Understanding Poststructuralism presents a lucid guide to some of the most exciting and controversial ideas in contemporary thought. This is the first introduction to poststructuralism through its major theorists - Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, Kristeva - and their central texts. Each chapter takes the reader through a key text, providing detailed summaries of the main points of each and a critical and detailed analysis of their central arguments. Ideas are clearly explained in terms of their value to both critical thinking (...) and to contemporary issues. Criticisms of poststructuralism are also assessed. The aim throughout is to illuminate the main methods of poststructuralism - deconstruction, libidinal economics, genealogy and transcendental empiricism - in context. A balanced and up-to-date assessment of poststructuralism, the book presents the ideal introduction to this most revolutionary of philosophies. (shrink)

Nurses working in correctional and forensic mental health settings face unique challenges in the provision of care to patients within custodial settings. The subjectivities of both patients and nurses are subject to the power relations, discourses and abjection encountered within these practice milieus. Using a poststructuralist approach using the work of Foucault, Kristeva, and Deleuze and Guattari, this paper explores how both patient and nurse subjectivities are produced within the carceral logic of this apparatus of capture. Recognizing that subjectivities are (...) fluid and dynamic, and capable of change, Deleuze and Guattari's concept of deterritorialization will illustrate opportunities for resistance, where nurses can begin to practice outside the dominant carceral logic (and restrictions) of the system. (shrink)

The philosophical works of Merab Mamardashvili are part of the emergence of phenomenological thought on the “margins” of the Eastern European sphere, appropriating and mediating a version of French poststructuralism in the “Soviet” 1980s, in which deconstruction constitutes both method and content. More specifically, Mamardashvili uses Descartes as the point de repère for his investigations into the phenomenology of the object of knowledge and the structure of consciousness, which come to model Mamardashvili's phenomenological Self, anticipating a modern, post-ideological Subject. Mamardashvili's (...) paradigm of the object constitutes the “linguistic” turn in late Soviet Georgian philosophy. Mamardashvili's phenomenon or “fact” makes its appearance in an ideologically determined regime, like a “Centaur,” as a melange of myth, belief and “physical” event, as something unseen, not as an unmediated experience of the world, yet neither as pure “thought from outside.”. (shrink)

"Poststructuralism and Critical Theory's Second Generation" analyses the major themes and developments in a period that brought continental philosophy to the forefront of scholarship in a variety of humanities and social science disciplines and that set the agenda for philosophical thought on the continent and elsewhere from the 1960s to the present. Focusing on the years 1960-1984, the volume examines the major figures associated with poststructuralism and the second generation of critical theory, the two dominant movements that emerged in the (...) 1960s: Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Lyotard, Irigaray, and Habermas. Influential thinkers such as Serres, Bourdieu, and Rorty, who are not easily placed in "standard" histories of the period, are also covered. Beyond this, thematic essays engage with issues as diverse as the Nietzschean legacy, the linguistic turn in continental thinking, the phenomenological inheritance of Gadamer and Ricoeur, the influence of psychoanalysis, the emergence of feminist thought and a philosophy of sexual difference, the renewal of the critical theory tradition, and the importation of continental philosophy into literary theory. (shrink)

Cartographies contributes to the growing debates on the value of poststructuralist theory. Grounded in a theoretical framework, it combines poststructural semiotics and a philosophy of the body. While interest in poststructuralism is well established, the currently felt need to anchor that interest in a political, material reality is where these readings gain their critical edge. They address the material - social, political and economic - effects of representation, marking anew direction in the debate.

Poststructuralism has long been acknowledged to offer a radical critique of the foundational subject as a precursor to affirming a constituted subject. Its detractors have however held that the resultant position cannot offer a coherent account of agency (strong version) or, alternatively, that while it may be able to account for non-subjective agency it is unable to develop a coherent explanation for subjective agency (weak version). Somewhat strangely, this issue has been largely ignored by commentators predisposed to poststructuralist thought. In (...) contrast, this volume focuses on the works of Judith Butler, Cornelius Castoriadis, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Lacan, and Catherine Malabou, to show that the question of the subject is a key one for many poststructuralist thinkers, that they are aware of the problematic status of agency that arises from their decentering of the foundational subject, and that they offer heterogeneous responses to it. Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism will therefore be an invaluable resource for researchers and advanced students interested in philosophy, political theory, psychoanalysis, critical theory, history of ideas, feminist theory, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Poststructuralist discourse theory is enjoying increasing recognition for its potential to contribute to the study of institutional change and continuity. Yet the most fruitful approach to realizing this potential has hitherto not been found. The main proposition so far has been to operationalize DT’s insights and concepts by adopting them into the framework of discursive institutionalism. However, an ongoing debate about the compatibility of the ontologies underlying DT and DI has cast doubts over whether such a combination is theoretically feasible. (...) The critical literature review in the first part of this article indeed finds insurmountable ontological differences between the discourse-theoretical and the discursive-institutionalist traditions, as their clashing notions of what is understood as a ‘discourse’ result in diverging views on power, agency, and subjectivity. Instead of merging DT into DI, I suggest to empower the former as a self-sufficient paradigm for institutional analysis. To achieve this, the second part of this article re-articulates the ‘logics framework’ proposed by Jason Glynos and David Howarth into a middle-range theory for the study of institutionalization and politicization in a discourse-theoretical fashion. The purpose of this re-articulation is to dispel various arguments against the viability of an autonomous poststructuralist approach to institutions. (shrink)

Gavin Rae shows that the problematic status of agency caused by the poststructuralist decentring of the subject is a central concern for poststructuralist thinkers. He shows how this plays out in the thinking of Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault, and find the best explanation of agency for the founded subject in the work of Castoriadis.

What would political thought look like without the foundation of ethics? Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, Madeleine Fagan puts forward a radical and far-reaching refusal of foundational ethics. She proposes that politics isn't built on ethics, where the two are separate things: politics and ethics are actually inseparable. The 'ethical' should not be understood as a label; it does not mean 'good' or it is not an evaluation or guide. Rather, both the ethical (...) and the political are descriptions of the context in which we find ourselves. Fagan shows us how it has become necessary to rethink the relationship between ethics and politics, based on how we practice both. In doing so, she overturns a series of common assumptions about poststructuralist ethics. It brings together an exploration of the ethical and political thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy for the first time. It provides an advanced introduction to poststructuralist ethical thought in politics and international relations. It focuses on the practical political implications of poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

Based on our respective research programs (psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, public health, HIV/AIDS, harm reduction) this article aims to use purposely non‐conventional means to present the substantial contribution of poststructuralist perspectives to knowledge development in nursing science in general and in our current research in particular. More specifically, we call on the work of Michel Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari to politicize nursing science using examples from our empirical research programs with marginal and often highly marginalized populations. We discuss the concepts (...) of power, discourse, and resistance to illustrate the essential contribution of poststructuralism to marginal, even “nomadic”, nursing research. (shrink)

Well-known for its criticism of totalizing accounts of reason and truth, postmodern thought also makes positive contributions to our understanding of the sensual, ideological, and linguistic contingencies that inform modernist representations of self, history, and the world. The positive side of postmodernity includes structuralism and poststructuralism, particularly as expressed by theorists concerned with practices of the body (Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze), commodity differences (Adorno, Althusser), language (Derrida), and gender (Kristeva, Irigaray). Though these challenges to modernity do not privilege subjectivity, they suggest (...) provocative new strategies for appreciating the work of thinkers from Bacon to Kant. (shrink)

In this brilliant assessment of the relation between poststructuralism and feminism to current religious thought, philosopher of religion Carol Wayne White convincingly demonstrates that postmodernist continental and feminist philosophies—far from being antithetical to religious concerns—in fact enrich our understanding of religion and its relevance to debates about contemporary culture. By triangulating these three unique perspectives on culture she expands prevailing views of cultural criticism and opens up the discussion to new creative solutions that arise from the intersecting interests of poststructuralist, (...) feminist, and religious studies. Dividing her work into three major sections, White first summarizes the major developments in postmodern and feminist thought in a lucid and refreshingly jargon-free exposition. Next she focuses on two major thinkers in poststructuralist religious scholarship—Sharon Welch and Mark C. Taylor—showing how their work incorporates, on the one hand, Foucault's political critique of power and, on the other, Derrida's textual deconstruction. Finally, she looks at feminist critiques of culture with special emphasis on feminists' contributions to the study of religion. She concludes by highlighting the important role of religious valuing in providing an impetus to action and pragmatic social change. Religion can and should move us beyond the stalemate of postmodern critiques with their often-nihilistic undertones and fruitless academic posturing. Poststructuralism, Feminism, and Religion succeeds in elucidating what it means to think and act religiously in the postmodern era. (shrink)

This essay identifies two different methodological strategies used by the proponents of anarchism. In what is termed the "ontological" approach, the rationale for anarchism depends on a particular representation of human nature. That characterization of "being" determines the relation between the individual and the structures of social life. In the alternative approach, the epistemological status of "representation" is challenged, leaving human subjects without stable identities. Without the possibility of stable human representations, the foundations underlying the exercise of institutional power can (...) be challenged. This epistemological discussion is traced from Max Stirner to the twentieth-century movement known as poststructuralism. (shrink)

Critique of Violence is a highly original and lucid investigation of the heated controversy between poststructuralism and critical theory. Leading theorist Beatrice Hanssen uses Walter Benjamin's essay 'Critique of Violence' as a guide to analyse the contentious debate, shifting the emphasis from struggle to dialogue between the two parties. Regarding the questions of critique and violence as the major meeting points between both traditions, Hanssen positions herself between the two in an effort to investigate what critical theory and poststructuralism have (...) to offer each other. In the course of doing so, she assembles imaginative new readings of Benjamin, Arendt, Fanon and Foucault, and incisively explores the politics of recognition, the violence of language, and the future of feminist theory. This groundbreaking book will be essential reading for all students of continental philosophy, political theory, social studies and comparative literature. Also available in this series: Essays on Otherness Hb: 0-415-13107-3: £50.00 Pb: 0-415-13108-1: £15.99 Hegel After Derrida Hb: 0-415-17104-4: £50.00 Pb: 0-415-17105-9: £15.99 The Hypocritical Imagination Hb: 0-415-21361-4: £47.50 Pb: 0-415-21362-2: £15.99 Philosophy and Tragedy Hb: 0-415-19141-6: £45.00 Pb: 0-415-19142-4: £14.99 Textures of Light Hb: 0-415-14273-3: £42.50 Pb: 0-415-14274-1: £13.99 Very Little ... Almost Nothing Pb: 0-415-12821-8: £47.50 Pb: 0-415-12822-6: £15.99. (shrink)

My favorite poststructuralist is Gilles Deleuze (with or without Guattari). I like to think that he was really writing an elaborate series of works of science fiction, in a non-fictional format (much as Stanislaw Lem did in Imaginary Magnitude and A Perfect Vacuum ), only without letting anyone in on the joke. Partly this is because there are moments where what he says is almost right (such as the definition of "relation" he gives in his interview with Claire Parnet, where (...) he visibly reaches for, but can't quite grasp, the notion of a set of ordered pairs), much as many science fiction writers get things almost right. That, plus the fact that he was obviously channeling La Mettrie, which seems to have escaped many people. (shrink)

Poststructuralism and After provides a comprehensive, innovative and lucid account of contemporary poststructuralist theory, which probes its limits, explores rival theoretical approaches, and elaborates new concepts and logics. The book distils and articulates the basic philosophical assumptions and theoretical concepts of poststructuralism, but by building upon the work of Derrida, Foucault, Heidegger, Lacan, Laclau, Levi-Strauss, Marx, Saussure and & ek it also provides a distinctive version of the poststructuralist project.The philosophy and theory of poststructuralism is presented through a critical engagement (...) with the central problems of social and political theory. Such problems include the structure/agency dilemma; the problem of social order; the ongoing debates between positivists, interpretivists and realists about the role and character of social science; the relationship between the economy, the state and society; the complexities of identity/difference; and the role of power, domination and ideology. Empirical illustrations and case studies of selected social phenomena further illuminate the theoretical arguments displayed in this book. (shrink)

Although it became customary to warn against confusing postmodernism with deconstructionism, it seems plausible to suggest that their central agendas are not dissimilar. Moreover, from the philosophical point of view, it is the idea of the 'deconstruction of meaning' that can be said to constitute the foundation of postmodernism understood here as an intellectual movement. It is true that grounded in the poststructuralist language analysis, deconstructionism seeks primarily to challenge the attempts inherent in the Western philosophical tradition to establish ultimate (...) meaning in a text. However, as one might have anticipated, the deconstruction of meaning of texts provided a basis for a large scale project leading to deconstruction of all 'truths', as conceived in the mainstream philosophical tradition. And it did it by questioning the coherence of the very concept of 'truth'. Eclectic as postmodernism is, it can be recognized by the fundamental assumption that there is no common denominator that guarantees the one-ness of the world, or the possibility of objective or neutral thought. This assumption would suffice to make one expect that postmodernism will challenge the very foundations of any metaphysical or religious system of beliefs. And so it does. In this paper I would like to ellucidate just one way this challange may be construed, poiting to the example of Don Cupitt, the leading exponent of the 'antirealist' critique of the discourse of theism. (shrink)

This book provides an historical and a conceptual background to post-structuralism, and in part to post-modernism, for readers entering the discussions on post-structuralism. It does not attempt to be at the cutting edge of these debates nor to be advancing research in these areas. It does however look at the educational implications of the ideas discussed. The intention behind this collection was to provide a sound introduction to the key positions of a number of French poststructuralist thinkers who are being (...) increasingly referred to, used as support, and even embraced by theorists in educational discourse. The editor and contributors to this volume are concerned that these thinkers have been misappropriated on occasions. That is why this volume concentrates on the historical and intellectual background of these philosophers. Each of the authors of the chapters in this collection deals with 'their' philosopher in the areas of: brief biographical details; key philosophical ideas; and the applications in, or implications of their work for education. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose that influential arguments of Jacques Derridas's and Judith Butler's rely on behaviorism and relativism, a reliance which has implications for, among other things, the issue of hate speech. I begin with a brief discussion of the philosophy of W. V. O. Quine, a thinker seldom discussed in relationship to continental poststructuralism. Quine is interesting because he explicitly defends an ontological relativism combined with linguistic behaviorism, the latter as influenced by B. F. Skinner and John Watson. (...) I then show that Butler's and Derrida's theories demonstrate a similar yet unacknowledged lineage. I devote the final section of the paper to a discussion of hate speech, and the problematization of behaviorism and relativism it entails. (shrink)

Methodologies of poststructuralist theory and critical social theory may be appropriated for nursing research and practice. Researchers using either methodology employ an analysis of power to explore experiences in various fields, and raise issues diat are highly relevant to nursing. However, the two methodologies differ and, often, die respective dieories are sharply opposed. In diis paper, die differences bodi from widiin and between each approach are explored, showing dieir tensions and limits. I contend that a reflexive approach to discourse analysis (...) provides insight into some of die methodological challenges diat arise in die context of bodi dieories. It is argued diat die differences between poststructuralism and critical social dieory seem likely to be mellowed by encounters diat treat each other with respect. To some extent, such encounters may tend to converge die two positions. (shrink)

Poststructuralism and nursing: uncomfortable bedfellows?The benefits and limitations of the application of poststructuralist in nursing research are discussed. The debate concerning the use of poststructuralist theory in feminist research is drawn on to argue a divergence between a deconstructionist poststructuralism and nursing aims. It is argued that there are strong parallels between nursing and social movements such as feminism. The reasons why many feminist and nursing researchers have been attracted to poststructuralist theory are explored, as are the criticisms of poststructuralism (...) as an inadequate, even reactionary theory. It is argued that poststructuralism is useful for examining or deconstructing existing discourse and practice, but incompatible and inadequate for research which aims to develop or change such discourses or practices. (shrink)

The essays in Part I of _Beyond Poststructuralism seek_ to demonstrate fallacies of structuralist and poststructuralist thought that remain potent even though the theoretical structures that led to their enunciation have lost much of their original influence. These fallacies include the idea that one must avoid the consideration of authorial intention; that meanings are undecidable; that there is no justification for seeking unity in a text; that all hierarchies of value are reversible; that history is no more than an open (...) contest among competing narrative constructions; and that the very nature of language makes the falsifiability of statements about human experience impossible. The essays in Part II suggest ways to bring literary study into closer relation with human experience of the world. Their authors emphasize the role of literature in providing new perspectives and broadening the range of available alternatives to what is threatening, unjust, fallacious, or absurd in social and cultural structures. Contributors are Bernard Bergonzi, John Holloway, Wendell V. Harris, A. D. Nuttall, Raymond Tallis, John Searle, Richard Levin, Robert Scholes, James Battersby, David Bromwich, Quentin Kraft, Michael Fischer, Charles Altieri, Christopher Clausen, Gayle Greene, André Lefevere, Daniel R. Schwarz, Virgil Nemoianu, and Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

Poststructuralism and complexity are plural and diverse modes of thought that share a common subscription to the `anteriority of radical relationality'. They nonetheless subscribe to a different ethic of life because they address the anteriority of radical relationality in different ways. Complexity remains strategic in its bid to become a power-knowledge of the laws of becoming. It derives that strategic ethic from its scientific interest in the implicate order of non-linearity that is said to subvert Newtonian science. Poststructuralism is poetic. (...) It derives its poetic ethic from Heidegger and from the reworking of orphic and tragic sensibilities to radical relationality with the radically non-relational. Observing that all poetry is complexity avant la lettre, the article illustrates these points with the Odyssey and concludes that while complexity is ultimately concerned with fitness, poststructuralism is preoccupied with justice. (shrink)

The end of the Cold War revitalised continental philosophy and, more particularly, interest in it from outside philosophy. "After Poststructuralism: Transitions and Transformations" analyses the main developments in continental philosophy between 1980-1995, a time of great upheaval and profound social change. The volume ranges across the birth of postmodernism, the differing traditions of France, Germany and Italy, third generation critical theory, radical democracy, postcolonial philosophy, the turn to ethics, feminist philosophies, the increasing engagement with religion, and the rise of performativity (...) and post-analytic philosophy. Analyses of the major figures are integrated within the discussion. After Poststructuralism reveals how continental philosophy - fuelled by an intense ethical and political desire to reflect changing social and political conditions - responded to the changing world and to the key issues of the time, notably globalisation, technology and ethnicity. (shrink)

Poststructuralist Discourse Theory is, in my view, a social theory for our time; embracing, as it does, the unconscious and capable of providing new insights into everything from the rise of Trumpian “post truth” through to our collective inability to universally engage with the existential threat of climate change. This article suggests an approach to the empirical analysis of problematised discourses starting from a search for dislocations. I draw from the writings of Laclau, Adorno and Derrida and use Žižek’s Lacanian (...) reading of Hegel to find support for this approach as one useful way to proceed towards new critical explanations and understandings. (shrink)

Can politics be thought?, asks Alain Badiou in the title of a recent book. The question itself reveals an experienced lack: that of politics. A lack which the so-called “return of the subject,” far from resolving, would stigmatize. The “return of the subject,” as he asserts, is merely the counterface of the break of politics, its reduction to an “ethics of tolerance” from which all its properly political traces have previously been erased. If politics cannot be associated with the “return (...) of the subject,” this is because politics does not relate to any subject but rather to the very impossibility of conceiving of it. Thus, the attempt to reactivate politics becomes inextricably linked to the endeavor of rethinking, or better said, unthinking the subject. As this article shows, this project articulates a specially dynamic current of thought in the last years, which we may call, generically, “poststructuralist Marxist.” That project not only gave a new impulse to Marxist thinking, articulating a space of reflection which delimitates this current from that one with which it borders—deconstructionism—and from which it can interpellate the entire philosophical tradition. Ultimately, it comes to condense an issue whose relevance far exceeds the ambit of Marxist thinking: how politics is possible in a post-metaphysical and post-subjective context. Being and Event, by Alain Badiou, is, no doubt, the most systematical attempt to answer that question. It allows us to observe the main contributions of these current to contemporary philosophical thinkings, revealing, at the same time, the kind of aporias that that issue poses to it. (shrink)

In Beckett and Poststructuralism, Anthony Uhlmann offers a reading of Beckett in relation to recent French philosophy, particularly the work of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Levinas, and Derrida. Uhlmann offers a work of literary criticism that is also a piece of intellectual history, emphasising how Beckett develops a kind of critical thinking which differs from yet is just as powerful as that of philosophers who, along with Beckett, found themselves faced with sets of ethical problems which were thrown into sharp (...) relief in post-war France. Uhlmann explores the links between ethics and physical existence in Beckett, Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, and between ethics and language in Beckett, Derrida, and Levinas, showing how post-war French philosophy was powerfully affected by Beckett's work. Literature is not reduced to philosophy or vice versa; rather Uhlmann considers how they interrelate and overlap, informing and deforming one another, and how both encounter history. (shrink)

This chapter offers a critical discussion of the relationship between poststructuralism and film theory. I commence with a brief account of poststructuralism’s distinctive features. I then turn to the key poststructuralist thinkers such as Derrida and Deleuze, and explore why poststructuralist thinkers themselves may have eschewed reflecting on the medium. I then consider the critique of poststructuralist contribution to film theory, suggesting what elements of that critique remain pertinent. Finally, I consider Deleuze, the only poststructuralist thinker to have focused on (...) cinema, and argue that much of his cinematic philosophy implies a critical distancing from the psycho-semiotic/poststructuralist approach to film theory. (shrink)

This book explores the impact of poststructuralism on contemporary political theory by focussing on a number of problems and issues central to politics today. Drawing on the theoretical concerns brought to light by the 'poststructuralist' thinkers Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze and Max Stirner, Newman provides a critical examination of new developments in contemporary political theory: post-Marxism, discourse analysis, new theories of ideology and power, hegemony, radical democracy and psychoanalytic theory. He re-examines the political in light of these developments in theory (...) to suggest new ways of thinking about politics through a reflection on the challenges that confront it. This will volume will be of great interest to students of postmodernism and poststructuralist theory in political science, philosophy, sociology, philosophy and cultural studies. (shrink)

A leading authority on Continental philosophy examines the concept of critical resistance within recent poststructuralist social thought.

Explaining his love of philosophy, Slavoj Žižek notes that he ‘secretly thinks reality exists so that we can speculate about it’. This article takes the view that links between mathematics and continental philosophy are part of reality, the reality of philosophy and its history, and hence require speculation. Examples from the work of Jacques Derrida and Henri Poincaré are discussed.

1. Postmodernism, Simon Malpas; German philosophy after 1980: themes out of school, Dieter Thoma; 3. The structuralist legacy, Patrice Maniglier; 4. Italian philosophy between 1980 an 1995, Silvia Benso & Brian Schroeder; 5. Continental philosophy in the Czech Republic, Josef Fulka, Jr.; 6. Third generation critical theory: Benhabib, Fraser, and Honneth, Amy Allen; 7. French and Italian Spinozism, Simon Duffy; Radical democracy, Lasse Thomassen; 9. Cultural and postcolonial studies, Iai Chambers; 10. The "ethical turn" in continental philosophy in the 1980s, (...) Rober Eaglestone; 11. Feminist philosophy: coming of age, Rosi Braidotti; 12. Continental philosophy of religion, Bruce Ellis Benson; 13. The performative turn and the emergence of post-analytic philosophy, Jose Medina; 14. Out of bounds: philosophy in an age of transition, Judith Butler & Rosi Braidotti. (shrink)

Abstract and Keywords This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical engagements with poststructuralism, reflection on examples of important contributions to this discussion, a discussion of the extent to which feminist work has engaged and critiqued the mainstream of the field, and feminist poststructuralist theorizations of the subject, identity, and culture. It also offers a critical genealogy of the epistemological paradigm poststrustructuralism has come to represent, in search of its continuities and breaks from its foundations (...) furnished by French structuralism, psychoanalysis and tangential links with Marxian critical theory. It argues that the anglophone appropriations of structuralism in postmodern context, as it would have been termed in the French academe, have veered away from the original and purely formal conceptualization of the subject by resorting to what might be called, in Marxian terminology, identity centered reifications. This chapter puts forward the claim that poststructuralist discourse and the neoliberal discourse of individual and social mobility, transformativity and the concomitant proclamation of “the death of ideology” (and history) have established numerous and mutually opportune discursive and ideological correspondences. (shrink)

"Poststructuralism and Critical Theory's Second Generation" analyses the major themes and developments in a period that brought continental philosophy to the forefront of scholarship in a variety of humanities and social science disciplines and that set the agenda for philosophical thought on the continent and elsewhere from the 1960s to the present. Focusing on the years 1960-1984, the volume examines the major figures associated with poststructuralism and the second generation of critical theory, the two dominant movements that emerged in the (...) 1960s: Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Lyotard, Irigaray, and Habermas. Influential thinkers such as Serres, Bourdieu, and Rorty, who are not easily placed in "standard" histories of the period, are also covered. Beyond this, thematic essays engage with issues as diverse as the Nietzschean legacy, the linguistic turn in continental thinking, the phenomenological inheritance of Gadamer and Ricoeur, the influence of psychoanalysis, the emergence of feminist thought and a philosophy of sexual difference, the renewal of the critical theory tradition, and the importation of continental philosophy into literary theory. (shrink)

Poststructuralists hold Hegel responsible for giving rise to many of modern philosophy's problematic concepts--the authority of reason, self-consciousness, the knowing subject. Yet, according to Simon Lumsden, this animosity is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of Hegel's thought, and resolving this tension can not only heal the rift between poststructuralism and German idealism but also point these traditions in exciting new directions. Revisiting the philosopher's key texts, Lumsden calls attention to Hegel's reformulation of liberal and Cartesian conceptions of subjectivity, identifying a (...) critical though unrecognized continuity between poststructuralism and German idealism. Poststructuralism forged its identity in opposition to idealist subjectivity; however, Lumsden argues this model is not found in Hegel's texts but in an uncritical acceptance of Heidegger's characterization of Hegel and Fichte as "metaphysicians of subjectivity." Recasting Hegel as both post-Kantian and postmetaphysical, Lumsden sheds new light on this complex philosopher while revealing the surprising affinities between two supposedly antithetical modes of thought. (shrink)

One theme in Continental Philosophy is to militate against structures, of language and institutions, as Nietzsche and Foucault did, and Habermas to some extent. That is called ‘poststructuralism’ by some. In this brief note, I do not oppose institutions, because societies cannot do without them. However, I am seeking a structure that leaves some room for freedom of individuals.

This chapter challenges the received doxa that the generation of ‘poststructuralist’ philosophers broke decisively with existentialism and rendered it out of date, a mere historical curiosity. Drawing on recent research in the area, it draws some lines of influence, and even argues for some surprising points of commonality, between existentialism and poststructuralism. At least some of the core philosophical ideas of poststructuralists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze bear more in common with existentialism than is often supposed. (...) Furthermore, it addresses a common resistance to poststructuralism by committed existentialists by showing that poststructuralism does not abandon concern with responsibility and decision, but in fact develops these themes in ways that are proximate to existentialist concerns. Finally, it argues that some of the needs that some prominent contemporary philosophers find lacking in poststructuralism – in particular, the need for subjective agency – are already met in significant ways in existentialism. These three points serve to throw new light on the contemporary relevance of existentialism, and to open up new directions for research. (shrink)