Overview
post-structuralism
Quick Reference
[Th]
A relativist philosophy based on the ideas and works of a number of French scholars working in the 1960s, notably Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, and Kristeva, to develop earlier thinking by Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Freud, and Marx. The approach challenges the structuralist notion that there are fixed relationships between signs and meanings, between the signifier and the signified, arguing instead that meaning is contextualized within the individual and highly nuanced. A general trend of post‐structuralist method, often termed deconstruction, is to unsettle any allegedly firm, detached, or neutral conclusions on the basis that claims of truth are internal to any particular discourse. In doing so it opens up alternative readings and meanings.
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