[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.Response Papers.Post-Structuralism

Okay so… how about we just start this party off with a ‘wow’? I think I could go for that. Wow. Post-structuralism. It takes what I already found to be a bit ridiculous – in this case Structuralism – then calls it a sham, and finally rockets off towards a new level of ridculousosity so absurdly out there that I’m not entirely sure what to do with it. In fact, I’m barely sure where to start with not knowing what to do with post-structuralism, but I’ll give it a shot in the dark, if you’ll excuse the cliché.
So, the one thing I pulled out of this ‘pamphlet’ of technical explanation is the differences between the before and after versions of structuralism. These differences are neatly summed up in two separate lists, one easy-to-follow table and the entire chapter, but nowhere better than in this easy to follow quotation from none other than Barry himself: “structuralists look for such features in the text as parallels, echoes, reflections… to show a unity of purpose within the text... By contrast,the deconstructionist aims to show that the text is at war with itself” (Barry 69). Okay, so maybe that’s not as easy as I thought. So, maybe it’s better to say that structuralists want us to examine a text, find the underlying themes, expound upon these themes, connect them to the outside world and enrich the text with all that the world has to offer. Post-structuralists want us to scrutinize the text, emphasize the paradoxes, the contradictions, and the missing links and then from these absences derive meaning. In short, structuralism is the art of weaving together the text with everything imaginable, and post-structuralism is the art of tearing a text into such small pieces that no one can recognize what the original intent is. I’m not entirely sure what to do with either camp besides criticize it, but since this is an essay about post-structuralism I figure I’ll mostly focus my derogatory comments on that one.
I’m a philosopher at heart, sort of, so the notion that “post-structuralism derives mostly from philosophy” (Barry 61) was entirely too intriguing to me. I believe in arguing over reality, morals, ethics, theology and generally everything in the universe in any complex context imaginable. I’m not entirely philosophical though, because I’m also highly mathematically minded. I believe in order, in some form of structure – random and varied as it may be – and at least some notion of logic and sense. Oftentimes this mathematic side to my personality wants some sort of concrete answer, something which philosophers are perfectly content to be without half of the time: “Philosophy has always tended to emphasize the difficulty of achieving secure knowledge about things. …It’s procedures often begin by calling into question what is usually taken for granted” (Barry 61). In short, I’m firmly based in the logos camp. It is because of this that the notion that tearing something apart is the only way to access a database of knowledge which we can never comprehend and that this is the best way to understand a text is beyond even the basest form of what I’d refer to as logic. It’s literary existentialism, if I’m not entirely off my rocker. It’s crazy talk, and the driving force behind the xkcd comic we saw in class. If it has any redeeming qualities, I’m unaware of them.
In the end, I feel like post-structuralism really is just the “attitude of mind” (Barry 68) that it claims to be. It’s like being childish, or optimistic, or narrow-minded, no matter which way you go there will always be someone there (in this case me) telling you you’re doing it wrong. So, post-structuralism, not only do I think that you are doing it wrong, but I do believe that there are few, if not any, others that do it worse. After all, if the meanings of words are so loaded, if the texts aren’t held together by anything other than representative words like space and time, and we can’t know anything for certain, then we may as well not believe a word anyone on your side has to say, because they’re trying to push us into chaos. Personally, as a writing tutor with a mathematical mind, I’d like to think that maybe I’m doing a bit more than spouting gibberish just because I type. Maybe that’s not exactly what it means to be a post-structuralist, but it is what I got out of it.