POST STRUCTURALISM | PART 3|| INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS|

Post-structuralism refers to the intellectual developments in continental philosophy and critical theory that were outcomes of twentieth-century French philosophy. The prefix “post” refers to the fact that many contributors such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Julia Kristeva were former structuralists who, after abandoning structuralism, became quite critical of it. In direct contrast to structuralism’s claims of culturally independent meaning, post-structuralists typically view culture as inseparable from meaning.

While post-structuralism is difficult to define or summarize, it can be broadly understood as a body of distinct reactions to structuralism. There are two main reasons for this difficulty. First, it rejects definitions that claim to have discovered absolute ‘truths’ or facts about the world.[1] Second, very few people have willingly accepted the label ‘post-structuralist’; rather, they have been labeled as such by others. Therefore no one has felt compelled to construct a ‘manifesto’ of post-structuralism.[2] Thus the exact nature of post-structuralism and whether it can be considered a single philosophical movement is debated. It has been pointed out that the term is not widely used in Europe (where most supposedly “post-structuralist” theory originates) and that the concept of a post-structuralist theoretical paradigm is largely the invention of American academics and publishers.