Catherine Belsey: Poststructuralism

Part of an excellent series published by Oxford University Press, Catherine Belsey's Poststucturalism: A Very Short Introduction (2002) provides a succinct grazing among the grasses of poststructuralism.

The philosophical ideas and theories Belsey discusses would probably seem less intimidating to more people if read or experienced through the scrim of science fiction, fantasy, mystery or poetry.

For example:

X. Our thoughts, beliefs and statements may not be our own.

Y. This is because the above (X.) are mediated through culture, including language, symbols and signs -- all things or processes we've learned about and absorbed since becoming conscious, having evolved or changed from infancy through adulthood, to wherever we're at now.

Z. We often feel (at) a loss because and after we have become acculturated, as if there is something we are missing. Is it lost innocence, simplicity, the womb, Eden, another identity?

Many of these ideas suffuse story-telling in books, journals, movies blogs, and more, sometimes subtly and sometimes directly.

I'll pull some small excerpts together for a sampling in a near-future post.

That said, stuff discussed includes: voice(s), ideas, texts and signs. Also grand narrative, deconstruction, differance, signifier-signified, culture, ideology, semiotics, structure, Other, trace and bourgeoisie.

Belsey also nibbles at or gingerly touches upon Humpty Dumpty, language, power, control, resistance, freedom, meaning, and more.

Included in the book are box pop-ups with extra little takes on:

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
Julia Kristeva (b.1941)
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
Louis Althusser (1918-1990)
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)
Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004))
Slavoj Žižek (1949)
Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998)

This works -- as does, I suspect, the entire Very Short Introduction series -- as a primer, a refresher and an introduction to the topic at hand.

Today's Rune: Warrior.