Editing Post-structuralism (section)

== Post-structuralism and structuralism ==
[[Structuralism]], as an intellectual movement in France in the 1950s and 1960s, studied underlying structures in [[Cultural artifact|cultural products]] (such as [[text (literary theory)|text]]s) and used analytical concepts from [[linguistics]], [[psychology]], [[anthropology]], and other fields to [[Interpretation (disambiguation)|interpret]] those structures. Structuralism posits the concept of [[binary opposition]], in which frequently-used pairs of opposite-but-related words (concepts) are often arranged in a hierarchy; for example: [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]]/[[Romanticism|Romantic]], male/female, speech/writing, rational/emotional, signified/signifier, symbolic/imaginary, and east/west.

Post-structuralism rejects the structuralist notion that the dominant word in a pair is dependent on its [[:wikt: subservient|subservient]] counterpart, and instead argues that founding knowledge on either pure experience ([[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]]) or on [[system]]atic structures (structuralism) is impossible,<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dDi6guWdpfIC |title=Gilles Deleuze |isbn=9781134578023 |last1=Colebrook |first1=Claire |author-link=Claire Colebrook |date=2002 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page=2 |series=Routledge Critical Thinkers |quote=''Post''-structuralism responded to the impossibility of founding [[knowledge]] either on pure experience (phenomenology) or systematic structures (structuralism). |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> because history and culture actually condition the study of underlying structures, and these are subject to biases and misinterpretations. [[Gilles Deleuze]] and others saw this impossibility not as a failure or loss, but rather as a cause for "celebration and liberation."<ref name="Colebrook">{{Cite book | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=dDi6guWdpfIC&pg=PA2 | title = Gilles Deleuze |isbn = 9781134578023 |last1 = Colebrook |first1 = Claire |date = 2002 |publisher= Routledge|page= 2|series= Routledge Critical Thinkers | quote = In Deleuze's case, like many other post-structuralists, this recognised impossibility of organising life into closed structures was not a failure or loss but a cause for celebration and liberation.}}</ref> A post-structuralist approach argues that to understand an object (a text, for example), one must study both the object itself and the [[system]]s of knowledge that produced the object.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.3817/0383055195 |title=Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel Foucault |journal=[[Telos (journal)|Telos]] |volume=1983 |issue=55 |pages=195–211 |year=1983 |last1=Raulet |first1=Gerard |s2cid=144500134}}</ref> The uncertain boundaries between structuralism and post-structuralism become further blurred by the fact that scholars rarely label themselves as post-structuralists. Some scholars associated with structuralism, such as [[Roland Barthes]] and [[Michel Foucault]], also became noteworthy in post-structuralism.<ref>{{Cite book |doi=10.1017/UPO9781844653683 |title=Understanding Poststructuralism |year=2005 |last1=Williams |first1=James |isbn=9781844653683 |publisher=[[Routledge]]}}</ref>