post-structuralism

[Cícero Barbosa]

dear John, 

Thanks for your answer. It surely helped. I would be also glad  to get
more comments from people all around who participate in this list.

Cícero

2005/8/11, John E Richardson <johnerichardson at cds-web.net>:
> Dear Cícero,
> 
> apologies for the delay in replying; I've been on holiday.
> Post/Structuralism is not really my area of expertise, but I just
> thought that I'd throw my hat into the ring; perhaps something I write
> will be of some use.
> 
> My understanding is that authors labelled post-structuralist (and I say
> 'labelled' because they universally did not call themselves this) are
> authors who previously wrote within the structualist paradigm.
> Structuralism, as I understand it, examines social phenomena in relation
> to an invariant structure through which meaning is produced.
> Linguistically, of course, this is epitomised by the work of de Saussure
> and his synchronic analysis of the internal constitution of signs. This
> was then developed by Levi-Strauss who used the langue/parole
> distinction to argue that such structures form a "deep grammar" of society.
> During the sixties, this started to be re-evaluated, given that many
> authors recognised that it encourages ahistoricism and bourgeois social
> theory (specifically of social continuity and the denial of the
> possibility of change). History was injected into the mix, and it is
> (generally speaking) the notion of historic or temporal analysis that
> distinguishes the post-structuralist from the structuralist. That is,
> the analysis of how structures both endure and change. In linguistics,
> this is the distinction between the diachronic and the synchronic:
> post-structuralists argue that structural analysis was generally
> synchronic and thereby suppressed historical or diachronic analyses.
> Foucault, of course, developed his diachronic analysis using two
> methods: genealogy (the study of historic continuities) and archaeology
> (the study of historic dead-ends).
> 
> So, given this, of the list you provide, only Foucault could be
> classified as p-s, because he started as a structuralist. The other
> three are concerned with issues of structure and agency (a similar
> dialectic as diachronic and the synchronic analysis) as approached
> through Marxist social theory. Bakhtin I am least sure of, though my
> understanding is that he is considered a humanist Marxist; Bourdieu has
> also been called a 'post-Marxist' (just to complicate things further!).
> 
> Hope some of this helps.
> 
> Best
> 
> John
> 
> Dear colleagues,
> 
> I am now joining this list and I would like to start by asking a
> question. Are these authors:Fairclough, Foucault, Bourdieu and
> Bakhtin, poststructuralists? Could you please write a few words
> explaining about it? I would be glad to be answered. Thank you,
> 
> Cícero Barbosa
> 
> John E Richardson
> Dept of Journalism Studies
> Sheffield University
>