutionary one and was readily taken up by the intellectuals of his age. It was applied to a variety of disciplines like mathematics, anthropology, psychology as well as to literature.

A website, adamrasonfreeserver.com defines Structuralism as:
“A school of thought which built up around a group of French thinkers in the 1950s and 60s…influenced by the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, and pursued an interest in how meaning is produced. Rather than focusing upon the consciousness of an author, for example) as the locus of meaning, the structuralist s analysed underlying structures such as those of language, of the psyche, and of society.”

An online glossary, gale.com, defines Structuralism as:
“a twentieth century literary movement in literary criticism that examines how literary texts arrive at their meanings, rather than the meanings themselves. There are two major types of structuralist analyses: one examines the way patterns of linguistic structures unify a specific text, and the other interprets the way literary forms and conventions affect the meaning of language itself….”

0.2.1: Features:

Structuralism gives primary importance to the texts. It upholds that meaning exists within the text which is in language that is a signifying system of signs. Meaning is produced by the relationship between the signs in the text. The relationship between the signs is that of binary oppositions. In other words, a sign is what another sign is not. This relationship of difference between the signs leads to the construction of meaning. Therefore, they maintain that meaning is within the text and not outside it and that it is both ‘determinable’ and ‘determinate’(Murfin & Supriya).As meaning is constructed through language within the text, therefore, the diachronic study of the text is not important. The texts, instead, should be read synchronically. In other terms, the texts are ‘paroles’ while the meaning, the structure that needs to be looked at and is of significance is the ‘langue’. In short, the structuralists emphasized the use of objective, scientific ways to study literature. In addition, by concentrating on the signifier, it gives primary importance to speech.

While describing Structuralism, K.M. Newton says: “…Structuralist literary criticism tends to emphasise the system of conventions which makes literature possible and to attach little importance to authorial or historical considerations or to questions of meaning or reference.”(p.83)He further states: “literary criticism should concern itself not with literary meaning as such but with how that meaning is produced.”(p.83)

Today, Structuralism has been influenced by Chomsky who gave the concepts of deep and surface structures.

0.2.2: Major Structuralists:

Structuralism influenced every discipline of knowledge. The intellectuals
started giving structures for everything : culture, language, mathematics and
psychology and even the mind and consciousness.

0.2.2.1: Ferdinand de Saussure:

Saussure is regarded as the father of modern linguistics and also that of structuralist criticism. He gave the idea of language having an underlying structure which he called ‘langue’. For him ‘langue’ underlies ‘parole’, the evident use of language manifest in speech. He gave the concept that meaning arises because of the binary opposition of signs in language.

0.2.2.2: Tzevetan Todrov:

Todrov was a Russian structuralist who disregarded biographical studies and journalistic writings as they, according to him, “are not ‘studies’.” (Newton: 86) While talking about Structuralism , in ‘Definition of Poetics’, he says that a critic’s “ goal is no longer the description of the particular work , the designation of its meaning, but the establishment of its general laws of which this particular text is the product.”(Newton: 87)

0.2.2.3: Claude Levi-Strauss:

Strauss was a French anthropologist who applied Structuralism to human society and culture. He studied the basic structure of the society and maintained that the society was a myth and it was made of the small structures that he called ‘mythemes’. He applied Structuralism to kinship and stated that kinship was based on the exchange of women.

0.2.2.4: Yury Lotman:

Lotman was a semiotician who believed that a literary text has “a number of ‘systems’ (lexical,graphic, metrical, phonological…) and gains the effect through constant clashes and tensions between these systems.” (Eagleton: 88)

0.2.2.5: Roman Jakobson (1896-1982):

He was a member of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, was associated with Russian Formalism and was also a member of the Prague Linguistic Circle. He maintains that there are six dimensions of communication: context, message, receriver, sender, channel and code that have corresponding six functions: referential, poetic, emotive, conative, phatic and metalingual. He gave three major concepts in Linguistics: ‘linguistic typology’ (the classification of language on the basis of their features: semantic, phonological, morphological) , ‘ markedness’ (wheteher a form is a default form like lioness that tells us everything about it Orient a non-natural form like lion that leaves some questions unanswered) and ‘linguistic universals’(statements that are true for all languages).

Wikipedia describes Jakobson as: “one of the most influential linguists of the twentieth century by pioneering the development of structural analysis of language, poetry and art.”

0.2.2.6: Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (1890-1938):

He was a Russian who influenced Prague Schoolof Structural Linguistics
and founded “morphephonology”. He defined phoneme as “the smallest unit
within the structure” of a language thus separating phonology from phonetics.

0.2.2.7: Wilhelm Max Wundt (1832-1920):

He was a German who applied Structuralism to psychology to “investigate the immediate experiences of consciousness, including sensations, feelings, volitions, apperception and ideas.” (wikipedia)

0.2.2.8: Edward B. Thitchener (1876-1927):

Edward was British. He applied Structuralism to psychology and believed that ‘sensations’ and ‘thoughts’ were the structures of the mind just as hydrogen and oxygen are the elements of the compound, water (H2O).

0.2.3: Significance of Structuralism :

According to Murfin and Ray, Structuralism has changed the names of literary ‘works’ to ‘texts’. It has shifted the focus of attention from the author the text. It maintains that the text has codes and the readers understand those codes because they have internalized “certain codes as norms”. (Murfin and Ray) Similarly, the authors have also internalized the codes that are evident in their work. It maintains that “Meaning was neither a private experience nor a divinely ordained occurrence: it was the product of certain shared systems of signification.” (Eagleton: 93)

Structuralism attacked the views that there is a natural relation between a sign and its referent as Structuralism maintains that this relation is arbitrary. This resulted in a quest for finding structures in all the disciplines of knowledge as well as in all the things related to man. It is also significant in that it has rejected “the myth that meaning begins and ends in the individual’s experience.” (Eagleton: 98)

Eagleton describes the structuralist philosophy as: “The work neither refers to an object, nor is the expression of an individual subject.” (98) Prof. John Lye, based on Culler’s views, lists the strengths of Structuralism as that it “is a firmer starting point for studying literature”, is “associated with codes”, is “open to literary conventions” and believes in reading in a “systematic, scientific way.”

In addition, it has also led to the birth and the development of the disciplines of Narratology and Semiotics.

0.2.4: Weaknesses (Shortcomings):

Structuralism, in the late 1980s and 1990s, was attacked by the Post-structuralists (the Deconstructionists) who “rejected the structuralist claim to scientific analysis”. ( Murfin & Ray: 383) they also attacked its claim that meaning is ‘determinable’ and ‘determinate’.

Eagleton has pointed out four weaknesses of Structuralism. Primarily, Structuralism does not take language as “an individual expression” but “it certainly involves human subjects and their intentions….” (98) Secondly, the structuralist criticism “encodes a certain questionable way of conceptualizing the relations between individuals and socities.” He further states: “Saussure slips language of its sociality at the point where it matters most: at the point of linguistic production, the actual speaking, writing, listening and reading of concrete social individuals.”(99) He further quotes Emile Benveniste, a French linguist, to say that the “shift from Structuralism has been …” a move from “‘language to ‘discourse’.” (100)

Mikhail Bakhtil, according to Eagleton, has criticized Structuralism for its complete focus on ‘langue’ while ignoring the dialogic nature of language. The Marxist critic, Eagleton says about Structuralism:

“Structuralism is among other things one more of literary theory’s series of doomed attempts to replace religion with something as effective : in this case, with the modern religion of science.”(Eagleton: 106)

0.3: Post-structuralism:
Post-structuralism is the product of structuralist criticism. It owes its existence to the early 1960s and 1970s. It was a reaction against Structuralism.

0.3.1: Features:

Post-structuralist criticism, like structuralist criticism , is text-centred but for it, there is no difference or fixed differentiation between the text and the world and believes in binary opposition between the signifiers and the signifieds. But, it differs from structuralist criticism in that it maintains that for a signified, there can be a number of signifiers. The binary oppositions exist but they modulate to such an extent that they become fluid. The same fluidity exists between and among different texts. This fluidity between the texts has been called by Julia Kristeva as ‘inter-textuality’. And according to Murfin and Ray, the texts, on account of their ‘inter-textuality,’ “undergo erasure” (p.303)

Murfin and Ray, while describing Post-structuralism, state:

“Post-structuralists …reject the possibility of … “determinate” knowledge. They believe that signification is an interminable and intricate web of associations that continually defers a determinate assessment of meaning. The numerous possible meanings of any word may lead to contradictions and ultimately the dissemination of meaning itself. Thus post-structuralists contend that texts contradict not only structuralist accounts of them but also themselves.” (Murfin & Ray: 299-300)

In other words, Post-structuralism believes that there is no single signifier for a signified. In addition, there is no absolute difference between the signified and the signifiers. The signified itself is a signifier for another signified leading to an unending chain of signifiers and signifieds. As the signifiers and the signifieds, the texts and texts, text and the world seem to be intermingling, seem to have fluidity, therefore, meaning is not determinate and it is not unitary. It is within the text but ‘indeterminable’ and ‘indeterminate’. In other words, it provides for a diachronic study of the texts.

Post-structuralism has extended into Deconstructionism, the philosophy that the meaning is indeterminate and plural. It believes in the plurality of meaning therefore, providing for the various interpretations of the text. The post-structuralists and the Deconstructionists believe that the reader is “the locus of competing and often contradictory discourses.” (Murfin & Ray:) the post-structuralists believe that “a text is a mosaic of pre-existing texts whose meanings it works and transforms.”

The extension of Post-structuralism, Deconstructionist criticism , has been described by Mitchell Stephens as:
“Deconstructive readings focus _____ intentionally, obsessively_______ on the metaphors writers use to make their points. Their purpose is to demonstrate, through comparisons of a work’s arguments and its metaphors, that writers contradict themselves _______ not just occasionally, but invariably ______ and that these contradictions reflect deep fissures in the very foundation of the Western culture.”

0.3.2: Major Post-structuralists:

The father of Post-structuralism and of Deconstruction is Derrida. Other prominent post-structuralists include Roland Barthes, Lacan, Kristeva and Michael Foucault.

0.3.2.1: Jacques Derrida:

Derrida believed that culture and the world are also like texts. He believed that culture could not be studied objectively and scientifically for objective study means studying something by standing outside it. As we cannot study culture from without as we cannot move out of it, therefore, it cannot be studied objectively and structurally. Derrida’s Deconstruction has been described by Dr. Mary Klages as:
“Here’s the basic method of Deconstruction: find a binary opposition. Show how each term rather than being polar opposite of its paired term, is actually part of it. Then the structure Orient opposition that kept them apart collapses, as we see with the terms nature and culture in Derrida’s essays. Ultimately, you can’t tell which is which, and the idea of binary opposites loses meaning, Orient is put into ‘play’. This is called “Deconstruction” because it is a combination of construction/ destruction ______ the idea is that you don’t simply construct new system of binaries, with the previously subordinated term on top , nor do you destroy the old system _______ rather, you deconstruct the old system by showing how its basic units of structuration (binary pairs and the rules for their combination contradict their own logic.”

The Deconstructive faith in plurality is quite obviously evident from Derrida’s statement: “Deconstruction ,…if there is such a thing as Deconstruction _______ and I wouldn’t say there is just one Deconstruction __________ is something heterogeneous, complex. Deconstructions are ways for accounting for the main assumptions common to the culture, common to what we call Western culture.” He also stated: “ Again, I don’t think there is one Western culture….It’s plural.” (Mitchell Stephens)

According to Stephens, when Derrida says that there is no meaning, it does not mean that there is no meaning at all. Stephens says: “It does mean that we can never know all there is to know about a sentence attributed to Aristotle, about our existence, about what is good, even about the words we are saying ____ all of which will always remain open to interpretation and reinterpretation.”

In short, Derrida is the father of Deconstructionism and he used the word “differance”, a French word, to express the relationship between signifiers and the signifieds; the word means “differ” as well as “to defer”. In addition, he believed that the Western ‘logocentric’concept is wrong as it provides for the existence of ultimate or complete truth while such a thing does not exist at all. For him, in addition, the absence is as important as the presence is. A whole has both presence and absence. Therefore, the present (text) and the absent (historical context) are both essential.

0.3.2.2: Roland Barthes:

Barthes was a prominent post-structuralist who believed that there are two orders of signification: iconic and connotative. According to him, the idea of second-order signification is a myth. He believes that a sign has a signifier and a signified which are related to each other through an unending chain of signifiers because there is not one signifier for a signified but many.

Barthes, in his essay, ‘The Death Of The Author’, states: “…writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body of writing.”
(Newton: 120)

Like all the post-structuralists and the Deconstructionists, Barthes gives importance to the context of which the text is a product. At the end of his essay, ‘The Death Of The Author’, he says:
“…it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” (Newton: 123)

0.3.2.3: Jacques Marie-Emile Lacan (1901-1981):
Lacan is a prominent post-structuralist , Deconstructionist who applied
Post-structuralism to consciousness. As the signifiers and the signified result in an unending chain, a circle, for Lacan, this chain of signifiers results in the stability of meaning. For him, the ‘self’ is an illusion. He believes in three stages of human development, according to Dr. Mary Klages. These stages are the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic. The first stage is the stage of “fullness” and of complete bliss. The child does not have a concept of self-identity. He is unconscious of the things outside his body and is unable to distinguish himself from his mother. He identifies himself with his mother.

In the second stage which Lacan also calls the Mirror Stage, the child associates himself with his image as his ‘self’. Thus, he associates himself with his image, the Other. In the third stage, when the child is eighteen months old, he starts dissociating himself from the Other.

The Real is a state of bliss, of fullness, of completeness. The child always desires to retrieve it and out of this lack of fullness, starts the use of ‘I’ and develops the language structure to use it. Thus, he, eventually, fits into the culture.

0.3.2.4: Julia Kristeva:

Kristeva founded ‘semanalysis’, a combination of ‘semiology’ and ‘psychoanalysis’. Unlike Barthes, she believes that language is the result of ‘pleasure’ and ‘excess’ and not of ‘lack’ and ‘castration’. Kristeva, in the beginning, was considered to be a structuralist but later on she came out as a prominent post-structuralist. She differentiates ‘semiotic’ from ‘symbolic’ in language. For her, the semiotic elements, ‘rhythm’ and ‘tone’, signify drives within language while the ‘symbolic’, the grammar and syntax, are related to “signification that does signify”. (Kelly Oliver). According to her, the ‘symbolic’ has a threshold, ‘thetic phase’ which is the product of Lacan’s ‘mirror stage.’ The identification of self starts at the ‘thetic phase’. According to her, the ‘symbolic’ and the ‘semiotic’ oscillate and the relationship between the two is “necessary and productive.”

0.3.2.5: Michael Foucault:

Foucault emphasized the relationship between knowledge and power.

0.3.3: Significance of Post-structuralism :

Post-structuralism has left important marks on the development of literary theory and criticism. It has led to the rise and the development of various schools of literary thought and criticism: Yale Deconstructionism, Psychoanalysis, Feminism and post-modernism.

0.4: Conclusion:

Although both Structuralism and Post-structuralism are two different movements of thought about literary theory and criticism, both can be regarded as two important phases in the evolution of critical literary thought. They are just like the signified and the signifier that oscillate, interchange, replace and owe, to each other, their existence.

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