From structuralism to poststructuralism

Authors

Craig A. Lundy, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

73171

Publication Details

Lundy, C. A. (2013). From structuralism to poststructuralism. In B. Dillet, I. Mackenzie and R. Porter (Eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism (p. 1). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (due late 2013)

Additional Publication Information

ISBN: 9780748641222

Abstract

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.