From Structuralism to Poststructuralism
As the immediate precursor to poststructuralism, the movement or paradigm of structuralism was naturally responsible for determining many of poststructuralism's salient features. But what was structuralism, and how are we to understand its transformation into poststructuralism? In this chapter I will address these issues by first outlining the contours of what might be called the image of structuralism. An appreciation of this image is necessary for a full understanding of the shift from structuralism to poststructuralism. Nevertheless, an acknowledgement of its limitations, of the inconsistencies it suppresses and the inaccuracies it perpetrates, is equally necessary. As I will therefore demonstrate, alongside the formation and propagation of the classical structuralist image runs a history of its transformation a history of those aspects and individuals who subverted the image of structuralism in one way or other, as it was in the process of emerging. Many of these aspects and individuals will in time be collected under the banner of 'poststructuralism' But as we will see, this raises several problems. Firstly, how are we to comprehend and categorise these various proto developments? Are they properly poststructuralist, or merely a different kind of structuralism? If the former, how can poststructuralism preexist its own emergence, and if the latter, then what is it that distinguishes structuralism from poststructuralism? Such considerations are made even more difficult by the fact that almost none of the thinkers identified today as 'poststructuralist' ever used the term, let alone self identified with it. These issues, however, belie a larger problem that has been of concern to structuralists and poststructuralists alike: the problematic nature of transformation. If we are to make sense of the shift from structuralism to poststructuralism, the manner in which we make sense will itself require analysis and critique. A