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Hi, my name is Tom, welcome back to my channel into another episode of what The Theory, my ongoing series in which I provide accessible introductions to key theories in cultural studies and the wider humanities. Today, we're looking at post structuralism, post structuralism. Central thesis is that language and all other forms of communicative system, such as images and video, are less perfect at expressing our thoughts and ideas than we might initially want to think they are. Rather than replicating our thoughts in the mind of a reader or viewer perfectly, most modes of communication are prone to misrepresenting us or to encouraging alternative interpretations of what we were trying to express when we first said, wrote or recorded something.

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Post structuralism asks what this means for the practice of analyzing cultural texts and questions, whether it is ever possible to arrive at a definitive interpretation of a given film book or other cultural text. Beyond this, it also asks whether in a society in which much of our thinking about the world is done through language, it is ever possible to arrive at objective truth, or whether the implicit biases surrounding race, gender and other concepts present in our linguistic and other communicative systems might shape our understanding of the world, too.

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Before we get going, if you have any thoughts or questions as we go along, then please do feel free to put those down below in the comments. And if you're new around here in this seems like your kind of thing, please do consider subscribing and hitting that notification. Bell Finally, if you really like what I do and like to support me to make more videos, then I would be so grateful if you would check on my page on page patrón dot com forward slash Tom Nicholas with Out of the way.

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However, let's crack on with post structuralism what the theory says.

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The first thing one notices about post structuralism is that as with postmodernism or post colonialism, the term itself implies a relationship with something called structuralism. Now, if you'd like a complete overview of structuralism itself, then I'd recommend checking out my video dedicated to that very topic. For today's purposes, however, it's enough to know that structuralism refers to a way of thinking about cultural texts, which prioritizes systematic inquiry. Drawing on the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand's sir, it asks us to view different forms of culture such as literature, film theater, visual arts and also culture in the all encompassing sense as a kind of language system.

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It does asks us to consider not only how an individual book, film performance or artwork infers meaning on its own terms, but also in its reliance upon tropes and conventions prevalent throughout the wider language of human culture. A structuralist analysis of Jordan Peele get out, for instance, might focus on how it employs or subverts certain narrative devices present in other films. Does it, as Robert McKee would likely suggest, adhere to the language or perhaps grammar of Hollywood storytelling in having an inciting incident, a moment of crisis, a climax and a resolution?

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Furthermore, how does it employ or subvert the language of the wider horror genre? Peale himself has been fairly open about borrowing certain conventions from the shining Halloween in north by Northwest structuralism foreground the presence of such shared conventions and tropes across multiple texts in order to gain a better understanding of the language of individual cultural forms and perhaps human culture in its entirety. Neither narrative structured nor genre, however unnatural phenomena. Both are human creations, and so too is language itself.

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Structuralist analysis is generally aware of this fact, yet mostly decides not to question it too much. It holds that language or again, the language of film or literature, etc. is all we have. So we're best off just compiling the best understanding of it. We can post structuralism, however, does go that step further in encouraging us to consider whether the fact that language is a human creation might mean not like any other human invention. It might have certain flaws and biases and encouraged us to ask whether language and again other forms of communication might sometimes fail and communicate something altogether different than what we initially intended.

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Furthermore, it asks us to consider whether those languages might be subject to many of the same ideological biases of, for example, gender, race and class as other human institutions. Let's start with the notion that language might be imperfect. Peterboro forwards and evocative example of how we might have experienced this in his book Beginning Theory, in which he asks us to think of any slightly less straightforward language situation like writing to your bank, writing an essay, striking up a friendship with a stranger at a party, or sending a letter of condolence.

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In these cases and many more, there is an almost universally felt anxiety that the language will express things we hadn't intended or convey the wrong impression or betray our ignorance, callousness or confusion. Even when we use a phrase like if you see what I mean, or in a manner of speaking, there is the same underlying sense that we are not really in control of the linguistic system, though for the most part, language seems like a pretty good system of communicating then that often leads to miscommunication, as it does to a perfect articulation of the thing we wanted to express.

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Furthermore, if you've ever found yourself trying to smooth over a personal or professional relationship after having had a letter, text or answer the phone message interpreted differently to how it was intended, you'll likely have found yourself wrestling with the fact that language is a closed system. And thus all you have at your disposal to explain your previous words is more words which are themselves open to alternate interpretations. Such an anxiety about the imperfect nature of language is at the core of structuralism.

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And just as did structuralism, it extends this view to the languages of art and culture. Perhaps the most famous text which develops this notion is Roland Bahts 1967 essay The Death of the Author, in which he questions previous scholars obsession with analyzing cultural texts with the goal of identifying what it was. The author intended it to me in such approaches by. Argues the explanation of a work is always taught in the man or woman who produced it as if it were always in the end through the more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author confiding in us.

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Yet if language is an imperfect communicator, but continues by asking, is it ever possible to arrive at an understanding of a text that is 100 percent accurate that intended by the author? Furthermore, he asks, even if we could. Would that be the most useful goal to aim for? For most people who encounter a given text likely do not come to it with an extended knowledge of the author's life and artistic priorities. Thus, to try to look through the text to see the intentions of the author behind it ultimately involves ignoring the rich, meaningful possibilities of the text itself.

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Post structuralism, then, is almost entirely disinterested in what an author might have originally intended a text to mean. In fact, it's skeptical that any text has any objective or final meaning at all, but instead is overflowing with possible interpretations. Therefore, as Terry Eagleton argues, the reader or critic shifts from the role of consumer to that of a producer of potential meanings of a text. It is not exactly as though anything goes in interpretation, for Bart is careful to remark that the work cannot be got to mean anything at all.

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But literature is now less an object to which criticism must conform than a free space in which it can support post structuralism encourages us not to pursue some kind of definitive meaning, but to celebrate the many and multiple meanings that a given book, film, painting or other form of cultural text might invite. Now, in so doing, post-structuralist is often accused of failing to show enough deference to the text itself and thus positioning the critical scholar or reader URAI as more important than the person or people who sweated to create that text in the first place.

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And there are no doubt examples of individuals doing both of these things. Nevertheless, a more sympathetic view would be that post structuralism, in fact returns our attention, which previously might have been obsessed with the life and opinions of the author behind the text to the text in front of us itself and embraces the fate of meaning present within it. This celebration of the text itself is perhaps best articulated by Jacques Derrida.