Hey guys, here's our final blog post on Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. We divided up the work, so everyone just wrote a paragraph detailing our own section. At the bottom is the prezi we included in class. Enjoy!
“It is the underlying rules of cultural texts and practices that interest structuralists. It is structure that makes meaning possible. The task of structuralism, therefore, is to make explicit the rules and conventions (the structure) which govern the production of meaning. “ (Storey, pg. 114). Sructuralists have two basic ideas introduced by the linguist Saussure. The first idea is a concern with the underlying relations of text and practices, which comprise structure. And the second idea is that meaning is always the result of relationships and combination made possible by the underlying structure. For example, if you write the word dog, it produces a signifier of the English word ‘dog’, and it creates a signified which is the mental image of a four legged canine creature. This creates the structure, which demonstrates the first idea of structuralism. The second idea of structuralism can be demonstrated by the word ‘mother’. Mother has no meaning unless you relate it to other concepts such as ‘father’, ‘daughter’, or ‘son’. Structuralism is centered around how we derive meaning. It tries to find where the meaning of events in life is derived from, and tries to explain how you can derive most meaning from life.
Post-structuralism differs from structuralism in many ways, but the best ideal to study is literary criticism. For example, if you wanted to find out what Shakespeare was really writing about when he wrote “Romeo and Juliet” a structuralist would tell you to ask Shakespeare. Structuralists believe that every literary work is a product of it’s time, and so you would have to study the environment under which the play was written. But not so with post-structuralism. A post- structuralist interpretation of the play would be very skewed, and even contradictory, but that is because a post- structuralist believes that the truth in art is with the interpreter. The artist’s true intentions do not actually matter, and the implications of the work are entirely up to the audience.
Both Structuralism and Post-Structuralism are interested in how meaning is created. Structuralists say that meaning comes from specific structures, while Post-Structuralists say that meaning comes from the recipient. For example, where is meaning found in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? Structuralists would say that in order to understand the meaning of Frankenstein, you have to understand Mary Shelley’s life, the culture that she lived in, and even Romanticism and Gothicism in literature. Post-Structuralists would say, however, that any meaning in Frankenstein is found only in reading it. As another example, what about the Beatles album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? Structuralists would say that, in order to understand the meaning of the album, you would have to understand the lives of the Beatles, the music of the 1960s, etc. Post-Structuralists would say, however, that the meaning is only found in the listener.
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