Post-structuralism is both an extension and a critique of the fundamental concepts of structuralism rather than a theory in its own right.
Post-structuralism is concerned with philosophical issues such as the nature of "truth" and conceptions of the individual. While structuralists conceive of the "subject" as the socially determined centre of consciousness, post-structuralists "de-centre" the subject by claiming that "the self" is constituted through signifying practices situated within social discourse.They argue that language is always fluid and meaning can never be recovered completely. there is no absolute authority for knowledge or "truth"; there is only interpretation which produces meaning by the interaction of a reader with a text. All claims to "truth" are treated as products of discursive struggles for power. Post-structuralists search for contradictions and multiple meanings in a text or aim to expose the power relations within language, discourse and representation.
In abandoning ontological claims the post structuralist free "what remains" from "empirical reductionism" and hierachy of structural meta-narrative but at the same time don't they abandon wholism? they abandon the conditioned subject but also deny a universal aspect to what is left? what is left if a flat plane of "discrete discourses"open to any interpretation (Kendall) at which the "powers" that remain? go to work in the discourses shaping the "Subjects" ? through interpellation...(Althuser) through assumed binary dualisms of language(Derrida)? through instrumental rationality(Habermas)?
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