t h e / u n t i m e l y / p a s t
the bibliography project
poststructuralism
last modified: 19 February 2000
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Attridge, Derek, Geoff Bennington, and Robert Young, Eds. Post-Structuralism and the Question of History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
"Recent developments in literary theory (such as structuralism and deconstruction) have come under attack for ignoring history, while historically based approaches have been criticized for failing to take account of the problems inherent in their methodological foundations. This collection of essays is unique in focusing on this central debate in literary studies today: the relation between post-structuralist and historical (especially Marxist) literary theory and criticism." from the back cover
Includes: Geoff Bennington and Robert Young, "Introduction: Posing the Question"; Geoff Bennington, "Demanding History"; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Speculations on Reading Marx: After Reading Derrida"; Tony Bennett, "Texts in History: The Determination of Readings and their Texts"; Jonathan Culler, "Criticism and Institutions: The American University"; Marian Hobson, "History Traces"; Ann Wordsworth, "Derrida and Foucault: Writing the History of Historicity"; Mark Cousins, "The Practice of Historical Investigation"; Rodolphe Gasche, "Of Aesthetic and Historical Determination"; Jean-Francois Lyotard, "The Sign of History"; Derek Attridge, "Language as History/History as Language: Saussure and the Romance of Etymology"; Mary Nyquist, "Fallen Differences, Phallogenetic Discourses: Losing Paradise Lost to History"; Maud Ellmann, "Ezra Pound: The Erasure of History"; William Pietz, "The Phonograph in Africa: International Phonocentrism from Stanley to Sarnoff."
Bannet, Eve Tavor. Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent: Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
"Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent is a fascinating and lucid exploration of the seminal writings of four eminent French post-structuralists that sheds new light on influential theoretical texts. Eve Tavor Bannet discusses the work of Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan as coherent philosophical fictions, showing their contradictory political, social, and pedagogical implications and their complex historicity.
"Placing these writings within various French contexts, Tavor Bannet demonstrates how each of these theorists reacted against the pervasive authoritarian and bureaucratic systems of post-World War II France. Working within an environment of dissent, they created alternative structures of language and thought. Their innovative and challenging ideas were widely imitated and repeated by intellectuals, creating new forms of academic conformity and constraint. Tavor Bannet compares the current situation of university intellectuals in France with that of their counterparts in England and the United states; in the process, she raises important questions about intellectual and academic responsibility." from the back cover
Cohen, Sande. Academia and the Luster of Capital. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
"Ideas, says Sande Cohen, have attained 'commodity' status in the academy, and knowledge is now seen as another capitalistic 'industry.' In Academia and the Luster of Capital, Cohen both reveals and interrogates the specific and material workings of this economy of the marketplace of ideas.
"Cohen uses paradigms from Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuse, and Guatteri to assemble a 'war machine' against the well-oiled apparatus of self-preservation and self-reproduction of the academic institution. In detailed and concrete arguments, he challenges accepted theories of criticism, especially university-based myths. Academia and the Luster of Capital constitutes a compelling statement for the abandonment of legitimating, officiating paradigms of thought in all academic disciplines, and outlines possibilities for the emergence of the new in thought and action." from the back cover
Dews, Peter. Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory. London and New York: Verso, 1987.
"Over the last two decades, contemporary French philosophy has exercised a powerful influence on intellectual life, across both Europe and America. Post-structuralist strategies and concepts have played an important role in many forms of social, cultural and aesthetic analysis, particularly on the Left. There can be little doubt that recent French thought has captured something decisive about the present mood in the advanced capitalist countries, and beyond.
"Despite this widespread reception, however, there has still been comparatively little analysis of the basic philosophical assumptions of post-structuralism, or of the compatibility of many of its central tenets with the progressive political orientations with which it is frequently associated. In this book, Peter Dews seeks to remedy this situation by setting post-structuralist thought in relation to another, more explicitly critical, tradition in the philosophical analysis of modernity-that of the Frankfurt School, from Adorno to Habermas.
"In a series of closely argued chapters on the work of Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard and Foucault, Dews examines such fundamental topics as 'difference', 'inter-subjectivity', 'desire' and 'power'. Throughout, the more integrated approach to these issues in the Critical Theory tradition is highlighted, and the unstable internal dynamic of post-structuralism is emphasized. In conclusion, Dews draws on the insights of Adorno to show how post-structuralist thought ultimately becomes entangled in the very 'logic of disintegration' which it so vividly evokes.
"Logics of Disintegration will be of interest to readers across the wide range of disciplines, from literary criticism to social theory, which have felt the impact of post-structuralism-and to anyone who wishes to reach a balanced assessment of one of the most influential currents of our time." from the back cover
Eagleton, Terry, "Marxism, Structuralism, and Post-Structuralism." diacritics 15:4 (Winter 1988), 2-12.
Review of Perry Anderson, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism.
Eagleton, Terry, "Last Post." Textual Practice 2:1 (Spring 1988), 105-111.
Review of Derek Attridge, Geoff Bennington, and Robert Young, Eds., Post-Structuralism and the Question of History.
Frank, Manfred. What is Neostructuralism? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Translated by Sabine Wilke and Richard T. Gray. Theory and History of Literature series, vol. 45.
"Manfred Frank is a German philosopher and literary critic who teaches at the University of Tubingen; his books have dealt primarily with German idealism and romanticism, the nineteenth-century hermeneutic tradition, and contemporary French theory. In What Is Neostructuralism? (published in Germany in 1983) he draws on his earlier work in an effort to mediate between the seemingly antagonistic positions of German hermeneutics and French poststructuralism.
"Frank first locates in classical structuralism-the work of Saussure and Levi-Strauss-those points that poststructuralism seized upon and radicalized (hence his term neostructuralism, suggesting an implicit continuity), and he identifies the critique of centered, closed structures as one of its basic tenets. Then, from his own vantage point within the interpretive tradition of hermeneutics, Frank provides detailed critical readings of Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Lyotard, focusing on three crucial issues: their view of history, their notions of subjectivity, and their theory of meaning." from the back cover
Harari, Josue V., Ed. Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979.
"An outstanding cast of contributors seeks to show the directions in which continental and continentally oriented American literary criticism has evolved since the influence of structuralism began to decline. Among the topics treated are semiology and literature, anthropology and literature; psychoanalysis and literature; the ideological operation which informs critical concepts; modern American poetics; algebraic models as epistemological operators; and the modes of production of poetic language. In discussing various authors such as Freud, Pascal, Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Conrad, Pound, Flaubert, Proust, and Valery, the essays explore the ways in which criticism is now openly challenging the primacy of literature.
"A book meant for the specialist as well as the novice, for the teacher of literature and criticism as well as the student. Textual Strategies is a brilliant introduction to post-structuralist critical theories and practices." from the back cover
Includes: Josue V. Harari, "Critical Factions/Critical Fictions"; Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text"; Jacques Derrida, "The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics"; Paul de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric"; Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?"; Edward W. Said, "The Text, the World, the Critic"; Rene Girard, "Myth and Ritual in Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Eugenio Donato, "The Museum's Furnace: Notes toward a Contextual Reading of Bouvard and Pechuchet"; Louis Marin, "On the Interpretation of Ordinary Language: A Parable of Pascal"; Michel Serres, "The Algebra of Literature: the Wolf's Game"; Gilles Deleuze, "The Schizophrenic and Language: Surface and Depth in Lewis Carroll and Antonin Artaud"; Neil Hertz, "Freud and the Sandman"; Joseph Riddel, "Decentering the Image: The 'Project' of 'American' Poetics?"; Gerard Genette, "Valery and the Poetics of Language"; Eugene Vance, "Roland and the Poetics of Memory"; Michael Riffaterre, "Generating Lautremont's Text"; Directions for Further Research, Bibliography."
Harland, Richard, Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism London and New York: Routledge, 1988. New Accents series.
"'Superstructuralism' is an overarching term to cover Structuralism, Semiotics, Post-Structuralism, and associated movements. In his book, Dr. Harland claims that these movements all spring from a characteristic 'superstructuralizing' way of thinking: a way of thinking that inverts our ordinary mode until superstructures which used to seem secondary take precedence over bases which used to seem primary. Ultimately, the book locates this way of thinking in its relation to previous similar ways of thinking - previous European ways of thinking, not generally understood or appreciated in the Anglo-Saxon world.
"At the same time, Dr. Harland does not deny the radical shifts and changes through which Superstructuralism has passed. But he argues that such shifts and changes represent the inevitable unfolding of a Superstructuralist way of thinking. From scientific Structuralists to anti-scientific Post-Structuralists, from interpretations of Freud and Marx to refutations of Freud and Marx, from studies of language and society to subversions of language and society - there is a logical story behind the chronological sequence. It is this story that Dr. Harland seeks to disclose in his comprehensive account of all the major Superstructuralists: Saussure, Lacan, Benveniste, Jakobson, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattrari, and Baudrillard." from the back cover
Harland, Richard, Beyond Superstructuralism London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
"Casting a critical eye upon the position described in his previous book, Superstructuralism, Richard Harland argues that structuralist and poststructuralist approaches to language are fatally limited by their focus upon single words. Instead he offers the radical alternative of a syntagmatic approach. This shows that the effect of combining words gramatically is more dramatic than any existing theory--European or Anglo-American--has yet recognized. The wide breadth of coverage in the book takes in 'post-Chomskyan' linguistics, deconstruction, analytic and speech-act views of language. Harland challenges the very foundation of recent literary and language-based theory, opening up a range of novel options for literary criticism, linguistics and philosophy." from the back cover of the paperback
Kurzweil, Edith. The Age of Structuralism: Levi-Strauss to Foucault. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
"Examining the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, of four writers who expanded on the structuralism he pioneered, and of three writers who reacted against it, Edith Kurzweil's The Age of Structuralism is a lucid and penetrating portrait of the movement that dominated French intellectual life for nearly twenty years, and whose impact still reverberates today in post-structuralist thought. Kurzweil surveys the French intellectual milieu up until structuralism's decline in the early 1970s. She explains the strikingly original contributions of Levi-Strauss, and then proceeds to illuminate the ideas of Louis Althusser, Henri Lefebvre, Paul Ricoeur, Alain Touraine, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault.
"Placing these major figures in the context of the political, historical, and psychoanalytic currents of the time, The Age of Structuralism is a commanding and far-reaching study of a decisive epoch in intellectual history." from the back cover
Megill, Allan Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Contents: Introduction. Part I: Friedrich Nietzsche as Aestheticist. 1. Nietzsche and the Aesthetic. 2. Nietzsche and Myth. Part II: Martin Heidegger and the Idealism of Nostalgia. 3. Heidegger and Crisis. 4. Heidegger's Aestheticism. Part III: Michel Foucault and the Activism of Discourse. 5. Foucault and Structuralism. 6. Beyond Structuralism. Part III: On the Meaning of Jacques Derrida. 7. The Deconstruction of Crisis. 8. The Deconstruction of Art. Conclusion.
Palmer, Donald D. Structuralism and Poststructuralism for Beginners New York: Writers and Readers, 1997.
"'What is Structuralism? How is it possible. And once the structures of structuralism have been discovered how is Post-Structuralism possible?'
"Thus begins Don Palmer's Structuralism and Poststructuralism for Beginners. If Nobel or Pulitzer ever give a prize for making the most difficult philosophers and ideas accessible to the greatest number of people, one of the leading candidates would certainly be Professor Don Palmer. From his Sartre for Beginners and Kierkegaard for Beginners for Writers and Readers to his Looking at Philosophy (Mayfield Publishing), author/illustrator Don Palmer has the magic touch when it comes to translating the most brutally difficult ideas into language and images that non-specialists can understand.
"If there is any subject that cries out for Palmer's artful clarification, it is the forbidding school of thought known as Structuralism. 'In its less dramatic versions,' writes Palmer, 'structuralism is just a method of studying language, society, and the works of artists and novelists. But in its most exuberant form, it is a philosophy, an overall worldview that provides an account of reality and knowledge.' Poststructuralism is a loosely knit intellectual movement, comprised mainly of ex-structuralists, who either became dissatisfied with the theory or felt they could improve it.
"Structuralism and Poststructuralism for Beginners is an illustrated tour through the mysterious landscape of Structuralism and Poststructuralism. The book's starting point is the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. The books moves on to the anthropologist and literary critic Claude Levi-Strauss; the semiologist and literary critic Roland Barthes; the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser; the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida. Learn among other things, why the Structuralists say:
Reality is composed not of Things, but of Relationships
Every 'object' is both a presence and an absence
The total system is present in each of its parts
The parts are more real than the whole
"The book concludes by examining the post-modern obsession with language and with the radical claim of the disappearance of the individual--obsessions that unite the work of all of these theorists." from the back cover of the paperback edition
Schrift, Alan D. Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction. London and New York: Routledge, 1990.
"Nietzsche is a forerunner of much of the contemporary debate about interpretation, and he is frequently quoted and cited as a source. But there has been little analysis of the specific contributions to interpretation theory he made in his own texts.
"Alan Schrift's book offers a clear exposition of Nietzsche's early accounts of language, metaphor, and rhetoric. It provides a detailed exposition of what Nietzsche says about perspectivism, philology, truth, and genealogy, showing the methodological implications of his remarks for hermeneutics."
"Schrift also summarizes the Heideggerian and Derridean interpretations of Nietzsche in a way that is accessible to non-specialists. Arguing that a tension in Nietzsche's own work anticipated the hermeneutic dilemma of dogmatism and relativism, Schrift proposes a pluralistic alternative. By examining the tension between perspectivism and philology and showing how it animated Nietzsche's own genealogical interpretations, Schrift displays genealogy as a practice which can accept multiple interpretations without relinquishing the ability to judge some as better than others." from the back cover
Schrift, Alan D. Nietzsche's French Legacy: A Genealogy of Poststructuralism. New York and London: Routledge, 1995.
"More than any other figure, Friedrich Nietzsche is cited as the philosopher who anticipates the philosophical themes that have dominated French theory since structuralism. Using Nietzsche's thought as a springboard, this study illuminates the ideas of some of the most important and difficult contemporary French theorists, including Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Helene Cixous. Nietzsche's French Legacy is a detailed study of how the French have appropriated Nietzsche in developing their own critical projects." from the back cover
Sturrock, John, Ed. Structuralism and Since: From Levi-Strauss to Derrida. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
"Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida -- these five charismatic difficult thinkers have helped shape an intellectual epoch. Writing in diverse fields, they have made structuralism the force that it is today, an intellectual fashion worldwide. Yet these authors are more discussed and quoted than read and understood. This book elucidates the structuralist phenomenon.
Structuralism began as a method of inquiry used by specialists first in linguistics and then in anthropology to organize and evaluate their findings. It has since expanded tot he point where the exact meaning of the term has become uncertain. Originating in France in the 1960s, structuralism has since spread to other European countries, to Britain and the United States. There are structuralists to be found now in many fields, in the social sciences, in history, in literary criticism."
Includes: John Sturrock, "Introduction"; Dan Sperber, "Claude Levi-Strauss"; John Sturrock, "Roland Barthes"; Hayden White, "Michel Foucault"; Malcolm Bowie, "Jacques Lacan"; Jonathan Culler, "Jacques Derrida."
Young, Robert, Ed. Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.
© Copyright 1999-2002, Jeffrey Hearn