UNIT 5. POST-STRUCTURALISM

Question 1

What is post-structuralism’s perspective on DA?

Answer 1

To post-structuralists social space (institutions, identities, etc.) and the world of material objects as discursive in nature. Thus, to them there’s nothing outside the text, yet they don’t deny the material world. There is a deep sense in post-structuralism that we live in a linguistic universe. “Reality” in this universe is only mediated reality, which is governed by things such as the structure of ideology, the various cultural codes, etc. All meaning is textual and intertextual, and it circulates in economies of discourse, for every text exists only in relation to other texts.

Question 2

What are the assumptions upon which the practices of Post-Structuralism are grounded?

Answer 2

1) The concept of “self” as a singular and coherent entity is a fictional construct.
2) The idea of a text having a single purpose or a single meaning is rejected.
3) The meaning of a text shifts in relation to the variables related to the reader’s identity.

Question 3

Who’s the most prominent figure in POST-STRUCTURALISM?

Answer 3

Michel Foucault

Question 4

What are the three stages of Foucault’s career?

Answer 4

1) Archaelogical Works
2) Genealogical Studies
3) Ethics of the postmodern subject

Question 5

What is Foucault’s archaelogical work?

Answer 5

It’s his constitutive view of discourse, a.k.a the way in which discourse constitutes or constructs society on various dimensional planes: social subjects, forms of self, social relationships, objects of knowledge, etc.

Question 6

What does Foucault’s archaelogical works imply?

Answer 6

That discourse prevails over human agency, a view that has the following implications:

1) Meaning is governed by the formative rules of discourse; thus it does not originate in the speaking subject.

2) Social identity is “dispersed”. The social subject is replaced by a “fragmented” subject with unstable identities enabled by discursive formations.

3) The acquisition of social identities is a process of immersion into -and submission to- discursive practice.

Question 7

What are Foucault’s Genealogical studies? What two major technologies of power does he analyze in them?

Answer 7

A shift from interest in discourse and into truth/power regimes and how they affect bodily disposition.

Foucault analyzes two major technologies of power: Discipline and Confession.

Question 8

What are Foucault’s ethics of the post-modern subject?

Answer 8

An ethical orientation for the postmodern era based on the idea that an analysis of the techniques of domination can be counterbalanced by an analysis of the techniques of the self.

Question 9

What are Pierre Bourdie’s most important points regarding discourse?

Answer 9

1) Symbolic Capital
2) Habitus
3) Bodily Hexis

Question 10

What is symbolic capital?

Answer 10

A metaphor using financial capital to explain symbolic resources and how the more a person or community has cultural access to discourse situations and the ability to express linguistically the more profitable it is.

Question 11

What is Habitus?

Answer 11

The individual differences in practical linguistic competence.

Its formation is permanently modified and sanctioned by the relative success/failure in the market of linguistic exchanges.

It is shown through language use.

The notion of habitus pressuposes a theory of linguistic practice, rather than a theory of the linguistic system.

Question 12

What is the bodily hexis?

Answer 12

An association of linguistic practices with deep-rooted bodily dispositions.

So that people from the upper-social classes will have a different bodily disposition associated to their use of language than members of the lower classes.

Question 13

So what is Pierre Bourdieu’s displacement of concepts regarding his sociological critique of linguistics?

Answer 13

1.He replaces the concept of gramaticalness by the notion of acceptability

2. He speaks of relations of symbolic power, rather than relations of communication, replacing the question of the meaning of speech with the question of value and power of speech.
3. He uses the term symbolic capital (associated to the speaker’s position in the social structure) instead of linguistic competence.

Question 14

What is Bakhtin’s argument regarding language and discourse?

Answer 14

That language must be seen as a concrete lived reality (not as an abstract system) because it is an essentially social phenomenon which is rooted in the ambiguities of everyday life.

Question 15

What are the basic ideas of Bahktin’s work?

Answer 15

1. Language is dialogic
2. Discoursive practice is essentially heteroglossic
3. Centriperal forces
4. Centrifugal forces

Question 16

What does it mean that language is dialogic?

Answer 16

That utterances are the basis of language, and that they always contain an implicit respondent voice.

Question 17

What does it mean that discourse is essentially heteroglossic?

Answer 17

That texts often contain the various voices that have been involved in their production.

E.g: that a film text normally includes the voice of the screenplay writer, the director and the people involved in its production.

Question 18

What is then Heteroglossia?

Answer 18

According to Bakhtin it might be defined as the collection of all forms of social speech that people use within a single language.

So that texts contain various voices that have been involved in their production. Bahktin argues that the power of a text originates in the coexistence of, and conflict between, different types of speech: speech of characters, narrators abd even speech of the author.

Question 19

What are centripetal forces? give some examples of the discourses they generate.

Answer 19

Forces associated with political centralization and a unified cultural canon. They generate authoritative and inflexive discourses.

e.g: religious dogma, teachers, fathers, scientific truth, etc.

Question 20

What are centrifugal forces?

Answer 20

Forces that allude to the stratification of language into varieties related to different genres, professions, age groups and so on.