What is post structuralism?

Post structuralism is a modern philosophical school of thought. It grew out of, and in response to, the philosophy of structuralism, which many of the pivotal thinkers of post structuralism were extremely critical of. Post structuralism is one of the major driving forces in philosophy today, and is intricately connected with postmodern thought.

Structuralism as a school of thought hit it's stride during the radical movemens of the 1950s and 1960s particularly in France, although it had its roots back at the beginning of teh 20th century. Structuralist look at the foundational structures implicit in all productions of a culture, and undertaken an analysis of teh many parts that creats something, to get a better understanding of the creation. Linguistics was one of the first fields to use structuralism to its advantage, and its application quickly spread to other fields. The basic premise of structuralism is that all things have a structure below the level of meaning, and that this structure constitute s the reality of that thing.

Post-structuralism grew as a response to structuralism's perceived assumptions that its own system of analysis was somehow essential. Post structuralists hold that in fact even in an examination of underlying structures, a slow of biases introduce themselvels, based on the conditioning of the examiner. At the root of post-structuralism is the rejection of the idea that there is any truly essential form to a cultural product, as all cultutal products are by their very naturl formed, and therefore artificial.

This concept of non-essential was famously expanded upon by Foucault in his history of sexuality,in which he argues that even gender and sexuality orientation are contrived formation, and that our concept of essentialist notions of gender or sexuality is flawed. For example, he argues that the entire class of homosexuality is in fact quite recent, built up by cultural norms and an interplay betwwen different groups in society, but with no more essential a quality than, for example, the idea of beauty.

One of the pivotal moments in the history of post-structuralism occured in 1966, when Derrida delivered a talk at John Hopkins University. Derrida was respected as one of the great thinkers of structuralism, and so was invited to speak on the subjectr at length, as it was just beginning to receive a great deal of attention in the American intellectual community. Derrida lecture, "struture, sign, and play in the Human science, " was a sharp critique of structuralism, pointing out its inherent limitations, and laying out some basic principles for new language of discourse.

Post-structuralism is importantly different from post-modernism, although the two are often considered one and the same by the general subject. Although there are certain areas of overlap, thinkers from one school almost never identify themselves with the other school of thought. Postmodernism importantly seeks to identify a contemporary state of the world, the period that is following the modernist period. Postmodernism seeks to identify a certain juncture, and to work within the new period. Post-structuralism, on the other hand, can be seen as a more explicitly critical view, aiming to deconstruct ideas of essential in various disciplines to allow for a more accurate discourse.