1. Post-structuralism and deconstruction
Lecture 5
Post-structuralism and deconstruction

2. Preamble
Post-Structuralism - contests Structuralism or is its development and continuation?
Structuralisms - language not only reflects reality, it models our perception.
PS: the decentered universe – no intellectual reference points.
The centre and the margins have been deconstructed.

3. Structuralism (S) vs Post-Structuralism (PS)
Origin of S is linguistics (structure, method, system).
Tone and discourse style: abstractization, detachment scientism.
Attitude towards language: the world is based on language .
Project: S tries to find structures and categories, starting from the linguistic model .
Origin of PS is philosophic (scepticism, the world is based on irony and paradox).
PS=emotivity, euphoria, alusiveness.
For PS reality is textual; language doesn’t offer knowledge.
PS dismantles the notion of motivation, introduces the notion of disolution of the human subject.

4. Deconstruction Barthes and Derrida
Barthes: “the death of the author” = a rhetorical syntagm expressing the birth of the reader: reception theory.
Derrida: decentralizing of human universe, the notion of the center disappears, everything becomes relative.
This relativism is perceived as a liberating thought: no authority to validate interpretations.

5. Deconstruction and literature
The deconstruction theory was postulated by Derrida – philosophy taken over by literary studies.
Reading in deconstructivist key defines the literary text as a reflection of the decentralized universe.
Reading is a de-construction of the text to find its deep meaning, not a re-construction of the author’s intention.
The text can be open to a thousand of interpretations.
Reading and interpretation must re-produce the text

6. Reception theory in PS
Structuralism ignored the issue of the reader’s position in relation to the text.
The horizon of expectation and implicit reader (H. R. Jauss)
Certain expectations are predetermined by each reader’s background.
Each work has its own horizon of expectation, a system of reference.
Aesthetic taste is produced by history and reproduced by education.

7. The issue of value in PS
The dictatorship of the artist is replaced with the dictatorship of the reader.
The receiver/reader becomes free to see what he/she wants in the respective text.
The public and the critic do not benefit from formal criteria of validation: everything is allowed.
The value issue is solved through the following concept: you understand what you know.