 I am Arpita Karwa and in this video I am going to talk about post structuralism or deconstructionism. Now in the previous video if you remember I talked about structuralism and I am so amazed to see the kind of response I have got. The comment section is flooded with messages where students are saying that after this video they have fallen in love with structuralism and now structuralism is their new best friend of English Literature so I was so overwhelmed that I thought that why not make another video on post structuralism and deconstructionism which is another frightening area of English Literature. So in this video I am going to talk about post structuralism and how is it different from structuralism. Let's just have a quick recap of what structuralism was. Structuralism basically talked about the relationship of sign that is signifier and signified and we found that the relationship is culturally constructed there is no universal relationship that is why we know it as an arbitrary relationship. Apart from that we also looked at the concept of binary opposition. We also looked at the great structuralist thinker Ferdinand Saschaar and his work where he talked about different different theories of structuralism. Now we are going to look at post structuralism. Now before we move on and look at the principles of post structuralism it is first important to look at this work post structuralism in detail. What does this term, this word post structuralism symbolize. Now there are two ways you can write it. If you have read Peter Barry's beginning theory you must have understood that somewhere he writes post structuralism with a hyphen in between and somewhere he writes post structuralism without a hyphen. Now how are these two terms different or are they just two ways of writing the same thing? No let me tell you there is a very slight difference between these two ways of writing post structuralism. Post structuralism with a hyphen in middle symbolizes a literary period. Suppose there was modernism and then came post modernism. Now post modernism with a hyphen means something which started around 1945 and which lasted till 1990 that was post modernism. Now similar fashion post structuralism is a literary movement which came as a response to structuralism. So there is a time period by which we define post structuralism. On the other hand when we write post structuralism without a hyphen in between in that case we are referring to the features and traits of post structuralism which still continues today giving you example of post modernism. Post modernism says that the world is fragmented. Now in spite of the fact that post modernism ended somewhere around 1990s even in today's world in today's 21st century we find that the world is still fragmented and if we want to talk about this fragmentation in the light of post modernism we are going to use the term post modernism without a hyphen which would symbolize that the features of post modernism, the traits of post modernism are being talked about. On the other hand if we say post modernism with a hyphen that means I am talking about that time frame of 1945 to 1990 and I am talking about the literary writers who were writing during that time. Similar fashion post structuralism is a time period whereas post structuralism without hyphen is talking about features or traits that are the basic principles or basic tenets of post structuralist theory. Now I hope that the difference is clear and this is a very very important question which can be asked in any viva from a literature scholar. If you are doing your PhD in post structuralism or post modernism or post colonialism and if the examiner or the jury finds this term written in your PhD thesis they might ask you that how are these two terms different with hyphen or without hyphen and if you can retain this fact for the rest of your life I am pretty sure you are going to impress your jury members very well. So in order to understand post structuralism you must understand that post structuralism was a reaction against structuralist movement. Structuralist said that meaning is absolute it is fixed and there is a structure which is followed by language. On the other hand post structuralist they negated all what was said by structuralist and they said that the meaning is not so absolute the structure is not so constant and the most important post structuralist thinker was Derrida. So Jack Derrida gave a theory of difference. If you look at the word difference you will find that it has been made from two words differ and defer. Differ means something which is not alike which is changing that is differ. What is defer? Differ means to continue something which is in continuation that is defer. So according to Derrida post structuralist believed in the fact that the meaning is constantly changing. How? If I give you three words pin, sin and bin. In all these three words you will find that there is something which is constant which is in all the three words that is in. I and in is constant in all the three words. So that is the component of defer. Differ means something which continues. So in is continuing in all the three words. On the other hand the first letter sin, bin and pin S, P and B all the three letters are changing. So the first letter is changing. Rest of the letters are continuing and this is what we call as deference. Something which is changing which is different in all three of them. The first letter is different. Something which is continued in all the three letters that is in. So this makes deference a amalgamation of differ and defer. So if you look at Derrida's work he has given a lot of terminology in regards to post-structuralism. He talks about metaphysics of absence. Now what is this metaphysics of absence? According to Derrida and other post-structuralist thinkers the meaning is changing because of what is absent. So if you look at a word where we have a blank and then we have in. So this first blank that you can see if we put B, if we put P, if we put S in the first blank the meaning changes. This is what is known as metaphysics of absence. That because there's something absent and because of that absent thing the meaning can change. The meaning of bin and pin is different because the first letter is absent. So that's metaphysics of absence. Derrida has given a lot of other terminology like aphoria and then we have logocentricism and so many other theories which are important but since it's a crash course I'm only going to talk about the most important theories and most important principles of post-structuralism. If you wish to study post-structuralism in detail you can join our online course. The details of our online course and the course content is given on our website arpithakarwa.com You can go to the website and check out the list of writers that we cover in our online course and we cover literally theory in detail in module number 7 where you will find lectures of more than 10 hours on each and every theory. So we talk about each writer in detail and we then discuss all the previous year questions on that writer so that you know how to attempt the question after knowing the theoretical base. Another important principle of structuralism was that everything has a structure. There's a relationship of signifier and signified. Okay, on the other hand if you look at the post-structuralist thinkers Lakhan he says that there's a constant sliding of signifier and signified. You can never reach the ultimate signified. Okay, because every signifier is leading to another signifier and then to another signifier you will never reach the signified. So if you can understand this theory you will understand the playfulness of language. Okay, we say that this is what I meant but actually is it what we mean to say? So if you look at this theory you will understand the fact that signifier and signified there's no constant relationship. It's ever changing, ever evolving. My father used to say a very beautiful line when I was young. He used to always say that when you play with words, words play with you. That's the basic principle of a good writing. You play with words and the words will play with you and you can use these words in various manners and various meanings are going to evolve. Similarly philosophers have said a beautiful thing that you can never dive into the same river twice. What they meant by this? That river is ever flowing. So when you dive in a river and you come out that water has flowed forward and now when you dive again you dive in new water. That's what post-structuralists are trying to tell us that when I say somebody I know her. If you ask me about my mother I might say that I know her very well but do I actually know her? Because I knew her a moment back but in one moment she has changed. She has evolved as a person and now in this moment I don't know her. If you have ever seen ECG machines where heartbeats are measured you will find that every heartbeat has a different rate. Similarly there are machines which can actually measure the sound quality. Now when you say a word P and next moment when you say P the waves would be different. The P that you said in the past moment will have a different wave and in this moment the P wave would be different. So see your P has changed. So there's nothing fixed. That's what deconstructionists are trying to say that you believe that something is fixed but nothing is fixed. Similarly in the similar fashion deconstructionists say a very beautiful thing that if you are looking at a word if you are looking at a sound it changes and it changes so much that you cannot find the relationship between signifier and signified. Everything has evolved. A very good and classic example of deconstructionist thinking is the word being, B E I N G. If you decode this word you will find that it is made of two words B E and I N G. B E means something which is done if I have done something if I have become something that's B. I N G means a process a continuous process. So you can see the word being itself shows that there is no similarity. You are and then you are also becoming B and I N G being. So you are something and you are also becoming so there's nothing fixed. Christopher Norris is a beautiful thinker who wrote a work Deconstructionist theory in practice and there he talks about all these theories. He talks about how everything is constantly changing is in state of flux and thus there is no fixed universal relationship between signifier signified. There is no fixed structure. Everything is sliding beneath one or the other. Just like my father said that words play with you similarly post-structuralist believe that words are always playing with you. The meaning is constantly changing the moment you say that I know this the next moment it has changed and then you cannot say that I know it anymore because the new meaning has developed from that particular word. So meaning of words are constantly changing. That is the maintenance of deconstructionist and post-structuralist thinking. Another principle of post-structuralism is that they don't believe in binary opposites. If you look at my previous lecture on structuralism I discussed the fact that according to structuralist there's a binary relationship between words. In order to understand dullness you need to look at it by understanding what is light. So light and darkness they are binary opposite and the meaning of one word is given by its opposite word. Similarly if you look at post-structuralist you will find that they don't believe in binary opposite. They say that there is no binary opposite existing now. Technology has altered the way we see the world. If you look at private and public you will figure out that now everything is public. There is no distinction between private and public. If you don't agree then let me give you a very very good example. Suppose you post a picture of yours which is a private property on Instagram. The next minute it goes viral and it becomes a public property. So how is your picture which was private is now public? There is no distinction between private and public anymore. Similarly in 21st century we find that gender is also not fixed. A person who is female can have masculine traits. Then there are the concepts of transgender. So you can see that there is no binary opposite existing anymore. And that is how they ridicule the structuralist idea of binary opposite. Another important thing proposed by structuralist was that speech is superior to writing. They said that speech is better and writing is inferior. But post structuralist did not believe in this point. They said that speech and writing both are complementary. And they even went ahead saying that writing is superior than speech. How come the structuralist would say that a child first learns to speak and then he is able to write. But then on the other hand post structuralist say that suppose there is a letter which looks like this which I have put on the screen. Now can you pronounce it? Can you speak it? Memory, it's not written in your brain. So whenever we learn something it is first written and only then we are able to speak. A child knows who is a father when he writes the image of father in his brain and only then he can say the word father. So according to post structuralist in this debate or of whether speaking is better or writing is better. They say that writing is superior to speech. Just like there was a constant debate between who came first. Is it the chicken or the egg? We still don't know whether it was chicken or the egg. Similarly post structuralist believe that it is writing which comes first and then speaking. On the other hand structuralist say that it is the speech which is superior and writing which is inferior. So if you look at all these theories which I just presented in front of you, you will understand that post structuralism is basically a literary movement which negate or false say that all the theories of structuralist are false. So when they are actually giving a counter argument of all the structuralist theories, that movement is known as post structuralism or deconstructionism. Post structuralism does not end with the works of Lacan and Derrida. There are a lot of other thinkers who have given their significant contribution in the field of post structuralism. One such writer is Mikhail Foucault who gave this beautiful quotes that power circulates in all directions and he talks about power, sexuality in his work, order of things, birth of cleaning and we talk about all these major works, these major thinkers in detail in our online course. The list of all important post structuralist thinkers which you must study for UDC net exam is given on my website, ArpitaKarwa.com You can go and check the list in the online course content section under module 7 and if you really like the layer list then you can join our online course in which we prepare you in a full fledged manner for UDC net exam. Also I would like you to note here that we give you a detailed course on all these literary theory. These literary theories are interesting as well as fascinating if you study them deeply because these videos are crash courses I would not be able to cover all the concepts. I only give you an overview of these theories. If you want to get detailed audio lectures you can subscribe to my online course wherein I talk about each of these theories are in detail looking at all the previous your papers as well so that you know how to answer those questions based on the theoretical theories. 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