Post Structuralist Approach To Textual Analysis

COMPARISON B/W STRUCTURALISM AND POST
STRUCTURALISM

• What is Structuralism?
Structuralism is an intellectual movement which began in France in 1950s and is first seen in the work of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and the literary critic Roland Barthes (1915-1980).
Structuralism is the name that is given to a wide range of discourses that study underlying structures of signification. Signification occurs wherever there is a meaningful event or in the practice of some meaningful action. A meaningful event might include any of following actions e.g. writing or reading a text, getting married, having a discussion over a cup of coffee or a battle. Most meaningful events involve either a document or an exchange that can be documented. This would

reader ,cultural norms, other literature, etc which are therefore never authoritative, and promise no consistency. A reader 's culture and society then, share at least an equal part in the interpretation of a piece to the cultural and social circumstances of the author
There is some key assumptions of Post-Structuralism include:
• The concept of "self" as a singular and coherent entity is a fictional construct and an individual rather comprises conflicting tensions and knowledge claims (e.g. gender, class, profession etc). The interpretation of meaning of a text is therefore dependent on a reader 's own personal concept of self.
• An author 's intended meaning is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives and a literary text (or, indeed, any situation where a subject perceives a sign) has no single purpose meaning or existence.
• It is necessary to utilize a variety of perspectives to create a multi-faceted interpretation of a text even if these interpretations conflict with one