Structuralism Books

Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Catherine Belsey

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Quite good, considering its length 4 out of 5 stars.
13 of 14 people found this review helpful.

French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's assertion that the relationship between a signifier (i.e., a word, symbol) and the signified (the phenomenon it describes) is arbitrary is the starting point for all forms of Poststructuralism. It reveals that language (and all signifying systems) actually create, rather describe, the world we live in. Consequently, all our understandings of the world, be they through culture, knowledge, or ideology, are artificial constructs. While Poststructuralists do not necessarily deny the existence of reality, they argue that ALL understandings of reality are shaped by the signifying systems through which we must experience and understand it. Their objective, therefore, is not to dissect language/symbols in order to discover an ultimate Truth, but rather to reveal how language and symbols create meaning/reality. Here, Catherine Belsey shows how these ideas inform the work of diverse thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Slavoj Zizek, and Jean-François Lyotard.

Although Poststructuralism is not necessarily political, it can been seen as "subversive" since by revealing how signifying systems create our understandings of the world, the individual learns to recognize and deconstruct the "realities" that control us. While Poststructuralism is empowering in this sense, it also has obvious shortcomings: we can no longer assert any absolutes. This leads the author to conclude that "Poststructuralism is more useful in prompting the uncertainty of questions than in delivering the finality of answers" (107).

I think this work is a very good "general" introduction to the topic. For only 107 pages, I don't think anyone could expect anything more. But, for anyone already familiar with Poststructuralism, it may seem a bit superficial.

Editorial Review:

Poststructuralism changes the way we understand the relations between human beings, their culture, and the world. Following a brief account of the historical relationship between structuralism and poststructuralism, this Very Short Introduction traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture. While the author discusses such well-known figures as Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan, she also draws pertinent examples from literature, art, film, and popular culture, unfolding the poststructuralist account of what it means to be a human being.

Structuralism and Poststructuralism For Beginners

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“In its less dramatic versions,” writes author Dan 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 these two theories. The book’s starting point is the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. The book 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. The book concludes by examining the postmodern obsession with language and with the radical claim of the disappearance of the individual–obsessions that unite the work of all of these theorists.

The Discourse of the Syncope: Logodaedalus (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

Jean-Luc Nancy

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Why is it that the modern conception of literature begins with one of the worst writers of the philosophical tradition? Such is the paradoxical question that lies at the heart of Jean-Luc Nancy’s highly original and now-classic study of the role of language in the critical philosophy of Kant. While Kant did not turn his attention very often to the philosophy of language, Nancy demonstrates to what extent he was anything but oblivious to it. He shows, in fact, that the question of philosophical style, of how to write critical philosophy, goes to the core of Kant’s attempt to articulate the limits, once and for all, that would establish human reason in its autonomy and freedom. He also shows how this properly philosophical program, the very pinnacle of the Enlightenment, leads Kant to posit literature as its other by way of what is here called the syncope, and how this other of philosophy, entirely its product, cannot be said to exist outside of metaphysics in its accomplishment. This subtle, unprecedented reading of Kant demonstrates the continued importance of reflection on the relation between philosophy and literature, indeed, why any commitment to Enlightenment must consider and confront this partition anew.

Heterology and the Postmodern: Bataille, Baudrillard, and Lyotard (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

Julian Pefanis

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Editorial Review:

In Heterology and the Postmodern, Julian Pefanis presents a new view of the history of poststructuralism (heterology) and the origins of postmodernism by analyzing three important French theorists, Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, and Jean-François Lyotard.
Beginning with the introduction of Hegel in French postmodernist thought—largely but not exclusively through the thought of Georges Bataille—Pefanis argues that the core problematics of postmodern aesthetics—history, exchange, representation, and writing—are related to Bataille’s reconceptualization of the Hegelian framework. Pefanis explores how Bataille was influenced by Hegel, Marcel Mauss, Freud, and Nietzsche, and traces the effects of this influence on the analyses and critiques of later postmodernists, most notably Lyotard and Baudrillard. Finally, employing these postmodernists along with Freud and Jacques Lacan, Pefanis discusses discourse on postmodernism and its relation to Freud’s concept of the death drive.
This intellectual history makes valuable contributions to the debates over what the “postmodern” may mean for intellectual and political activity.

Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Short Introductions)

Rosi Braidotti

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Editorial Review:

The discussions about the ethical, political and human implications of the postmodernist condition have been raging for longer than most of us care to remember. They have been especially fierce within feminism. After a brief flirtation with postmodern thinking in the 1980s, mainstream feminist circles seem to have turned their back on the staple notions of poststructuralist philosophy. Metamorphoses takes stock of the situation and attempts to reset priorities within the poststructuralist feminist agenda.


Cross-referring in a creative way to Deleuze's and Irigaray's respective philosophies of difference, the book addresses key notions such as embodiment, immanence, sexual difference, nomadism and the materiality of the subject. Metamorphoses also focuses on the implications of these theories for cultural criticism and a redefinition of politics. It provides a vivid overview of contemporary culture, with special emphasis on technology, the monstrous imaginary and the recurrent obsession with 'the flesh' in the age of techno-bodies.


This highly original contribution to current debates is written for those who find changes and transformations challenging and necessary. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, feminist theory, gender studies, sociology, social theory and cultural studies.

Bloodrites of the Post-Structuralists: Word Flesh and Revolution

Anne Norton

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In Bloodrites of the Post-Structuralists provocative theorist Anne Norton presents an alternative narrative of the history of the world She starts by reminding us of the real interplay between words (laws, scriptures, myths, and history) and the world of flesh (of bloodties and bloodshed, skin color and sexuality). The seemingly precious and all too literary constructs of the poststructuralists really do act on the body politic. The book is written on three historical sites: the revolutions in England and France, the struggle against colonialism, and the modern liberal order. In this telling, we see liberal constitutions born in Terror and regicide, we see a word, a text, a document, write "slave" on the darkness of the body, we see the guillotine release the power in the blood, and we hear the words that declare a people free. Norton re-reads and re-writes foundational myths from Abraham and Isaac on the mountain top in the Bible to legends of the American Revolution. This lyrical and mesmerizing book serves, in its way, as a catalog of oppressions, and a history of the justifications oppressors have made for injustices. It also makes clear that that these oppressions and justifications continue on today, as certainly as they did in any point in history. Defying easy categorization, Bloodrites of the Post-Structuralists is the ultimate challenges to all those who claim that history has come to end, or that life is classifiable or uncomplex, or that we understand all we need to understand about the story of Western History.

Philosophy and Post-Structuralist Theory: From Kant to Deleuze

Claire Colebrook

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Exploring the Kantian and phenomenological background of Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, and Irigaray, this book raises some key questions and issues in critical theory. Is it still possible to sustain a transcendental critical project? How do such projects fare in the current terrain of cultural studies and anti-representationalism?

The Making and Unmaking of Democracy: Lessons from History and World Politics

Theodore Rabb

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For every citizen of the world, there is no more urgent issue than the spread of democracy. Democracy is what the WTO-protestors are calling for; it's the main concern of human rights advocates; and it's only long-term way to end terrorism. But how does democracy spread? What can be done to encourage and support. This remarkable new collection brings together some of the best minds in variety of fields to discuss the conditions that promote and sustain, or undermine and extinguish democratic institutions and ideas. Spanning political thought from ancient Athens to contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, the contributors develop an outline of how democracy develops. Several key factors emerge: Democratic transitions are always heavily shaped by the ideas and practices of past regimes (like tribal traditions in Africa), international political and economic pressure to liberalize (as in Asia) and current economic conditions. The quality of democracy is almost always improved by the elimination of religion as thecenter of the state, by the move from democracy as protection of the individual from the state to democracy as enhancer of rights, and by the progression from a focus on the individual to a focus on the community. Expansive in its coverage and fundamental in its significance, The Making and Unmaking of Democracy is a volume to learn from, argue against, and expand upon.

Structure and Being: A Theoretical Framework for a Systematic Philosophy

Lorenz B. Puntel

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A magisterial work in the grand tradition of systematic philosophy not seen in this country perhaps since Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality (1929), this book by a leading German philosopher aims to resurrect systematic philosophy as an essential part of the theoretical enterprise. In Lorenz Puntel's vision, philosophy as the universal science can be holistic without being imperialistic.

The book presents theoretical frameworks as indispensable for any and all theorizing. It argues that there can be truths only relative to sufficiently determinable theoretical frameworks, and that all such frameworks are genuinely revelatory ontologically. No problematic relativism results, however, because such frameworks can be compared and thereby ranked with respect to their theoretical adequacy.

Structure and Being contributes to the reconciliation of analytic and continental philosophy by insisting upon clarity and precision, as the former does, while aiming for comprehensiveness, as the latter often does.

An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics

Alex Miller

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This introduction provides a highly readable critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth-century and contemporary metaethics. It traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent arguments between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and non-cognitivism.

• A highly readable critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth century and contemporary metaethics.
  
• Asks: Are there moral facts? Is there such a thing as moral truth? Is moral knowledge possible?
  
• Traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent debates between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and noncognitivism.
  
• Provides for the first time a critical survey of famous figures in twentieth century metaethics such as Moore, Ayer and Mackie together with in-depth discussions of contemporary philosophers such as Blackburn, Gibbard, Wright, Harman, Railton, Sturgeon, McDowell and Wiggins.