The task of writing an introduction to a collection of work that explores the terrain of poststructuralism and its relation to the study of the past is an unusually complicated one. This is in part a consequence of the felt need to explain very carefully and with great precision exactly what this hard to understand topic is all about, the desire to make it as clear and accessible as is possible. To accomplish such a goal two very daunting steps would seem to be required. The first concerns the many historians who are rather unreflective on the subject of the theoretical assumptions implicit in their work: such assumptions need to be made explicit before discussion can constructively proceed. But even with such premises quite clearly understood by all concerned, the second step--that of mapping out the extremely contrary set of beliefs from which poststructuralist work is elaborated--is every bit as problematic.
Given a term like poststructuralism, some reference to the significance of structuralism would seem to be the place to begin. It is a label that has been applied rather broadly at times, but here I wish to refer to the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the scholarly activity, stretching across a variety of disciplines, which has been modeled upon Saussure's approach to the study of language. The ethnology of Claude Levi-Strauss and the cultural criticism of Roland Barthes are commonly identified as preeminent examples of this elaboration of Saussure's program. The terms "semiology" and "semiotics" are also used to categorize this work, and are effectively synonymous with "structuralism" in this context. Saussure envisioned semiology as a general science of the sign, applicable to all areas of social life.(1) His own work in structural linguistics would be but a branch of such a science, focused upon the workings of linguistic sign systems alone. It has been the hope of proponents of the structural approach that it would develop into a universal methodology for the human sciences, much as the scientific method has for the natural sciences.(2)
Although structuralism is less a theory than a method, we still need to be familiar with some of its inherent philosophical assumptions in order to sort out the relationship between structuralism and poststructuralism, and the theory of knowledge which underlies structuralist practice is an area of particular importance. Structuralism is based upon a rationalist epistemology. Unlike the empirical tradition, in which the objective "things" which comprise the natural world are the basis for knowledge acquired through passive observation, a rationalist understands knowledge to be the product of the exercise of pure reason, with experience playing no role at all. Furthermore, structuralism is a variation of the metaphysical, rather than the Cartesian, brand of rationalism: objective, not subjective, ideas are the ultimate ground of the knowledge the rational mind seeks. Therefore, structuralism's signs bear some similarities to Plato's ideal forms, Spinoza's modes and attributes, and Hegel's categories, but also an important difference. For the structuralist, signs are neither timeless and universal, given by God, nor the product of a more secular, yet still mystical, geist. They are understood to be arbitrary social conventions bearing no natural connection to reality. No longer transcendental in the manner of the comparable elements of the metaphysical tradition mentioned above, signs are objective ideas which are not merely manifest in the laws, customs and institutions of society, but, indeed, culture bound.(3)
In the case of Saussure's specialty, for example, language is no longer taken to be a transparent medium, functioning as if it were merely a collection of words, unproblematically representing reality. Instead, the meaning we understand words to bear is seen to be an effect produced solely by the differential operation of the linguistic sign system itself. Signs are recognized, that is, understood as meaningful, as a result of how they fit into a comprehensive structure of interdependent relationships, and more to the point, how they differ from other signs, not because of any positive content they bear independently. Our mastery of the codes which structure this difference and produce meaning, it is argued, is what enables us to have knowledge of the world we experience, to find it meaningful or significant.
One consequence of finding structure to be at the root of all meaning is that the traditional role of the subject is eclipsed. Humanism's transcendental subject--the centered, unified, self-identical free agent, in the sense of an author, for example, who is the originary presence behind his text and determinant of its meaning--is displaced within the structuralist scheme of things. Individual agency effectively disappears, reduced to the status of a secondary effect. Formerly sovereign, the subject is now dependent. The author becomes a function of the text.
But with structuralism everything becomes a function of the text, or more generally, of structure. Behind the displacement of the subject is the more fundamental displacement of a convention so powerfully established in the Western tradition that it has long been seen as an essential, self-evident truth--this being the notion that meaning does in fact have a true being present to itself, that it is objective, fixed, universal and most certainly, no mere convention. The "metaphysics of presence," and "logocentrism," are terms used by a prominent poststructuralist, Jacques Derrida, to describe this long held and still dominant perspective.
Derrida's brand of poststructuralism, known as deconstruction, is an extension of structuralism, but it is also a critique.(4) In challenging the dominion of the metaphysics of presence, Derrida finds structuralism's description of meaning as an effect of difference rather than identity to be quite instructive. But inasmuch as structuralism assumes that any given structure of difference is a stable and closed system and can generate determinate meaning, Derrida concludes that even it is logocentric.
He does not, however, reject structuralism altogether for its failure to provide a thoroughgoing alternative to the logocentric Western philosophical tradition. Instead, he builds upon it by elaborating a description of meaning as not just an effect of static differentiation within a structure of relations, but also an effect of a temporal differentiation, or deferral. In a sense, Derrida brings history to bear against structuralism's preoccupation with synchronicity. And by expanding the structuralist notion of difference in this manner, Derrida is still able to maintain that just as there is no meaningful speech without a language, nor language without prior acts of speech, so too is no originary presence involved in any process of signification. This notion of an endlessly proliferating chain of relations suggests that meaning exists, paradoxically, only by reference to differential relations which are never quite stable. Signs are endlessly referring to the traces of other signs which are endlessly referring to the traces of still other signs, etc. For Derrida, and for poststructuralists more generally (and this is where they part company with structuralism), meaning is never believed to be innately fixed or determinate in any manner. In fact, clear and present meaning never objectively exists.
Derrida's objective is to reveal the workings of difference in the texts he examines--primarily major works of philosophy in the logocentric vein and literary texts which are suggestive of the antirational (but not irrational) alternative he wishes to suggest. In those texts which seek to ground themselves in the metaphysics of presence, he demonstrates that a careful reading reveals the fissures which undermine the manifest argument--inconsistencies, contradictions and other internal tensions which sympathetic readers overlook or disregard as unimportant marginalia.
He finds that the arguments made in such texts are built upon oppositions between key terms which have been hierarchically ordered. These contrasts may be discussed overtly in order to establish the privileged concept as central, original, or superior in relation to the subordinate which is marginal, derivative, or inferior, but the use of difference as a means of giving definition to a term threatens to undermine the logic of the logocentric position. The imposition of hierarchy serves to diminish the contrasting term; its marginalization in the text diverts attention from the possibility that the terms of the opposition will be recognized as interdependent. Derrida works to unveil that interdependence by demonstrating the reliance of the overtly privileged term upon its supposed inferior. But he doesn't just leave it there, with the hierarchy reversed and a new dominant presence in place. He seeks, through a variety of methods, to make "clear" the ultimate instability of the relation in question, and by extension, the instability of meaning which dissembles even the most resolutely logocentric text.
Derrida has found the theme of speech as it is privileged over writing to be particularly important in Western philosophy. The underlying premise in this tradition has been that the rational mind can understand the essential meaning of reality in a direct and unmediated fashion. Ideally, then, the form of expression which communicates our thoughts would be a transparent medium, as spoken language is preferred to written language in part because when we speak we seem to have direct access to our thoughts; it is difficult to separate mind from voice. Furthermore, with speech the speaker, being present and able to "clear up" any misunderstanding, is presumed to be able to communicate what he or she knows with the greatest accuracy. Writing is described as a derivative form of expression, at best a mere transcription of speech. It is farther removed from self-present meaning, and unlike speech, writing necessarily functions without the author present to govern understanding of the text, to determine its meaning. If it conveys anything original, if it adds anything on its own, it distorts the truth that speech conveys. A piece of writing is always open to interpretation; its meaning is effectively indeterminate. If one is attempting to convey truth--determinate, fixed and absolute meaning--writing is the more troubling form of expression.
And yet Derrida finds that in case after case the privileging of speech as the superior form of expression is consistently dependent upon writing when speech should, from the logocentric point of view, have an independent, positive identity all its own. But as mentioned above, Derrida has no interest in simply reversing the hierarchy, valorizing writing and subordinating speech. To do this would be to still accept the rules of the game as laid out by the metaphysics of presence. Instead he seeks to draw out the indeterminate nature of the differential relations between the terms. Speech may be defined by its relation to writing, but writing too is defined by its relation to speech. Or, to return to an earlier example, a meaningful individual act of speech may require a language as a prerequisite, but a language similarly requires individual acts of speech.
Derrida's work raises questions about any attempt to ground meaning in essential and hierarchical terms. And textual relations at the conceptual level are not all that is at issue here. The horizon expands to the social level, where knowledge about difference can underwrite social practice, where public discourse is institutionalized, policy decisions are made, and individual agency is conditioned. Attention to the process by which difference at the textual level is naturalized helps us to see that rather than interpret the world around us, attempting to determine its "true" meaning, we may instead wish to investigate the manner in which the boundless referentiality of the process of signification and the consequent elusiveness or sure and stable meaning is being domesticated, how knowledge is being created and linked to social relations. Deconstruction, and poststructuralism generally, I would argue, raises the question of the will to power.
This phrase, "will to power," reminds us that the connections between deconstruction and structuralism are only one piece of the poststructuralist puzzle. Clearly, another source of tremendous importance is Friedrich Nietzsche. We can find in Nietzsche's critique of the Western philosophic tradition, for example, much that Derrida will later draw upon. And in Nietzsche's genealogical method, which has been an important influence on another exemplary poststructuralist, Michel Foucault, we have a tool which can help us to better understand the relationship between knowledge and power, and the social impact of the attendant struggles to produce and legitimate knowledge of difference.(5)
But we would still have much further to go if we really wish to draw a comprehensive map that will allow us to understand poststructuralism in all its manifestations. After Nietzsche, we could move on to Heidegger, or we could turn to a number of other influences: Husserl and phenomenology, the Marxist tradition, Freud. These and many others are discussed in the secondary literature. Even the obscure French anti-positivist approach to the history of science is an important part of the story.
All of which brings us back to how problematic a task it is to "introduce" poststructuralism. But, as it may be clear by now, for the poststructuralist, this is not because there are so many disparate threads to be woven together, rather, it is because the very act of trying to represent poststructuralism in this manner is contrary to the critique poststructuralism presents. The trail from origin to a poststructuralist end is a thoroughly logocentric one. The point is not to sum up, or to state the essence or the "heart of the matter." An introduction, inasmuch as it proposes to define what poststructuralism means, is a party to the notion that there really is some fixed, objective meaning for poststructuralism. Such an approach is premised, even if only implicitly, upon the metaphysics of presence which poststructuralist practice calls into question.(6)
If we were to try instead to describe what poststructuralism has meant in historical context, desiring to avoid an appeal to the transcendental, we do not get as far as we may assume. Historical context is no more natural than any other knowledge we can have of the world. When we draw the boundaries we call context, we are making an assertion about what to include and what to exclude, what is at the center and what is on the margins. We act as if historical context did and still does objectively exist, much as the structuralist assumes there really is a closed system, a structure, in terms of which meaning is fixed and therefore can be determined. Such an approach still presumes a reality present to itself. In terms of the theoretical implications of our practice, historicism leaves us back where we started.(7)
As for the individual contributions to this issue, I will forgo altogether the conventional introductory formalities. Whatever I could say by way of introduction would remain either problematically logocentric or, if I sought to engage the pieces in a manner more consistent with poststructuralist practice, more of a critical afterword than an introduction. However disingenuous the gesture may be, given all the ways an editor exercises power by the time a collection such as this goes to press, I will instead step aside in hopes that each contribution will be better able to claim its own ground.
As tentative a beginning as this introduction may be, however, there is ultimately no neutral place to stand it we wish to make sense of this topic. Even if we are not free agents, we do take action and our actions have effects. My own identity is in part composed of the notion that I am something called an historian, and that the terrain of my practice is the discipline of history. My encounter with poststructuralism has not changed those beliefs, but it has changed the way I think about the categories involved. As I read the situation, "we historians" thrive on our own mistaken identity, to borrow a phrase from artist Barbara Kruger's work. We take far too much for granted. It is commonly asserted we are historians, not philosophers; we write history, not fiction. But these oppositions carry within themselves the seeds of our own deconstruction. If we examine them carefully, it is no longer clear where the boundaries lie between our discipline and others, between us and others. And if this is the nature of the identity crisis which poststructuralism provokes among those who consider its implications for the study of the past, perhaps the task before us is that of reconstructing our disciplinary self, so that "we" may thrive once again.
ENDNOTES
Jeffrey Hearn is a doctoral student in history at the University of Maryland, College Park, and editor of this issue of The Maryland Historian.
1. The term "sign" here referring to that which signifies: sights, sounds, or material objects as they are linked to concepts and thereby understood to be meaningful.
2. Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (Berkeley, 1977) is a useful introduction. Saussure's lectures were published posthumously as Course in General Linguistics, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger, eds., trans. Roy Harris (LaSalle, Ill., 1986). For examples of the extension of his work beyond linguistics, see Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (Garden City, N.Y., 1967); Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, trans. Annette Laver and Colin Smith (New York, 1968); and Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Laver (New York, 1972).
3. Richard Harland, Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism (London and New York, 1987), 70-76, 124.
4. Given the difficulty of this material, secondary sources, such as Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London and New York, 1982), Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), and Christopher Norris, Derrida (Cambridge, Mass., 1987) are invaluable, but the importance of reading Derrida's own work can not be stressed enough. For his critique of Saussure and structuralism, see "Linguistics and Grammatology" in Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, 1976), 27-73; and "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, 1978), 278-293.
5. See "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-memory, Practice; Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), 139-164; "Two Lectures" in Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper, (New York, 1980), 78-108; Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1983), 208-226; Paul A. Bove, "Discourse" in ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, Critical Terms for Literary Study (Chicago and London, 1990), 50-65; and Michael Mahon, Foucault's Nietzschean Genealogy: Truth, Power, and the Subject (Albany, N. Y., 1992).
6. Bove, "Discourse."
7. See Mark Cousins, "The Practice of Historical Investigation," in Derek Attridge, Geoff Bennington, and Robert Young, eds., Post-structuralism and the Question of History (Cambridge, Eng., 1987), 126-136.