Post-Structuralism%20

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Post-Structuralism Postmodern Texts (3)

1. Post-Structuralism Defined Marxism vs.
   Post-Structuralism
2. Fiction and Reality Examples 1 context into
   text, 2 life//story-telling , 3 parody 4. Other
   kinds of fiction
3. Deconstruction
4. Subject and Power

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Post-Structuralism Defined (review)

• post-structuralism as an anti-foundationalist
  mode of thinking prevalent in the second half of
  the 20th c.
• Foundations
• Reality Representation
• Man Subject
• Truth History God, . . ., any kind of
  Totalization and Center. Différance and
  Discourse

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Poststructuralism Major Concerns

• Realist Representation e.g.
  metafiction and Deconstruction
• Transcendent Knowledge and Subject
  Textualization of Self and Society e.g.
  Foucault
• Truth is provisional regime of truth.
• Subjects are fragmentary (positions).
• Society is a network of discourses.

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Discourse and Power Major concepts

• From Language to Discourse
• Nothing outside of Discourse?
• 2. Power and Knowledge (Truth)
• 3. Subject and Subject Position
• 4. Influences on Literary Criticism

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From Language to Discourse

• Saussure Barthes Derrida Foucault

Language Or Langue/ Parole Semiotics-wider fields of languages Textual Play, Open text, Meaning undecidable and fluid History Social practices texts discourse
Meaning and Signification Scientific (text, but not subject) Meaning and Signification Scientific (text, but not subject) Signification traces Knowledge power Subject position
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Discourse Definition and Example

• P. 26
• Statements
• Rules about the sayable and thinkable
• Subjects

• Romanticism Discourse
• The Poet with unique imagination close to
  nature, etc.
• Emotion over Reason Nature over Science.
• The Poet The peasants

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Discourse Definition and Example

• P. 26 27
• Authority of knowledge, and exclusion of other
  statements
• Practices within institutions
• Historicized discursive formation

• Romanticism Discourse
• The forming of Romantic poetry as the canon.
• Literary reviews, letters, prefaces
• Contributing historical factors industrial rev.
  french rev. emergence, dominance and then
  decline of Romantic poetry.

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Literary Discourse implications

• No fixed boundaries between literature and other
  social practices
• The author is not the creator of his work. He
  serves as a label to put on a group of works
  related to him. (e.g. Wordsworth discourse)
• Defining some subject positions (of the author,
  the reader, etc.)

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From Language to Discourse

Structuralism Focuses on language and fixed structure Foucault Language (statements) as well as social practices
Marxism Materialist view of history and society -- scientific Foucault p. 48 --not limited to class --every knowledge is contigent.
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Discourse and Truth

• Which of the following is an objective and
  unchangeable fact?
• Madness is a mental illness.
• Masturbation causes sexual impotence.
• ?????????????.
• sodomy gay homosexual queer ??
• What is the regime of truth which make these
  statements valid?

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Power and Knowledge

• power
• both repressive, controlling and productive
• -- not just top-down it circulates, working in
  multiple direction like capillary movement.
• e.g. the operation of power in a hospital
  exertion of power through spatial arrangement,
  the doctors examination, the posters, pamphlets,
  the different examination room, registration
  system, pharmacy, insurance co., etc.

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Subject and Subject Position

• p. 55 56
• Two ideas of subject 1. Conscious autonomous
  subject
• 2. Subject to someone elses control.
• Foucault 1. Constituted by a discourse to
  represent it (hysteric woman) 2. Subject
  positions.

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Subject and Subject Position Victorian
Women--Hysteria
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Subject and Subject Position Victorian
Women--Hysteria
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Subject and Subject Position Victorian
WomenPre-Raphaelite Women

• Elizabeth Siddal
• http//www.eng.fju.edu.tw/crit.97/PRwomen/final.ht
  m

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Subject and Subject Position Victorian
WomenPre-Raphaelite Women

• Fanny Cornforth
• http//www.eng.fju.edu.tw/crit.97/PRwomen/final.ht
  m