Literarytheory

Introduction to
Postmodern Literary Theory

Agenda
1. Why study literary theory?
2. Modernity, liberal humanism & the origin of English literature
3. Modernism vs. postmodernism
4. Literary theory

Agenda
LITERARY THEORY
 New Criticism
 Archetypal / myth criticism
 Phenomenology & reader-reception theory
 Marxist / ideological
 Psychoanalytical
 Structuralism & semiotics
 Poststructuralism
 New Historicism
 Deconstruction theory
 Cultural materialism
 Feminism
 Queer theory
 Postcolonialism

Why Study Literary Theory?
 It’s about more than finding meaning in a text
 Current theories of language, knowledge and the self
 Reflects a recent revolution in the humanities
 A complete overhauling of long-accepted Western assumptions
and biases
 Literature is power
 To help you become citizens of the postmodern world

Language & Truth
 People are the same everywhere
 There are universal laws and truths
 Knowledge is objective, independent of
culture, gender, etc.
 Language is a man-made tool that refers to
real things / truths
 I, the subject, speak language
 I have a discernible self
 The self is the center of existence
What Is Language?
as
TRADITIONAL WESTERN “MODERN” THINKING

Liberal Humanism: View of Literature
 Good literature is of timeless significance.
 The literary text contains its own meaning
within itself.
 The best way to study the text is to study the
words on the page, without any predefined
agenda for what one wants to find there.
 The text will reveal constants, universal truths,
about human nature, because human nature
itself is constant and unchanging.
Purpose of Literature

 A literary work is "sincere," meaning it is
honest, true to experience and human nature,
and thus can speak the truth about the human
condition.
 What is valuable in literature is that it shows
us our true nature, and the true nature of
society, without preaching
 What critics do is interpret the text (based
largely on the words on the page) so that the
reader can get more out of reading the text.
Purpose of Literature
Liberal Humanism: View of Literature

History of English Literature
 18th C England—standards of polite letters
 Industrial revolution created oppressed working
class
 Role of literature was to uplift society
 Victorian period: scientific discovery & social
change
 Dominance of religion began to erode (powerful
ideological control of image, symbol, habit, ritual)
 The view was “England is sick and English
literature must save it…to delight and instruct us,
to save our souls and heal the state.”
Literature As Power

History of English Literature
 Mathew Arnold—saw need to cultivate the
middle class
 Not in universities, but in working men’s
schools
 English was the poor man’s “classics”
 Goal—transmission and reinforcement of
moral & social values
 Ideological control
 Royal Commission—“English is a suitable
subject for women and second and third-rate
men who became schoolmasters.”
Literature As Power

Modernist Literature
“Things fall apart,
The centre cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
--Yeats, “The Second Coming”
A World with No Center
PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM

Modernist Literature
 Emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity
 Movement away from “objective” third-party
narration
 Tendency toward reflexivity and self-
consciousness
 Obsession with the psychology of self
 Rejection of traditional aesthetic theories
 Experimentation with language
Breaking the Rules

What is Postmodernism?
 Continuation of modernist view
 Does not mourn loss of history, self, religion,
center
 A term applied to all human sciences —
anthropology, psychology, architecture, history,
etc.
 Reaction to modernism; systematic skepticism
 Anti-foundational
Acceptance of a New Age
POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism: Basic Concepts
 Life just is
 Rejection of all master narratives
 All “truths” are contingent cultural constructs
 Skepticism of progress; anti-technology bias
 Sense of fragmentation and decentered self
 Multiple conflicting identities
 Mass-mediated reality
The End of Master Narratives
POSTMODERNISM

 All versions of reality are SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTS
 Concepts of good and evil
 Metaphors for God
 Language
 The self
 Gender
 EVERYTHING!
The End of Master Narratives
POSTMODERNISM

 Language is a social construct that “speaks”
& identifies the subject
 Knowledge is contingent, contextual and
linked to POWER
 Truth is pluralistic, dependent upon the
frame of reference of the observer
 Values are derived from ordinary social
practices, which differ from culture to
culture and change with time.
 Values are determined by manipulation and
domination
Language As Social Construct
POSTMODERNISM

Postmodern View of Language
 Observer is a participant/part of what is observed
 Receiver of message is a component of the
message
 Information becomes information only when
contextualized
 The individual (the subject) is a cultural construct
 Consider role of own culture when examining
others
 All interpretation is conditioned by cultural
perspective and mediated by symbols and
practice
The Observer is King
POSTMODERNISM

PostModern Literature
 Extreme freedom of form and expression
 Repudiation of boundaries of narration & genre
 Intrusive, self-reflexive author
 Parodies of meta-narratives
 Deliberate violation of standards of sense and
decency (which are viewed as methods of social
control)
 Integration of everyday experience, pop culture
Play and Parody
POSTMODERNISM

PostModern Literature
 Parody, play, black humor, pastiche
 Nonlinear, fragmented narratives
 Ambiguities and uncertainties
 Conspiracy and paranoia
 Ironic detachment
 Linguistic innovations
 Postcolonial, global-English literature
Fragmented Identities
POSTMODERNISM

Literary Theory
 THE AUTHOR
Three Perspectives

Literary Theory
 THE AUTHOR
Three Perspectives
 THE TEXT

Literary Theory
 THE AUTHOR
Three Perspectives
 THE TEXT  THE READER

Literary Theory
Celebrating Diversity
POSTMODERNISM
 Different constructs of reality
 “Lenses” through which we see the world
?

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
 POETICS: Mimetic Theory
(learn through example & representation)
 History represents the particular
 Poetry represents the universal
 Complete and unified action, beginning
middle and end, short memorable stories
 Good plot: reversal of fortune
 Anagnorsis: recognition of an unknown truth
 Tragic mimesis: Great characters that evoke
pity and fear
 Comedy: Flawed characters
Ancient History
as

First Critics
 F. R. LEAVIS—Editor of SCRUTINY (1932-1953)
 English as the supreme civilizing pursuit
 Rigorous critical analysis; “words on the page”
 Practical criticism
 Close reading
 Continued Mathew Arnold’s social mission
 Literature could cure all ills of society (crusaders)
 Elitist
Words on the Page
as
TEXTUAL THEORY

New Criticism
 View literature as a valid form of knowledge and
as a communicator of truths inaccessible via
scientific and other discourse
 A work of literature has an organic structure
 Objective way of analyzing literature
 Author’s intentions are irrelevant
The Sanctity of the Text
as
TEXTUAL THEORY

New Criticism
 I. A. RICHARDS (English)
 Principles of Literary Criticism
 The meaning of a poetic word is radically
contextual, a function of the poem’s internal
verbal organization
The Meaning Is in the Text
as
TEXTUAL THEORY

New Criticism
 T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965)
 New political reading of English literature
 Miltons and Romantics less important
 Metaphysicals upgraded
 French symbolists imported
 Eliot was an extreme right-wing traditionalist
 Assaulted middle-class ideologies of
liberalism, romanticism, individualism
 Before Milton—poets could think but not feel
 After (Romantics)—feel but not think—and
degenerated
The “Bible” of Tradition
as
TEXTUAL THEORY

New Criticism
 T.S. ELIOT
 Symbolism in context of classical and Christian traditions
 Believed language of poetry should communicate by
objective correlatives—deep symbols and images that
bypass rational thought and seize readers by “the cerebral
cortex, the nervous system, the digestive tracts.” Images
should penetrate to the primitive levels at which all men
and women experienced alike—through symbols, rhythms,
archetypes, images of death and resurrection, the Fisher
King.
The Objective Correlative
as
TEXTUAL THEORY

New Criticism
 AMERICAN NEW CRITICISM
 John Crow Ransom The New Criticism (1941)
 Poetry as an aesthetic alternative to the scientific
rationalism of the North
 Sensual integrity of poetry as a form of human knowledge
 Allen Tate, R. P. Blackmur, Robert Penn Warren,
Cleanth Brooks
 A poem is a “unification of attitudes into a hierarchy
subordinated to a total and governing attitude”
An American Aesthetic
as
TEXTUAL THEORY

Existentialism
 Existence precedes knowledge (arationalism)
 “I am, therefore I think, I feel, I suffer…”
 There is no meaning that man does not create
 Inherent sense of alienation, angst, anxiety
 Nietzsche: Man should rise from the ruins of the
broken cathedrals and assume his rightful
supremacy, without mourning
 Kierkegaard: Faith in God, in fear and trembling
 Nihilism, absurdity and despair
 Christian existentialism
Alone in the Wasteland
as
TEXTUAL THEORY

Phenomenology / Reception Theory
 JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (1905-1980)
 What is Literature? (1948)
 A book’s reception by the reader is part of the
work itself
 Includes an image of who the book is written
for
 An implied reader is encoded in the book itself
 The dilemma of the contemporary writer, who
can address his work neither to the
bourgeoisie, the working class or the mythical
man in general.
The Implied Reader
as

“What did you make of the new couple?”
The Andersons, George and Helen, were
undressing.
The Reader As Interpreter
as

Phenomenology
 EDMUND HUSSERL (1859-1938)
Crisis of the European Sciences (1935)—Wanted to
launch a spiritual rebirth through an “absolutely self-
sufficient science of the spirit”
 We can not be sure of the independent
existence of objects
 Only absolute truth is what appears to us in our
minds, things posited by our consciousness
 There are universal types or essences which
we can grasp
 Knowledge of phenomena is intuitive
Phenomena As Truth

Phenomenology
 EDMUND HUSSERL
 Being and meaning are bound together; there is no object
without a subject, no subject without an object.
 Centrality of the human subject
 Literary text is the embodiment of the author’s
consciousness
 Deep structures and patterns within the work
 Limitation: ignores social Marxist view—a head without a
world
A Head Without a World

Phenomenology
 MARTIN HEIDEGGER (1889-1976)
 Rejects Husserl’s concept of a transcendental
subject capable of knowing through intuition
 Heidegger begins with irreducible givenness of
existence
 Dasein: Being-in-the-world
 We are beings in a world we cannot objectify
 Language is where reality unconceals itself
(similar to structuralism)
Being-in-the-World
as

Phenomenology
 MARTIN HEIDEGGER
 We must make way for Being via “humble listening,”
open ourselves passively for truths to emerge
 Pre-Platonic “listening to the earth and stars”
 Understood that meaning of language is a social matter;
language belongs to a society before it belongs to me
 CULTURE CONSTRUCTS US
Humble Listening

 RECEPTION THEORY
 Role of reader as co-partner
 Reader brings considerable knowledge and experience
to the literary encounter
 Including literary conventions
 Will fill in the blanks, select and organize
 Must open ourselves to the deep essences of things
 Look for recurring themes and patterns of imagery
Reading Between the Lines
as

Reception Theory
 WOLFGANG ISER (1926-)
 The Act of Reading (1978)
 We bring assumptions to each reading,
based upon language codes and traditions
 Good literature forces reader into a new
critical awareness of customary codes
 Often violates or transgresses our normative
ways of seeing
 The whole point of reading is to bring us into
deeper self-consciousness
Reading Ourselves
as

 E.D. HIRSCH (1928- )
 Validity in Interpretation
 Literary meaning is absolute and
immutable, resistant to historical
change
 Believes in author’s intention
 But significances vary throughout
history (interpretations)
 Critic must reconstruct ways of seeing
that would have governed the author’s
meaning at the time of writing
Intentional Fallacy?
as

Hermeneutics
 HANS-GEORGE GADAMER (Truth and Method)
 All interpretations are situational and
constrained by the historically relative criteria of
a particular culture; impossible to know the text
“as it is.”
 All interpretations consist in a dialogue between
the present and the past
 We “listen” with passive Heideggerian passivity
for the answer
 Must reconstruct the question
 Interpretation is a matter of “coming home” to
the past
Coming Home to the Past

Hermeneutics
 HANS-GEORGE GADAMER (Truth and Method)
 Assumes there is a single mainstream tradition which all
valid works participate in and that history is an unbroken
continuum
 Tradition is home
 Rationale for high German tradition; its own classics and
national pride
 FLAW: fails to recognize the problem of ideology; that
history is not a dialogue but a monologue between the
powerful and powerless
 A theory based upon tradition and classics; does not allow
for atraditional literature
Tradition Is Our Home
as

 KEY POINTS:
 “Meaning” begins with the reader (not author or text)
 We must open ourselves up to the phenomena of the text
 Reading is a “spiritual” experience that can lead us to a
deeper sense of consciousness and awareness
 Reading enables us to connect with “history, essences,
and traditions”
 We are co-partners with the author
 We participate in the reading process through the social
construction of language, which precedes us
The Reader in the World

 STANLEY FISH (American)
 A novel is all the assorted accounts of the
novel that have been given or will be given
by readers and reviewers
 Does not mean all interpretations are valid
(relativism)
 Readers are members of interpretative
communities that have communal and
conventional beliefs
Interpretative Communities
as

Pre-Structuralism
 NORTHROP FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
 Literature formed an objective system that
could be analyzed “scientifically”
 Laws = archetypes, myths, genres are basic
structures (universal patterns)
 Four narrative categories:
 Comic Spring
 Romantic Summer
 Tragic Autumn
 Ironic Winter
Myths & Archetypes
as

Pre-Structuralism
 All these patterns spring from the COLLECTIVE
UNCONSCIOUS to reveal universal archetypes
 Myth Hero is superior
 Romance Superior in degree
 Tragedy and epic Superior in degree but not to
others
 Comedy and realism Equal to rest of us
 Satire and irony Inferior
The Universal Conscious
as
STRUCTURALISM

Archetypal Criticism
 Tragedy About human isolation
 Comedy Human integration
 Three recurrent patterns of symbolism:
 Apocalyptic
 Demonic
 Analogical
Archetypal Genres
as
STRUCTURALISM

 JOSEPH CAMPBELL (1904-87)
Myth as the Ultimate Truth
STRUCTURALISM
Ten Commandments for Reading Mythology
1
Read myths with the eyes of wonder:
the myths transparent to their universal
meaning, their meaning transparent to its
mysterious source.
2
Read myths in the present tense: Eternity is
now.

STRUCTURALISM
3
Read myths in the first person plural: the Gods
and Goddesses of ancient mythology still live
within you.
5
Look for patterns; don't get lost in the details.
What is needed is not more specialized
scholarship, but more interdisciplinary vision.
Make connections; break old patterns of
parochial thought.

STRUCTURALISM
8
Know your tribe! Myths never arise in a vacuum;
they are the connective tissue of the social body
which enjoys synergistic relations with dreams
(private myths) and rituals (the enactment of
myth).
10
Read between the lines! Literalism kills;
Imagination quickens.

Ferdinand de Sausurre (1857-1913)
 Course in General Linguistics (1916)
 General structures by which language, myths and
literatures work
 Language is a system of signs
 Individual units of a linguistic structure only have
meaning in relationship to other units
 Do not go outside the myth or poem
 Meaning is in the structure not the content
 Sees language as a complete system in itself now
(ignores historical evolution)
Structural Linguistics
as
STRUCTURALISM

Ferdinand de Sausurre
 SIGNIFIER Sound or written word
 SIGNIFIED Meaning
 ARBITRARY RELATIONS—“Cat” could mean anything—what
counts is that no other sets of signifiers mean cat
 Structuralist concerned with objective structure of signs —
langue—system of language
 Not with any specific unit—parole
Signifier & Signified
as
STRUCTURALISM

 VALUE—collective meaning assigned to signs within a
community; relation between various signs
 SIGNIFICATION—meaning—relationship between signifier and
signified
 DIFFERENCE—the relation that creates value
 THE IDEA OF DIFFERENCE IS BASED UPON THE CONCEPT OF
BINARY OPPOSITES
 Night/day; sweet/sour; body/soul; lightness/weight
Binary Oppositions
STRUCTURALISM

 LINEAR (SYNTAGMATIC) RELATIONS--words in time, in a
sentence
 Position in sentence governs meaning :
 “The stoned man stoned the stone wall.”
 ASSOCIATIVE—similar words in memory
 Allow for metaphorical expression
 LANGUAGE SPEAKS US
Language Speaks Us
as
STRUCTURALISM

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-)
 French anthropologist
 Took Saussure’s theories about language and
applied them to the study of myth and culture
 Refused to see Western civilization as unique
 Savage mind = civilized mind
 30 years studying North and South American
Indians
 Man obeys laws that are inherent in the brain
 Myths are not made by an individual—but by the
collective human consciousness
The Savage Mind
as
STRUCTURALISM

Claude Levi-Strauss
 Every culture organizes knowledge into binary pairs
 Different myths are all variations on a number of very basic themes
 A kind of grammar for narratives inherent in the human mind
 Certain constant universal structures called mythemes
 Structuralism decentralizes the individual (the subject)
 Meaning is not a private experience or divinely ordained
 Product of certain shared systems of signification
The Grammar of Myth
STRUCTURALISM

Claude Levi-Strauss
 LANGUAGE predates the individual
 REALITY is a product of language
 Jonah and Christ are the same story
 Thus all myths are timeless
 Hero needs to overcome an obstacle
 A story about a guy who loves a girl who is
inaccessible
 Woman wants to make chicken soup has no
chicken
 SAME STORY: incomplete/completeness
The Same Old Stories
STRUCTURALISM

Claude Levi-Strauss
 STORY/NARRATIVE—exists on a diachronic axis (l to r) like
music, irreversible time
 STRUCTURE—synchronic axis (up down) in reversible time, like
staffs of score
 He focuses on the harmony of relationships, which he calls
bundles
 BINARY OPPOSITIONS — lend a certain order and logic to things
in the universe, and can be used to help people believe in
contradictions—(yin and yang, god made man)
Bundles of Meaning
STRUCTURALISM

Claude Levi-Strauss
 Cadmos
ravished
by Zeus
 Oedipus
marries
mother
 Antigone
buries
brother
Analyzing Mythemes
STRUCTURALISM
 Oedipus
kills
father
 Cadmos
kills
dragon
 Oedipus
kills the
Sphynx
 Labdacos
lame
 Oedipus
has
swollen
foot
A
B
C
1 2 3 4

Structuralism
Language Creates Us
STRUCTURALISM
 Language and culture produce subjects
(the “I” is decentered)
 Binary oppositions
 Literature reflects universal psyche of
the human mind

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
 The text represses its real content
 Patterns of language beneath the surface that
betray repressions, obsessions, neuroses, etc.
 Dreams and imagery (especially sexual)
 Reader functions as psychiatrist, listening for
verbal play in which the “patients” are saying
more than they realize
 Author: Text reveals “secret life” and
psychological struggles of the writer
 Characters: Look for psychological motives
Suspicious Texts
as
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

KEY CONCEPTS:
 Id, Superego, Ego
 Resolution of Oedipus complex > the Self
 Repression
 Dreams: displacement and condensation
(metaphor and metonomy)
 Neurosis and psychosis
 Transference
Repressed Truths
as
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Jacques Lacan(1901-81)
Language Is Us
as
 Language (and thus culture) constructs our
sense of self
 Our unconscious is just not inside us.
 It is formed by language which is outside us.
 Language, our parents, the unconscious, the
symbolic order represent the OTHER.

We Want Our Mothers
as
 IMAGINARY PHASE: One with mother
(Pre-Oedipal)
 MIRROR STAGE: We recognize a separate
being in mirror, feel “lack” for mother;
recognition of OTHER but not SELF
 SYMBOLIC (Oedipal crisis): Understand
symbols; Father rules; we learn language;
unconscious is formed; emergence of desire
 REAL: Understand our place in the physical
world; conscious of our perennial “lack”; real
lies beyond language; accept we can never
know it

The Unconscious As Other
as
 Humans continue to look for an imaginary wholeness and unity
 Ego is a function of a subject that is always dispersed, never
identical with itself, strung out along a chain of discourses
 I stands for the ever-elusive subject which will always slip
through the nets of any particular language

as
 Ego is a moment in time in the discourse of language
 The unconscious is the discourse of the Other. It is Other. It is
the linguistic structure of the unconscious. The Subject does
not know that he desires what the Other desires. The Other is
the Oedipal drama (the father of the real Other).
 The unconscious is outside us. It exists between us and others.

as
 There is no separation between self and society.
 Society inhabits the individual.

as
 There is no subject independent of language.

as
 We constantly negate our identities.

as
 I am the quest for myself.

as
 We have a perpetual lack of wholeness.

as
 NEED Biological Child in oral phase
 DEMAND Response from other Recognition
 DESIRE For the ideal OTHER Never fulfilled

Writing for Fulfillment
as
APPLICATION TO LITERARY THEORY:
 Supports poststructural ideas of the fragmentation of self
 All texts are made up of meanings constituted by filiation and
difference that are cultural in scope
 Must challenge the borders of the text
 Look for repetitions, gaps, what not said
 Writing is in response to lack and desire (creative act)
 Rich play of language (ambiguities)
 Readers and authors are “positions”

The Voice of the Father
as
 How does the language of the text signify something other than
what it says?
 What aspects of the text reflect the Imaginary, Symbolic or Real
orders?
 Is there a voice of a mother or father present?
 Is the mother’s voice (less structured, more associational, more
fluid) suppressed by a phallocentric symbolic order?
 Evidence of a splintered, constructed self?

B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
Behavior Modification
as
 We can’t know the “mind”--so why worry about it?
 Focus on behavior & what is observable
 Perceptions, thoughts, images, feelings are
subjective and immune to measurement
 Operant conditioning (aversive & reinforcing
stimuli)
 Skinner Box-- “rat in a cage”
 Walden II (utopian vision)

Marvin Minsky (1927-)
Artificial Intelligence
as
 Founder of artificial intelligence (MIT)
 Cognitive scientist
 The brain is a number of organs, each within its
own function (e.g., vision, story telling, math)
 The mind is a society of tiny components
 We all possess many “brains” or “selves” (both
metaphors)
 We can have different beliefs, plans and
dispositions at the same time

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
 Communist Manifesto
 Saw capitalism as a driving force of history
 Predicted that it would conquer the world
 Lead to globalization of national economies and
cultures
 Would divide world between “haves” and
“have-nots”
 Class struggle
 Advocated abolition of private property,
traditional marriage, concentration of political
power in the hands of the proletariat
Class Struggle
as
IDEOLOGICAL CRITICISM

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
 PREDICTED:
 Old-established national industries and cultures destroyed
by large capitalistic entities
 Dominance of American and English lifestyles and
products (Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse)
 Depressions and economic crises (e.g., Asia)
 Loss of local cultures and identities
 JAMESON: “Increasing standardization on an
unparalleled scale…as human history becomes “a
tortuous progression toward the American consumer
as a climax.”
Loss of Cultural Identity
IDEOLOGICAL

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
 FAILED TO SEE:
 Capitalism’s ability to buy proletarian support by gradually
enfranchising them
 Social contracts that overcome shortcomings
 Welfare, Social Security
 Growth of an economically “content” middle class
 Socialism created oppressive, authoritarian states
 Working class did not share in wealth
 Class vs. class too simplistic
 Multiple subclasses (women, environmentalists, etc.)
Power to the People
IDEOLOGICAL

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
 INFLUENCE OF HEGEL:
 Dialectics
 Thesis > antithesis = synthesis
 Never-ending cycle or process
 Dialectic materialism
 “The material productive forces of society come into
conflict with the existing relations of production.”
 RULING CAPITALISTS > REVOLUTION = COMMUNISM
(Few control many) (Many control (Production
production) socialized)
Dialectic Materialism
IDEOLOGICAL

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
 APPLICATION TO LITERARY THEORY:
 “Hermeneutics of suspicion”
 Focus on what the text hides (ideology is silent)
 Hegemony: “A pervasive system of assumptions,
meanings and values…that shapes the way things look,
what they mean, and what reality is for the majority of
people within a given culture” (Antonio Gramsci)
 How characters are shaped and controlled by economics
Silent Ideologies
IDEOLOGICAL

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
 Questions a Marxist literary critic would ask:
 Who was the text written for? Is it a “power play” on the
part of one class to dominate another?
 What is the underlying ideology?
 Does the main character affirm or resist bourgeoise
values?
 Whose story gets told? Who is left out?
 In what way are characters or groups of people
“commodified”?
Text as Power
IDEOLOGICAL

Louis Althusser (1918-1990)
 Ideologies constructs the subject
 Humans are the result of many different social
determinants
 Why didn’t the working classes rebel?
 Ideologies help us create a sense of identity
 Make us feel good about ourselves
 Lacan’s idea of Other
 Ideologies give people a satisfying mirror
image of themselves (identify with a cause)
Text as Power
IDEOLOGICAL

Poststructuralism
POSTMODERN LITERARY THEORY
 Not a unified school: A group of theoretical positions
 Self-reflexive discourse that is “aware of the tentativeness,
slipperiness, ambiguities and complex interrelations between
texts and meanings.” (Lye)
 Rejects:
 Totalizing view All phenomenon under one concept
 Essentialist concept Reality independent of language
 Foundationalism Stable signifying systems rooted in
human thought
Rejection of Essentialism
as
POSTMODERNISM

Poststructuralism
All Truths Are Cultural
as
POSTMODERNISM
STRUCTURALISM
 The individual is sacred
 The mind as the realm of
meaning
 Universal laws and
essences
 Inherent universal
meanings that precede
the text
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
 The “subject” is a cultural construct
 Mind created from interactions as
situated symbolic beings
 Truth is “local”; language creates
reality
 Meaning is intertextual, determined
by social discourse; changes with
history

Poststructuralism
A Rose is Not a Cow
as
POSTMODERNISM
 Meanings are often hidden in the texts
 Real meaning can be unlocked by deconstructing the text
 Must consider psychological, cultural, ideological, gender and
other “power positions” of author, characters, intended readers
 Words are an endless chain of signifiers, pointing to nothing
but themselves

New Historicism & Cultural Materialism
 Recognize that history is written by the victors
 History as culturally produced--not objective narratives
 Paralleled evolution in cultural criticism
 Focus on power, culture and economics
 New Historicism: Top of social hierarchy
 Government, church, upper classes
 Cultural Materialism: Bottom of society
 Lower classes, women, gays, colonialized ethnic groups
History of the Victors
as
POSTMODERNISM

New Historicism
 What are the relations of power suggested by the text?
 How does the work reveal a historically specific model of truth or
authority?
 What historical or cultural events might illuminate the text?
 How is power operating secretly within the text?
 How is the subversion to authority contained?
--D F Felluga
The Power of Print
as
POSTMODERNISM

Cultural Materialism
 What is the hidden ideology? Does the author reflect a power
position? (E.g., male-centric, Christian, American, Islamic?)
 What is model of identity for oppressed groups?
 How does the work reflect the author’s class, or the author’s
analysis of class relations?
 How do those with less power try to subvert those with more?
 What is the utopian vision?
 How are people commodified? What commodifies them?
 Role of media & consumerism?
--D F Felluga
People As Commodities
as
POSTMODERNISM

Roland Barthes (1915-80)
 Transition between structuralism and
poststructuralism
 Semiologist
 One of first to analyze mass media and
consumerism as manipulators of reality
 “The author is dead.”
 The text is a “multi-dimensional space in
which a variety of writings, none of them
original, blend and clash.”
The Author Is Dead
as

Roland Barthes (1915-80)
 The reader “produces” a text on his or her
own terms, forging meanings from “what has
already been read, seen, done, lived.”
 OK to view literature from many perspectives:
existential, psychoanalytical, Marxist, etc.
 Sees less distinction between literary and non-
literary texts
The Reader As “Writer”
as

Jaques Derrida (1930-)
 Skeptical postmodernist
 Attacks fundamental principles of Western
philosophy
 Influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger
 Attacks from a structuralist foundation
 Agrees that meaning is not inherent in signs
 Strongly disagrees with bifurcation of
structuralism
Down with Descartes
as
Deconstruction is a theory of reading which aims to undermine
the logic of opposition within texts.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

STRUCTURALISM is inherently flawed:
 Argues that all STRUCTURES have an implied center
 All systems have binary oppositions
 One part more important than another (good/evil, male/female)
 Reinforces humanist idea that speaker/subject more important
 Reinforces real self as the origin of what is being said
 This is logocentricism—basic to all Western thought since Plato
The Dangers of Dualism
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

BASIC THEMES:
 By deconstructing, basic units of logic are shown how they
contradict themselves.
 Sees all writing as a complex, historical cultural process rooted
in the relations of texts to each other and in the institutions and
conventions of writing.
 Language operates in subtle and often contradictory ways.
 Certainty will always elude us.
Language is Slippery
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

THE SELF AS FICTION
“Our self-presence is a fiction, we are in a constant state of
differing and deferrence. As our center is not really a center, our
self-presence is a fiction we create to disguise the play of
opposition and displacement within which we live.”
Viv Le Difference
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 BASIS OF DECONSTRUCTION:
 Focuses on difference (from essay “differance”)
 All signs have difference
 Open up a space from that which they represent
 They defer—open up a temporal chain, or participate in
temporality; meaning always delayed
 Every sign repeats the creation of time and space
 Difference is ultimate phenomenon in universe—which
enables and results from being
 Difference is at the heart of existence, not essence
What’s the Difference?
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

LANGUAGE & MEANING:
 A meaning is always temporal and part of a network of
meanings, part of a chain of meanings in a chain or system to
which it belongs which is always changing
 What a sign differs from becomes an absent part of its presence
(TRACE).
 Opposites already united. They depend upon each other for
meaning. They are the alternating imprint of one another.
What’s Black Is White
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

INTERTEXTUALITY:
 All texts refer to other texts (just as signs refer to other signs).
 No interpretations are final.
 The authority of any text is provisional.
Ecriture
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

STRUCTURALISM
Signified
Signifier
No Final Signified
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
DECONSTRUCTION
Signified
Signifier Signifier Signifier

Man can find truth in nature.
Under Erasure
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY
 Meaning circulates by difference, by being other.
 It is creative and inventive.
 Affirms multiplicity, paradoxes, richness of our life .
 Frees ourselves from tyrannies of univocal readings.
 Opposes humanism, which puts man at the center. One can talk
about ideas and work with views that man is at the center only by
placing them “under erasure.”
 Closer to reality, less artificial
Richness of Language
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 "If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is
not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of
one mode of signifying over another.
A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the
specificity of a text's critical difference from itself."
Destruction is Good
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

DECONSTRUCTIVE INTERPRETATION:
 Find binary opposition and implied center
 Refute claims
 Find contradictions, self-imposed logic that is faulty
 Focus on what text is saying is other than what it appears to be
saying
 Look for gaps, margins, figures, echoes, digressions,
discontinuities
The Unsaid Truth
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Exclusions and repressions as important as what is said—in fact
are more central: they point to the contingency of a central part
 What is not said provides clues to author’s real views of power
 Male Western authorities have encoded within their work silence
about women and others (rationalized exploitation of others
without knowing it).
Male Domination
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 BINARY OPPOSITIONS
 Nature / culture
 Health / disease
 Purity / contamination
 Simplicity / complexity
 Good / evil
 Speech / writing
Deconstructing Rousseau
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
as
 ASSUMED CENTER
 Nature is good
 WHAT HE IS REALLY SAYING
 Theme of lost innocence
 Naïve romantic illusion
 Western guilt over
colonization

 Some literature that recognizes the highly
mediated nature of our experience, and are
playful, ironic, explicitly intertextual and
deconstruct themselves may be closer to reality.
Fuzzy Reality
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Nietzsche influence:
 Language is radically metaphorical in nature
 Every idea originates through an equating of the unequal
 Metaphors are essentially groundless
 All assumptions must be questioned
 Must consider vast plurality of “wills to power”
Language as Metaphor
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 “What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors,
metonymies, anthropomorphisms; truths are illusions of which
one has forgotten that they are illusions…”
-- Nietzsche
What is Truth?
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

A Long Way from Aristotle
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
TRADITIONAL THEORIES
 Mimetic
 Didactic
 Expressive of truths
DECONSTRUCTION
 The author is dead
 History and literature become
processes of intertextuality
 The careful reader is king

Michel Foucault (1926-84)
 Views language in the framework of power
 Denies Marxist concept of class oppression
 Denies all grand schemes
 Power is found only in discourse
 All social relations are relations of power
 Everyone oppresses others through discourse
 Everything we say, think, read is regulated by
the world in which we live
Language is Power
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

NIETZSCHE INFLUENCE:
 Rejects Hegelian dialectic (past/present
connection)
 Gealogy of Morals: local, discontinuous
knowledges vs. unified orderly narrative
 How society deals with fringe elements
(madness)
 From power in a sovereign king, to impersonal
bureaucratic powers that silently oppress us
 Will to power vs. objective claims of truth
Language is Power
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Metaphor: Panopticon
(19th English prison design: people feel they
are being watched at all time)
 Surveillance, regulation and discipline
 All-knowing God
 Freud’s superego (monitor of desires)
 Big Brother (files, computer monitoring)
 Power becomes system of surveillance which
is interiorized
 Social engineering and psychological
manipulation
Prisoners of Discourse
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Society disciplines populations by sanctioning
the knowledge claims of various micro-
ideologies--education, medicine, criminology
 Anti-Marxist:
 Does not believe in any total single theory
 State and class power overrated
 The “subject” is the locus of multiple,
dispersed and decentered discourses
 Anti-humanist
Prisoners of Discourse
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

TEXTUAL THEORY:
 Sees historic texts as a “series of fictions”
 Focus on discourses--all types of texts on a
subject--not authors
 The author is decentered; merely a subject
position within a text
 Discourse regulated by rules of exclusion,
internal systems of control
The Decentered Author
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

APPLICATION TO LITERATURE:
 We are never totally free to say anything we want:
 Some have privileged right to speak (experts)
 Rituals, doctrines and traditions
 What is the source of the discourse?
 What are the regulating institutions or ideologies?
 How are discourses controlled selected, organized
and redistributed?
Silent Censorship
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998)
 Collapse of grand narratives:
“The supreme fictions we tell ourselves
about ourselves.”
 Classless society (Marxism)
 Freedom of humanity
 Total unity of knowledge
 Democracy through capitalism
Modernity is Dead
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 The end
of the
Enlightenment project
It’s All Over, Karl
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Art removed from life
(neither sacral or courtly)
 Individualistic fragmented society
is here to stay
 No one can grasp all that is going on
 Capitalism created hedonism,
narcissism, lack of social identity
It’s All About Me
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Computerized knowledge has become
the principle force of production
 From the “building of minds” to the
acquiring of knowledge as a product that
can be bought and sold
 Knowledge as a commodity that nations
will fight over
 Multinational corporations breaking
down sovereignty of nations
The Battle for Bytes
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Language is a game based upon social
contracts
 To speak is to fight
 Science and big business speaking louder
 Nations trying to pass science off as an epic
 Who will control knowledge?
To Speak Is to Fight
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Big stories are bad
 Little stories are good
Small is Beautiful
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Fragmentation of Truth
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
APPLICATION TO LITERATURE:
 Beware of grand narratives
 “Truth” is in fragmentation, montage, mini-narratives
 Avant-garde, non-organic art ‘the historic norm” (Adorno)
 “The only possible authentic expression of alienation in late
capitalistic society.”
 View discourses as language games (none are privileged)
 People (characters) are “nodes” where pluralistic lines of
discourse intersect

Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
 Cultural materialist
 Consumer objects = signs that differentiate the
population
 Our postmodern is no longer real. It is a
simulation of the real.
 Mass media & consumerism have created a new
myth of reality that we accept as real
 We live in a state of hyperreality
 McLuhan: The medium is the message
You Are What You Consume
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
 America is a spectacle
 An illusionary paradise
 TV is the world
 Advertising gives consumers illusion of freedom
 “All is well” is the party line
 Illusion perpetuated by media & culture
 “Kerouac with brains”
The Myth of America
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Feminist Literary Theory
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR (1908-1986)
 The Second Sex
 Questioned the “othering” of women by Western
philosophy
 Rediscovery of forgotten women’s literature
 Revolutionary advocacy of sexual politics
 Questioning of underlying phallocentric,
Western, rational ideologies
 Pluralism: gender, sexual, cultural, ethnicity,
postcolonial perspectives
The Second Sex
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Exorcise the male mind
 Deconstructs logocentricism of male discourse
 Sees gender as a cultural construct
 So are stereotypes
 Focus on unique problems of feminism:
 History and themes of women literature
 Female language
 Psycho-dynamics of female creativity
Gender As a Social Construct
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

JULIA KRISTEVA (1941-)
 Psychologist, linguist & novelist
 Influenced by Barthes, Freud & Lacan
 “Dismantles all ideologies,” including feminism
 Does not consider herself a feminist
 Disagrees with “patriarchal” views of Freud and
Lacan
 Maternal body source of language and “laws”
(not paternal anti-Oedipal drive)
Feminizing Freud
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Masculine symbolic order represses feminine
semiotic order
 Semiotic open to men and women writers
 Semiotic is “creative”--marginal discourse of the
avant garde
 Raw material of signification from
pre-Oedipal drives (linked to mother)
 Realm of the subversive forces of madness,
holiness and poetry
 Creative, unrepressed energy
Madness, Holiness & Poetry
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 Challenges Judeo-Christian icons of woman
 Balancing act: live within Lacan’s symbolic order
of patriarchal laws without losing uniqueness
 Women can produce own symbols and language
 Multiplicity of female expression
 “To break the code, to shatter language, to find
specific discourse closer to the body and
emotions, to the unnamable repressed by the
social contract.”
--Kristeva
I Am Woman
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 ALICE JARDINE, Gynesis (1982)
 Woman as a binary opposition
 Man/woman
 Rational/irrational
 Good/evil
 Implied male logocentricism
 The concept of jouissance
Binary Equals
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Helene Cixcous
 Critic, novelist, playwright
 Picks up where Lacan leaves off
 Denounces patriarchal binary oppositions
 Women enter into the Symbolic Order differently
 Deconstructs patriarchal Greek myths
 Femininity (jouissance) unrepresentable in
phallocentric scheme of things
 Favors a “bisexual” view
The Joy of Jouissance
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Helene Cixcous
 Women are closer to the Imaginary
 Women more fluid, less fixed
 The individual woman must write herself
 Feminine literature: not objective; erase
differences between order and chaos, text and
speech; inherently deconstructive
 Admires Joyce and Poe
 Men can produce feminist literature
Deconstructing Sigmund
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

L
uce Irigaray
 Expose patriarchal foundations of Western
philosophy & psychology
 Women are more than defective men
 Western culture, identity, logic and rationality are
all symbolically male
 Mother-daughter relationship has been
unsymbolized
 Language as elusive, shifting, undogmatic
Deconstructing Sigmund
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Queer Theory
 Gender and sexuality not “essential” to identity
 Socially constructed
 Mutable and changeable
 Self shaped by language, signs and signifiers.
 Self becomes a subject in language, with more
multiplicity of meaning.
 Sex as (1) animal instinct and (2) socially
constructed behavior shaped by ethics/morals
 Western ideas of sexual identity come from science,
religion, economics and politics and were
constructed as binary oppositions
Queer Ideas
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Queer Theory
 Queer theory deconstructs all binary oppositions
about human sexuality.
 Encourages the examination of the world from an
alternative view.
 Allows for the inclusion of gender, sexuality,
race and other areas of identity by noticing the
distinctions between identities, communities, and
cultures.
 Challenges heterosexism and homophobia, in
addition to racism, misogyny and other oppressive
discourses while celebrating diversity.
Deconstructing Sex
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Queer Literature
 Queer activism seeks to break down
traditional ideas of normal and deviant, by
showing the queer is what is thought of as
normal, and the normal is queer.
 Queer theory reconstructs knowing and
understanding by challenging tradition.
A Political Challenge
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Queer Literature
 Unmasks signs of homosexuality in “old”
literature
 Reveals how cultures construct negative
identities of homosexuals
 A political form of academics (change views)
 Views sexuality as a complex array of social
codes and forces, individual activity and
institutional power
Coming Out
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Postcolonialism
 Attempts to resurrect colonized cultures
 Deconstruct Western view of third-world
nations as “otherness”
 Edward Said: “Orientalism” was an artificial
word constructed by the West to talk about
and the East (Typical binary opposition)
 Empire-building nations used literature as
power
 Ingrained Western myths & phallic
logocentricism in colonized people
The Myth of the Orient
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Postcolonialism
 Denied richness of diversity within cultures
 “Totalizations” or stereotypes are based upon
nostalgic experiences of colonizers
 Attempt to “rebuild a present” (since past is
lost)--and come to grips with lack of identity
 A weapon of resistance and subversion
 Written in hybrid language
American Tragedies
as
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Theory Speak
"If such a sublime cyborg would insinuate the future as
post-Fordist subject, his palpably masochistic locations as
ecstatic agent of the sublime superstate the need to be
decoded as the 'now-all-but-unreadable DNA' of a fast
deindustrializing Detroit, just as his Robocop-like strategy
of carceral negotiation and street control remains the
tirelessly American one of inflicting regeneration through
the violence upon the racially heteroglossic wilds and
others of the inner-city."

So?
 The white-Western-male view of the world is dead
 New Criticism, Marxism & Structuralism are passe
 We now have a new set of “lenses” to view the world
 We understand the importance of being suspicious
(literature is not necessarily sincere)
 We recognize that truth, identity, gender, etc. are
social constructs, contingent and local
 We recognize the power of discourse
 PM “explains” the global world in which we live
Now What?
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

The Dangers of Postmodernism
 Can lead to intellectual nihilism & cynicism
 From the comfortable foundation of humanism
to absolute relativism and pluralism
 Whose lens is “correct”? Who says so?
 Is humanism really all that bad?
 It’s all theory
 How do we use theory? Apply all to all texts?
 Glib, hip intellectualism
Proceed with Caution
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Where Do We Go from Here?
 Has the progress of history come to a dead-end?
(as Foucault and Lyotard suggest)
 Have we reached the point of self-defeating moral
relativism?
 Jameson:
 We need narratives, and some sort of history
 We need to re-endow the individual
 History, literature have important functions
 Sarup:
 We need to keep the Enlightenment project alive
Proceed with Caution
POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Hyperpostpostmoderndeconstuctruralism
Common sense
The Real World
as
POSTPOSTMODERNISM?

“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” Adrienne Rich
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.
as
POSTPOSTMODERNISM?

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