Structuralism/Poststructuralism Terms

Mise en Abyme

"A free fall into the abyss." Picked up by deconstructionists to describe the reader's unsettling confrontation with unresolvable contradictions within a text.

ideologeme

"The intersection of a given textual arrangement... with the utterances... that it either assimilates into its own space or to which it refers in the space of exterior texts" (Kristeva).

actant

"a functional unit with a predicate defined by what it does" (Greimas). Structuralist, scientific term for "character"

The Prague School

A group of structuralists who focused on the "synchronic" or ahistorical study of language. Led by Roman Jacobson, they emphasized language as a coherent and vast structure with various functions: cognitive, expressive, phatic, and metalingual.

deconstruction

A philosophically skeptical approach to the possibility of coherent meaning in language, begun by Derrida.

code

A shared set of rules or convention by which signs can be combined to permit communication. Suggests the pre-existing, often unspoken or unconscious rules-- linguistic or social-- that dictate how reality is perceived.

text

According to Barthes, "an open process with which one can interact creatively."

Writing

According to Derrida, "any practice of differentiation, articulation, and spacing." Includes any form of inscription, even nonliterary ones.

postmodernism

Reaction against modernism which rejects "grand narratives" and makes use of pastiche and parody

synchronic

Refers to the study of language "out of time"

diachronic

Refers to the study of language over time-- its historical dimensions

aporia

Rhetorical term for the purported doubt or deliberation over a question. In deconstruction, it means an impasse or paradox, the point at which the text reveals self-contradictory meanings that cannot be resolved.

Langue/Parole

Saussure's distinction between the total, abstract system of language with its combination and differences and the concrete application of the system in an individual utterance.

poststructuralism

Term for a variety of critical theories since the 1960s that share a radical skepticism about the possibility of absolute truth or value. A mistrust of language itself is the basis for this skepticism. (Derrida, Foucault, Lacan)

binary oppositions

The principle of contrast between two mutually exclusive terms (like absence/presence)

semiotics

The science of signs, especially the relationship among signs in a given structure, linguistic or cultural.

intertextuality

The various relationships a text may have with other texts (allusion, parody, translation, etc.)

Death of the Author

Barthes' way of transferring the center of meaning-making from the writer to reader, or more precisely the critic.

eme

Basic unit of meaning in any structure.

narratology

Branch of literary study devoted to the analysis of narrative. (Greimas, Todorov, Genette)

decenter

Derrida's term for the critical act that exposes an illusory truth in a given discipline. Derrida believes that any such concept is part of the false claims of metaphysics.

differance

Derrida's term that combines two French words to suggest the impossibility of assigning meaning: difference and deferral.

logocentrism

Derrida's term to designate the tradition of philosophy and theology that tried to guarantee meaning by some ultimate principle (truth, God).

sign

For many structuralists, this means a union of sound image (signifier) and concept (signified).

Tel Quel

French journal influential in the rise of structuralism and poststructuralism.

bricolage

French term for improvisation or makeshift piece of handiwork. Derrida uses it to describe "the necessity of borrowing one's concept from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined."

Yale Critics

Hartman, Bloom, Miller, and de Man, disciples of Derrida in the 1970s.

trace

In Derrida, "the erasure of selfhood, of one's own presence, constituted by the threat of anguish or its irremediable disappearance, of the disappearance of its disappearance."

totalization

In Derrida, the tendency for Western thought to claim absolute coverage of an issue, or the discourse of a discipline claiming to occupy complete authority, so that alternative discourse are stifled.

supplement

In French, means both "something added" and "substitute." Ambiguous term used by Derrida.

structuralism

Intellectual movement that analyzes literature and cultural phenomena with principles derived from linguistics. Goal is not to interpret individual works, but to seek the underlying structure governing individual instances of some phenomenon.

trope

Literally a turn or twist in meaning, distinguished in rhetorical theory from figures of speech, which only rearrange normal order.

foundationalism

Philosophical term for the belief that knowledge is founded on certain truths that do not or cannot be called into question and from which other truths can be inferred. Poststructualism opposes this idea.