Structuralism and Poststructuralism For Beginners

Structuralism and Poststructuralism For Beginners

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<p>€œWhat is Structuralism? How is it possible? And once the structures of Structuralism have been discovered, how is Poststructuralism possible?€</p><p>Thus begins Don Palmer€s <i>Structuralism and Poststructuralism For Beginners</i>. If Nobel or Pulitzer ever made a prize for making the most difficult philosophers and ideas accessible to the greatest number of people, one of the leading candidates would certainly be Professor Don Palmer. From his <i>Sartre For Beginners</i> and <i>Kierkegaard For Beginners</i> to his <i>Looking at Philosophy</i>, author/illustrator Don Palmer has the magic touch when it comes to translating the most brutally difficult ideas into language and images that non-specialists can understand.</p><p>€œIn its less dramatic versions,€ writes Palme, €œstructuralism is just a method of studying language, society, and the works of artists and novelists. But in its most exuberant form, it is a philosophy, an overall worldview that provides an account of reality and knowledge.€ Poststructuralism is a loosely knit intellectual movement, comprised mainly of ex-structuralists, who either became dissatisfied with the theory or felt they could improve it.</p><p><i>Structuralism and Poststructuralism For Beginners</i> is an illustrated tour through the mysterious landscape of Structuralism and Poststructuralism. The book€s starting point is the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Sausser. The book moves on to the anthropologist and literary critic Claude L©vi-Strauss; the semiologost and literary critic Roland Barthes; the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser; the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida. Learn among other things, why structuralists say:</br><ul><li>Reality is composed of not Things, but Relationships</li><li>Every €œobject€ is both a presence and an absence</li><li>The total system is present in each of its parts</li><li>The parts are more real than the whole</li></ul></p><p>The book concludes by examining the postmodern obsession with language and with the radical claim of the disappearance of the individual €“ obsessions that unite the work of all these theorists.</p>