Literary Criticism

Expressive Realism/Liberal Humanism:

- Literature is of timeless significance; it somehow transcends the limitations and the
peculiarities of the age it was written, and thereby speaks to what is constant in human
nature.
- Human nature is essentially unchanging. The same passions, emotions, and even
situations are seen again and again throughout human history.
- Texts are unified wholes with stable and determinate meanings.
- Meaning and truth are timeless and universal and ultimately available only to “properly
instructed readers”.
- The subject is autonomous, self-sufficient, and essentially free.
- In much of Western literature, and especially in lyric poetry and realistic fiction
individuals present themselves, or are portrayed, as free from their social and economic
situations.
- Language is neutral, objective, and transparent.
- Art is a reflection and imitation of reality (the Aristotelian concept of art as mimesis).
Russian Formalism:
- It places a high priority on literary form.
- It wanted to discover the general rules of “literariness”. In other words, what all literary
texts have in common, or which makes a literary text different from, say, a journalistic
or scientific article.
- The validity of defamiliarization as the ultimate criterion in establishing “literariness”
formulated the fullest formalist answer to the question of how to distinguish the
language of fiction from ordinary language. (Defamiliarization is the artistic technique
of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way in order to
enhance perception of the familiar).
- Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of Folktales (1928), which sought to establish a generic
identity of folkloric fairy tales. Propp discovered that if you looked closer at many
Russian folktales and fairytales you actually found one and the same underlying story.
New Criticism:
- For New Criticism, a literary text is a timeless, autonomous (self-sufficient) verbal object.
Readers and readings may change, but the literary text stays the same. Its meaning is as
objective as its physical existence on the page.
 - It emphasized the importance of “objective” and balanced close reading which was
sensitive to the figurative language of literature.
- It is not concerned with context-historical, biographical, intellectual and so on; it is not
interested in the ‘fallacies’ of ‘intention’ or ‘affect’; it is concerned solely with “the text
in itself”, with its language and organization.
- “Criticism Inc.” is the ‘business’ of professionals – professors of literature in universities
in particular; criticism should become ‘more scientific, or precise, and systematic’;
“students should study literature, and not merely about literature”.
- In the pursuit of an ‘objective’ criticism which abjures both the personal input of the
writer (intention) and the emotion effect on the reader (affect/pity) in order purely to
study ‘the words on the page’ and how the artifact works.
- “The text itself” became the battle cry of the New Critical effort to focus our attention
on the literary work as the sole source of evidence for interpreting it. The life and times
of the author and the spirit of the age in which he or she lived are certainly of interest to
the literary historian, New Critics argued, but they do not provide the literary critic with
information that can be used to analyze the text itself.
- Sometimes a literary text doesn’t live up to the author’s intention. Sometimes it is even
more meaningful, rich, and complex than the author realized. And sometimes the text’s
meaning is simply different from the meaning the author wanted it to have. Knowing an
author’s intention, therefore, tells us nothing about the text itself, which is why New
Critics coined the term intentional fallacy to refer to the mistaken belief that the
author’s intention is the same as the text’s meaning.
- Just as we cannot look to the author’s intention to find the meaning of a literary text,
neither can we look to the reader’s personal response to find it. Any given reader may
or may not respond to what is actually provided by the text itself. Readers’ feelings or
opinions about a text may be produced by some personal association from past
experience rather than by the text. Such a conclusion would be an example of what New
Critics called the affective fallacy (pathetic). While the intentional fallacy confuses the
text with its origins, the pathetic fallacy confuses the text with its affects, that is, with
the emotions it produces.
- For the only way we can know if a given author’s intention or a given reader’s
interpretation actually represents the text’s meaning is to carefully examine, or “closely
read’’ all the evidence provided by the language of the text itself.
Structuralism:
- Saussure attacked the conventional correspondence theory of meaning where by
language was viewed as a naming process, each word corresponding to the thing it
names. Saussure urged that the sign unites not a thing and a name but a concept
 (signified) and sound-image (signifier). He argued that the bond between signifier and
signified is arbitrary (and not natural) in that a concept is not intrinsically linked to a
particular signifier.
- The meaning is determined by collective behavior or convention and is fixed by rules.
Thus, language is a system of signs and meaning itself is relational, produced by
interaction of various signifiers and signifieds within that system.
- Structuralism diverged sharply from the Romantic notion of the author as the source of
meaning, and shifts emphasis away from authorial intention toward the broader and
impersonal linguistic structure in which the author’s text participates, and which indeed
enables that text.
- Saussure denied that there is somehow a natural connection between words and things,
urging that this connection is conventional. This view of language also challenges the
view of reality as somehow independent and existing outside of language, reducing
language to merely a “name-giving system.” Saussure’s view implies that we build up an
understanding of our world by means of language and view the world through language.
- Saussure argued that language is a system of signs in relation: no sign has meaning in
isolation; rather, its signification depends on its difference from other signs and
generally on its situation within the entire network of signs. In other words, the belief
that things cannot be understood in isolation - they have to be seen in the context of
the larger structures they are part of (hence the term 'structuralism').
- For Saussure, language constitutes our world; it doesn't just record it or label it.
Meaning is always attributed to the object or idea by the human mind, and constructed
by and expressed through language: it is not already contained within the thing. Well-
known examples of this process would be the choice between paired alternatives like
'terrorist' or 'freedom fighter'. There is no neutral or objective way of designating such a
person, merely a choice of two terms which 'construct' that person in certain ways. So
Saussure's thinking stressed the way language is arbitrary, relational, and constitutive.
- Structuralists are not interested in individual buildings or individual literary works (or
individual phenomena of any kind) except in terms of what those individual items can
tell us about the structures that underlie and organize all items of that kind. For
instance, you are engaged in structuralist activity if you examine the structure of a large
number of short stories to discover the underlying principles that govern their
composition.
- Some theorists, including Saussure, have thought so and have argued that our reality is
in fact constituted by our language. If that is indeed the case, then the language that we
inherit at birth is for all practical purposes an autonomous system that carves up the
world for us and governs the way we see it. This position which claims that our reality is
determined by language is called linguistic determinism.
 - Barthes put the structuralist view very powerfully, and argued that writers only have the
power to mix already existing writings, to reassemble or redeploy them; writers cannot
use writing to ‘express’ themselves, but only to draw upon that immense dictionary of
language and culture which is ‘always already written’. It would not be misleading to use
the term ‘anti-humanism’ to describe the spirit of structuralism. Indeed the word has
been used by structuralists themselves to emphasize their opposition to all forms of
literary criticism in which the human subject is the source and origin of literary meaning.
(The death of the author).
Semiotics:
- Semiotics applies structuralist insights to the study of what it calls sign systems. A sign
system is a linguistic or nonlinguistic object or behavior (or collection of objects or
behaviors) that can be analyzed as if it were a specialized language. In other words,
semiotics examines the ways linguistic and nonlinguistic objects and behaviors operate
symbolically to “tell” us something. For example, the picture of the reclining blond
beauty in the skin-tight, black velvet dress on the billboard advertising a particular brand
of whiskey, when examined semiotically, “tells” us that those who drink this whiskey
(presumably men) will be attractive to seductive beautiful women like the one on
display. As this example illustrates, semiotics is especially useful in analyzing popular
culture.
- In terms of literary analysis, semiotics is interested in literary conventions: the rules,
literary devices, and formal elements that constitute literary structures.
- Semiotics recognizes language as the most fundamental and important sign system.
However, semiotics expands its subject of inquiry to include objects, gestures, activities,
sounds, images. Thus, it is the business of semiotics to isolate and analyze the symbolic
function of sign systems, although the objects or behaviors under investigation will
often have other functions as well.
- French literary critic Roland Barthes (1915–1980) claims that culture is ‘a language’.
Psychoanalysis: Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)
- Lacan posits three orders or states of human mental disposition: the imaginary order,
the symbolic order, and the real. The imaginary order is a phase where an infant is as
yet unable to distinguish itself from its mother’s body or to recognize the lines of
demarcation between itself and objects in the world; indeed, it does not as yet know
itself as a coherent entity or self. Hence, the imaginary phase is one of unity (between
the child and its surroundings), as well as of immediate possession (of the mother and
objects), a condition of reassuring plenitude, a world consisting wholly of images (hence
“imaginary”) that is not fragmented or mediated by difference, by categories, in a word,
by language and signs. The mirror phase – the point at which the child can recognize
 itself and its environment in the mirror – marks the point at which this comforting
imaginary condition breaks down, pushing the child into the symbolic order, which is the
world of predefined social roles and gender differences, the world of subjects and
objects, the world of language.
- For Lacan, the child’s acquisition of language means a number of important things. He
refers to the child’s acquisition of language as its initiation into the Symbolic Order, for
language is first and foremost a symbolic system of signification, that is, a symbolic
system of meaning-making. Among the first meanings we make—or more correctly, that
are made for us—are that I am a separate being (“I” am “me,” not “you”) and that I
have a gender (I am a girl, not a boy, or vice versa). Our entrance into the Symbolic
Order thus involves the experience of separation from others, and the biggest
separation is the separation from the intimate union we experienced with our mother
during our immersion in the Imaginary Order. For Lacan, this separation constitutes our
most important experience of loss, and it is one that will haunt us all our lives Thus, in
entering the Symbolic Order—the world of language—we’re entering a world of loss
and lack. We’ve exited the Imaginary Order, the world in which we had the illusion of
fulfillment and control. We now inhabit a world in which others have needs, desires,
and fears that limit the ways in which and the extent to which we can attend to our own
needs, desires, and fears. There is no more illusion of sustained fulfillment here, no
more comforting fantasy of complete control. This new world is one in which there are
rules we must obey and restrictions by which we must abide.
- Lacan locates the mirror stage in the development of a child between the ages of 6 and
18 months. Such a child can “recognize as such his own image in a mirror”. This
recognition has a profound and enduring impact: in his mirrored gestures, his reflected
play, and his experiences.
- In the ‘mirror stage’ we are confronted with the ‘mirror' image that the world gives back
to us. But that image, just like the image that we see in an actual mirror, is a distortion
that leads to “misrecognition”. Still, that misrecognition is the basis for what we see as
our identity. For Lacan, we need the response and recognition of others and of the
Other to arrive at what we experience as our identity. Our ‘subjectivity’ is construed in
interaction with ‘others’ that is individuals who resemble us in one way or another but
who are also irrevocably different. We become ourselves by way of other perspectives
and other views of who we are.
Marxism: Louis Althusser (1918-1990)
- Althusser employed a structuralist account of the societal mechanisms (ISA) that
inculcate consent and produce willing compliance; and psychological account of how
 ideology “interpellates” individuals and make them unwittingly participate in their own
oppression.
- The Ideological State Apparatuses are the social mechanisms which individuals take up
predefined subject positions which conform to the values and interests of the dominant
class. Ideological Social Apparatuses include social institutions like family, school,
religion and so on. Althusser observes that these institutions operate with “relative
autonomy” and obtain their power not through explicit coercion but by implicit consent.
Althusser also traces the rising influence of school as the dominant ISA in modern
society, instilling the students the habits that will make them productive citizens of
modern capitalist societies.
- A social formation refers to a society (a social structure at any level such as a nation,
city, business, university, or even a family) with all its complexities, as it is historically
constituted. It includes all the internal contradictions that exist in a society, all emerging
and disappearing tendencies in the economy and superstructure (ideology), in the
social relationships that comprise these.
- According to Marxists, even literature itself is a social institution and has a specific
ideological function, based on the background and ideology of the author. In essence,
Marxists believe that a work of literature is not a result of divine inspiration or pure
artistic endeavor, but that it arises out of the economic and ideological circumstances
surrounding its creation. For Marxist critics, works of literature often mirror the
creator's own place in society, and they interpret most texts in relation to their
relevance regarding issues of class struggle as depicted in a work of fiction. For instance,
Jane Austen, who came from a very respected and wealthy family, did not cover poverty
and the lower classes in her novels.
Poststructuralism/Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
- Deconstruction has been variously regarded as a way of reading, a mode of writing, and,
above all, a way of challenging interpretations of texts based upon conventional notions
of the stability of the human self, the external world, and of language and meaning.
- According to Derrida, language is not the reliable tool of communication we believe it to
be, but rather a fluid, ambiguous domain of complex experience in which ideologies
program us without our being aware of them. In our daily lives, most of us take
language for granted, assuming that it communicates what we want it to, and if it
doesn’t, we assume that the fault is in ourselves, not in language. Because we are so
used to the everyday patterns and rituals in which language seems to work the way we
want it to, we assume that it is by nature a stable and reliable means of communicating
our thoughts, feelings, and wishes. Deconstruction’s theory of language, in contrast, is
based on the belief that language is much more slippery and ambiguous than we realize.
- For deconstruction, language is wholly ideological: it consists entirely of the numerous
conflicting, dynamic ideologies—or systems of beliefs and values—operating at any
given point in time in any given culture. For example, our use of the word slut for a
woman who sleeps with many men and the word stud for a man who sleeps with many
women reveals and perpetuates the cultural belief that sexual relations with multiple
partners should be a source of shame for women and a source of pride for men.
- Language is inherently unreliable. Derrida claims, words are never stable and fixed in
time. From Derrida’s perspective, then, language never offers us direct contact with
reality; it is not a transparent medium, a window on the world. On the contrary, it
always inserts itself between us and the world – like a smudgy screen or a distorting
lens. Deconstruction takes its name from Derrida’s practice: his strategy of analyzing
and dismantling texts or, more usually, parts of texts in order to reveal their
inconsistencies and inner contradictions. Thus, deconstructionists conclude that the
idea that it is truly possible to know the world is theoretically unfounded.
- In literary terms, a text never achieves closure – which quite literally means that its case
can never be closed: there is no final meaning; the text remains a field of possibilities.
Bibliography:
- Habib. M.A.R. A History of Literary Criticism and Theory: From Plato to the Present.
- Barry. Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.
- Selden. Raman. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory 5th Edition.
- Tyson. Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide 2nd Edition.
- Bertens. Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics.
- Litz. A.Walton, ed. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. 7: Modernism and
the New Criticism 1st Edition.
- Selden. Raman, ed. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. 8: From
Formalism to Poststructuralism 1st.
- Belsey. Catherine. Critical Practice 2nd Edition.
Footnotes based on class material:
- “All language is a metaphor”- Nietzsche. Plainly speaking, we shouldn’t take for granted
the transparency of language, but considering it as opaque and a game by being open to
different meanings and interpretations.
- The difference between structuralism and poststructuralism can be explained by the
following example mentioned in class. Imagine two people standing in a front of a wall;
the structuralist will only focus on the wall and the breaks that it consists of. To put it
bluntly, it is only the structure that gave that particular order that matters. However,
the poststructuralist goes deeper by asking more questions about that edifice. For
instance, where did the breaks come from? Why did they take that particular shape?
Who made the wall? And why it was made in the first place?
- Mimesis is an Aristotelian concept of art which states that the latter (art) is a reflection
and imitation of reality.
- Meaning is plural by relying on different factors such as the text, the author; the reader,
etc.
- Science and knowledge are a set of ideological discourses. Common sense and
traditional criticism belong to that category by assuming that literature reflects reality;
an assumption that is ideological in itself. These discourses are different ways of
organizing the world and socially constructing it. Poststructuralism thinks that these
ideological discourses that present themselves as the natural order of things should be
deconstructed.
- New Criticism suggests that there is nothing relevant outside the text; a suggestion that
discards the socio-historical context of the text. Furthermore, new critics assert that the
text is autonomous and independent; a close reading of the text will be sufficient. In
other words, meaning is the words on the page; it’s all there.
- Schools of criticism search for meaning in a methodological way.
- Russian formalists focus on the techniques and the forms of writing.
- New Criticism attacks traditional criticism’s lack of professionalism by asserting that
literary criticism needs to be like a company (criticism Inc.). In contrast, this method has
some shortcomings because it is mostly applied in poetry.
- Catherine Betsey’s approach is based on poststructuralism by believing that meaning is
not fixed or eternal as opposed traditional criticism.
- Ferdinand De Saussure thinks that language is not a system of meanings. It is
conventional, acquired; it is a part of culture. Language is a system of differences; it is
what makes things different through the process of identifying objects that creates
meaning. This is based on the theory of signs which asserts the arbitrary relationship
between the signified (abstract meaning) and the signifier (physical object); this shows
the gap between the two. Drawing from Saussure’s theory, we conclude that language is
not transparent, but it is a matter of agreements and conventions. This conclusion will
influence the poststructuralist conception of language.
- To explain more the opacity (obscurity/lack of transparency) of language, let’s take the
following example that we covered in class. “Democracy will ensure the extension of the
boundaries of civilization”, now let’s take three people from different perspectives: a
Tory MP (British conservative party), a communist, and the vice president of Pepsi. Each
one of these people will interpret the quote mentioned above differently. The MP will
interpret democracy as the parliamentary representative system, the communist will
decode it as dictatorship of the proletariat through seizing the means of production
from the capitalist class, and the vice president will decipher it as free market capitalism
and the reign of transnational capital all over the world.
- As we can see the transparency of language is problematic at best and an ideological
assumption at worse. Furthermore, experience, ideas, habits, beliefs, and our
environment influence heavily our vision of things.
- An ideology represents our relationship with the world and the way we conceive it.
Moreover, for Althusser, ideology is everything which presents itself as the natural order
of things.
- “Men make history”. Marxists interpret this as the collective who change history while
the liberals believe that individuals (i.e. venture capitalists like Elon Musk, Mark
Zuckerberg etc.) who shape the course of history.
- Structuralists try to identify the structures and how they are organized in order to
understand the phenomena. However, the poststructuralists attack this stand as
reductionist and suggest that we should see beyond the structure.
- Traditional critics think that the meaning resides outside the text; it is in the mind of the
author while shaped by the biography and the socio-historical specificities of the
author’s era. In contrast, the new critics and the Russian formalists believe that the
 meaning is in the text and that the latter (the text) is autonomous and understandable
by itself. Plainly speaking, it’s all in there. Furthermore, the new critics regard literary
criticism as a profession. One should be trained in this field; otherwise, he/she is not
qualified to talk about it.
- To back up their assumption about the text as an autonomous and independent entity,
new critics coined two terms namely: the intentional fallacy and the pathetic fallacy. The
intentional fallacy refers to the mistaken belief that the author’s intention is the same as
the text’s meaning by asserting that the intention of the author is unknown. On the
other hand, the pathetic fallacy refers the emotional involvement of the reader by
getting the meaning from his sentimental projection rather the text itself.
- Structuralism is an approach to see not only literature but everything about culture and
society.
- For Saussure, linguistics is a part of discipline called semiology.
- Structuralism is the grammar of literature and its goal is to find the rules of it. What
makes literature different from other types of text?
- Structure in human thought works through binaries: evil/good; mind/body etc.
- Plato believes that thought creates reality while Marx thinks that reality or our
economic condition that shapes our thought.
- Structuralism examines the underlying fixed structure in order to analyze a narrative
material (i.e. literary text). Every text must have a set of structures which are governed
by a series of rules.
- Structuralists study any field as a pattern or a complex system which consists of
separate interconnected parts; structuralism has many applications in many fields. This
approach was intended as a method of critical investigation; a scientific rationale or
mathematics for literary and cultural theorists.
- Structuralists want to discover the code systems and structures which could govern
cultural activity and all the things that it produces. Meaning exists because it is
supported by an underlying convention or a system of distinction. In other words,
literary works that have similar structures are basically the same.
- Structuralism has some shortcomings; for instance, it disregards individual differences
by only focusing on the structure of text. Furthermore, this approach was labeled by its
opponents as anti-humanist and ahistorical because it does not take into consideration
the creativity of the author and the socio-historical factors that influence the production
of the literary text or any other artistic work.
- Everything is a conventional sign that can be understood in cultural context according to
semiotics. Any sign is used to communicate and convey meaning.
- Subjectivity starts when the child looks at the mirror according to Lacan.
- According to postmodernism, the subject is volatile. Moreover, language precedes the
subject; thus; the subject is the product of language.
- Any form of artistic work cannot be submitted to authority because meaning is plural
and temporary.
- According to Derrida, any system gives the illusion of perfection and harmony while
holding inside it something (le jeu) abnormal that keeps developing until that thing
breaks that structure in the end.
- Poststructuralism questions how language reflects empirical reality.
- The text is a heterogeneous fabric that consists of different things; finding this
difference while deconstructing the claim of sameness is the task of the literary critic
according to poststructuralists.
- Deconstruction does not give an end, a satisfactory answer, or sense. It is an endless
search.
- If what matters is the structure or repeated structures to discover the meaning; then,
the author is not important to the text or its creation; in other words, the author is just
an instrument of previous stories (the death of the author or the agency). “la littérature
c’est de la copie”
- Everything is a text which is a composition of many things.
- Language use/speaking is more important than grammar/standard language according
to poststructuralists.
- Because of our ideology, social environment, background, culture etc. we value
standard Arabic more than Moroccan dialect which is considered low and unimportant.
In other words, we devalue the ordinary use of language while we value the standard
language because it is considered high and well-articulated.
- Standard language devoids the speaker from his identity and culture by forcing him to
hide a core element of himself. Poststructuralism pays attention to the ordinary use of
language not the standard one.
- Language is the focal point of the major schools of literary criticism. For instance,
traditional criticism regards language as neutral, objective, and transparent while
poststructuralism views language as opaque, ideological, and unreliable.
- Saussure distinguished between two levels of language namely: “langue” which is the
standard form (used in academia, media etc.) and “parole” which is the form that we
use in our daily lives (dialect). Langue is considered superior to parole for ideological
reasons.
- Poststructuralism focuses on the language itself rather than what it conveys. For
example, we should focus on the mirror rather than what it reflects.
- Stereotype as social construction. Who made it and for what purpose? It is the powerful
who create these discourses in order to subjugate the weak. For instance, the white
 supremacists view of black people as sub humans, or the patriarchs view of women as
inferior creatures. In other words, language usage should be taken into consideration.
Moreover, the margins are more important than the center.
- Because we are part of heterogeneous group, we acquire meaning from the group we
belong to. For instance, our musical taste is heavily influenced by our entourage.
- Reader-response school of criticism asserts that the reader does not read in a vacuum;
his social formation (socio-economic status, religious beliefs, geographic location etc.)
influenced the way he reads the text. Strictly speaking, different readers give us
different meanings.
- The ideological state apparatus (ISA) is a concept of the Marxist thinker Louis Althusser
by which he explains that the state through its ideological institutions (i.e. the
educational system) shapes our mind and the way we see the world.
- Any system no matter how perfect and harmonious it looks or claims to be; it always
consist of a strange element (le jeu) that breaks the system. For example, what makes a
perfectly sane, successful, and young guy joins a terrorist group? At what point his
structure broke which led him to make that dangerous transition? Another example is
related biology and how a healthy cell becomes an anti-cell; thus; causing cancer and
destroying the whole body.
- According to poststructuralism, language is a social fact; a mere social construction.
- Poststructuralists believe that meaning is plural. For example, Professor Touaf
encounter with a priest in Paris; the priest reproached that Muslims call Christians
“infidels” (kofar) even though they believe in God. In other words, there are different
roots (meanings) to God. Another example related to the concept of democracy.
- Meaning is impossible without language. Furthermore, language carries with it the
world view and the culture of the people that use it.
- Multiplicity of readers gives us a plurality of meanings. Moreover, meaning is influenced
by various factors such as age, experience, time, etc.
- The subject and the language exist within a social context, not in a vacuum.
- Discourse involves a lot of different parties such as the speaker/writer and the
reader/listener through a set of discursive practices. And by discursive practices,
Foucault means power relations in society and how they are asserted through the use of
language. For instance, people of big cities making fun of other small cities, or
patriarchal discourses about women. These practices are usually practiced
unconsciously.
- History is man-made and creates the conditions of every process.
- The state uses two main categories of institution to control its own people: first, the
ideological state apparatuses which consist of the media, the mosque, and the
 educational system. Second, the repressive state apparatuses which consist of the
military, the police, and the judiciary.
- Meta stories are more important than big narratives.
- Mind is superior to the body according to Plato. Moreover, he considers the mind as the
seat of the body; he goes further to propose that the state should be run by
philosophers. On the other hand, poststructuralists think that the body which controls
and determines the meaning. For instance, someone with a bad health will see the
world differently as compared to a healthy person. Everything that we are deprived
from comes out in different form as a process of compensation.
- Text comes from the word textile which is a fabric that consists of different
components. In the same manner, texts constitute us by being consisted of stories,
beliefs, social practices, etc. We are the production of history and the intersection of
texts and discourses which is a mixture of different things.
- The poststructuralist approach doesn’t give us definitive answers; it only gives us ways
and tools to look at things in more complex and sophisticated ways. This approach looks
at the subjective context, general condition, ideologies, and the different interpretations
and discourses that derive from these factors in order to deconstruct them by
deciphering their opaque language.
- Poststructuralism warns us that ideologies and discourses simplify things and sometimes
create reality out of nothing. For instance, stereotypes about immigrants in the populist
discourse. Furthermore, these representations claim to replace the things that were
present through a set of discursive practices as mentioned in the stereotype example.
- Language precedes the subject. Moreover, it tries to bring what is absent physically
present in an abstract manner.