From Structuralism to Poststructuralism

Structuralism was rooted in a theory that the meaning of words stems not from the differences in their objects, but their binary differentiation from other words. These binary distinctions are not equal, however, there is an (implicit) hierarchy within them. Poststructuralism, however, observes the radical instability of the model, because it also conceptualizes nothingness, and nothingness has the effect of devouring the claims of presence, being, authority, and truth that would be upheld in the language. In the end, it isn't only the author's words, but the author himself whose identity is destabilized by the structuralist view of language.

If the nineteenth century claimed with Nietzsche that God is dead, the poststructuralists, while agreeing, announced that so is the (human) author. Despite Descartes' belief that he had established the certitude of his own being through the cogito, all that he really established was that he was thinking. He had not established his own existence, let alone that of God (a 'transcendental signifier').

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