Poststructuralism

Question 1

Bakhtin is interested in

Answer 1

the contextual character of
linguistic utterances.

Question 2

Linguistic material is not enough to determine….

Answer 2

if a
word or sound is gloomy, ironical, threatening, etc.

Question 3

Meaning depends on…

Answer 3

prior utterances in the dialogue,
the life of language as praxis.

Question 4

Utterances are

Answer 4

ideologically saturated and resonate
with things said previously and anticipate replies.

Question 5

Heteroglossia

Answer 5

refers to the presence of two or more expressed viewpoints in a text or other artistic work.

Question 6

Poststructuralism is

Answer 6

an umbrella term for various
scholars working in the 1960s and 1970s who
challenged the Structuralist methodology, yet did
not offer an alternative methodology of their
own.

Question 7

Poststructuralism was directed against…

Answer 7

the
Structuralist faith in binaries as a manifestation
of the production of meaning through difference.

Question 8

Poststructuralism brings out

Answer 8

a critique of
logocentrism.

Question 9

Logocentrism

Answer 9

has faith in the centrality of the logos
(“divine word”, “the transcendental signified”).

Question 10

Logocentric philosophers provide for…

Answer 10

the expression
of the logos through a sensuous incarnation into
the physical/material world.

Question 11

Logos

Answer 11

is a transcendental signified, the idea of the essence of meaning to which the sign points

Question 12

For poststructuralists, the logic of logocentrism
operates….

Answer 12

through binaries

Question 13

A binary is

Answer 13

a set of two related terms, in which the
first term (which is perceived to be closer to the
logos) is privileged over the second.

Question 14

In any binary….

Answer 14

one term is given privilege over the other, one term has something that the other one lacks

Question 15

Poststructuralism questions the integrity of
structuralist reasoning:

Answer 15

structuralism seemingly
extends a critique of logocentrism, yet reinforces
it through the rule of the binarist logic.

Question 16

For Derrida - the notion of the centre

Answer 16

is paradoxical

Question 17

poststructurialists are concerned with

Answer 17

conceptual paradoxes

Question 18

Philosophical discourse is dominated b

Answer 18

phonocentrism

Question 19

Phonocentrism derives from

Answer 19

a reasoning that
gives privilege to speech as having a direct and
natural relation with self-presence and meaning.

Question 20

Philosophical statements seek

Answer 20

to be structured by
logic, reason, and truth, rather than the rhetoric
of the language in which they are expressed.

Question 21

Logocentrism

Answer 21

refers to the orientation of philosophy
toward an order of meaning (thought, truth,
reason, logic, etc.) conceived as existing in itself,
as a foundation.

Question 22

Pharmakon

Answer 22

means ‘a drug’, both medicine and poison

Question 23

The transcendental signified

Answer 23

refers to the logos, the
idea of the essence of meaning to which the sign
points, underlies the Western philosophical
thought.

Question 24

Human subjectivity is

Answer 24

paradoxical

Question 25

Arche-writing

Answer 25

a notion which refers to the
conceptual principle of meaning-making that
speech shares with writing and which therefore
dismantles the entailing dichotomies of presence/
absence, natural/artificial, interior/exterior, etc.

Question 26

Deconstruction

Answer 26

derives from “de” + “con” +
“structure”, which is suggestive of simultaneous
‘destruction’ and ‘creation’.

Question 27

Deconstruction is a method

Answer 27

of critical analysis of philosophical and literary language which emphasizes the internal workings of language and conceptual systems, the relational quality of meaning, and the assumptions implicit in forms of expression.

Question 28

Structuralism believes

Answer 28

in the foundation of deep
structures (e.g. morphology of the folktale,
semiotic square) underlying the formation of
meaning.

Question 29

Deconstruction challenges

Answer 29

the idea of the ‘essence’,
‘centre’ and deep structure.

Question 30

to be “para”

Answer 30

s to be on the boundary between inside and outside and thus to be part of both

Question 31

Parasite

Answer 31

1. Any organism that grows, feeds, and is
   sheltered on or in a different organism while
   contributing nothing to the survival of its host;
2. A person who habitually takes advantage of
   the generosity of others without making any
   useful return.

Question 32

The host

Answer 32

1) shares the food with the parasite; 2) is
the substance consumed by the parasite.

Question 33

Miller observes that

Answer 33

A host is a guest, and a
guest is a host

Question 34

a deconstructive reading
is

Answer 34

a rhetorical exercise that takes the text to its
limits

Question 35

A deconstructive reading is always

Answer 35

encrypted in
all readings as a possibility.

Question 36

this is what literary critics do …

Answer 36

they take texts apart, make texts sacrificial objects. all poems are parasites that feed on other poems.

Question 37

In learning the poem by heart we….

Answer 37

partake of the
Other, expose ourselves to danger (i.e. spikes),
but also deprive the poem of its singularity.

Question 38

The productive tension between….

Answer 38

singularity and
generality organises the structures of the literary
system.

Question 39

In Derridean terms, literature is…

Answer 39

an institution that
questions its own institutionality

Question 40

Derrida’s thinking about literature deconstructs….

Answer 40

the dichotomy literary/non-literary.

Question 41

Différance

Answer 41

is both the positive state of being different, and the act of differing, producing differences

Question 42

Sossourean idea -> signifier and the signified cannot be stabilized…

Answer 42

cannot be fixed. signifiers are always on the move.

Question 43

In Derridean terms, meaning is

Answer 43

disseminated
rather than transferred.

Question 44

Dissemination

Answer 44

suggests an act of signification
whereby meaning is spread around by way of
unlocking the stable relation of signifier to
signified.

Question 45

The relationship between signified and signifier

Answer 45

is
unhooked in the stream of signification whereby
signifiers are constantly deferred to other signifiers.

Question 46

Aporia

Answer 46

Greek for ‘wayless’. a final impase, a paradox

Question 47

Deconstructive analysis shows

Answer 47

how the
text undermines its own rhetorical structure,
dismantles, deconstructs itself,
results in aporia.

Question 48

Aporia invalidates…

Answer 48

ideas about any single, fixed, or ‘correct’ meaning

Question 49

Aporia is not

Answer 49

a negative state that should call for a
nostalgic longing for meaning or presence.

Question 50

For Derrida aporia marks

Answer 50

the joyous affirmation of
the play of the world and of the innocence of
becoming

Question 51

Aporia frees us

Answer 51

from being bound to any fixed
truths or origins.

Question 52

Deconstruction makes us aware of

Answer 52

the
seductiveness of writing, its simultaneous
desire for presence (i.e. meaning) and its
failure to make it tenable.

Question 53

Derrida does not seek to destroy traditional
criticism, but seeks…

Answer 53

to show how texts
deconstruct themselves and thus open
themselves up to new interpretations.

Question 54

Poststructuralism criticises the idea…

Answer 54

of the
author as an individual person and an
originating source of literary meaning.

Question 55

Poststructuralism questions the idea of…

Answer 55

“human
nature” as the represented subject and common
frame of reference for literary depictions.

Question 56

Poststructuralism emphasises …

Answer 56

that language
cannot point outside of itself.

Question 57

Poststructuralism champions the idea…

Answer 57

that
languages produce (rather than reflect) meaning.

Question 58

Postructuralism brings…

Answer 58

difference and deferral into
the foreground in order to disrupt any notion of
stability or unity of meaning.

Question 59

. Poststructuralism challenges…

Answer 59

the structuralist
reliance on fundamental structures – a final, allembracing explanation is impossible because we
cannot step out of the discourse in which we are
implicated.

Question 60

Poststructuralists show….

Answer 60

that what counts as the
deep or central meaning of a text depends on
where you stand.

Question 61

Poststructuralists see the text…

Answer 61

as always
unfinished, full of loopholes and
contradictions. Reading is always potentially a
misreading.

Question 62

Structuralism sought facts about texts. For
Poststructuralism…..

Answer 62

there are no facts, only
interpretations.

Question 63

Poststructuralism criticises structuralism for…

Answer 63

its dependence on the logic of binaries and
seeks to expose its theoretical premises, but in
effect is dependent on structuralist claims as
the premise of its own theoretical agenda.