Post-Structuralism & Postmodern Texts (3)1. Post-Structuralism Defined &

Marxism vs. Post-Structuralism2. Fiction and Reality: Examples 1:

context into text, 2: life//story-telling , 3: parody 4. Other kinds of “fiction”

3. Deconstruction

4. Subject and Power

Post-Structuralism Defined (review)

post-structuralism as an anti-foundationalist mode of thinking prevalent in the second half of the 20th c. Foundations:

1. Reality Representation2. Man Subject3. Truth; History; God, . . ., any kind of Tot

alization and Center. Différance and Discourse

Poststructuralism: Major Concerns

“Realist Representation” –e.g. metafiction and Deconstruction Transcendent Knowledge and Subject Textualization of Self and Society e.g. Foucault– Truth is provisional; “regime of truth.” – Subjects are fragmentary (positions).– Society is a network of discourses.

Discourse and Power: Major concepts

1. From Language to DiscourseNothing outside of Discourse?2. Power and Knowledge (Truth)3. Subject and Subject Position4. Influences on Literary Criticism

From Language to Discourse

Saussure Barthes Derrida FoucaultLanguage—Or Langue/Parole

Semiotics-wider fields of languages Textual Play, Open text,

Meaning undecidable and fluid

History + Social practices + texts =discourse

Meaning and SignificationScientific (text, but not subject)

Significationtraces

Knowledge & power; Subject position

Discourse: Definition and Example

P. 26 Statements

Rules about the “sayable” and “thinkable”“Subjects”

Romanticism Discourse“The Poet” with unique imagination; close to nature, etc. Emotion over Reason; Nature over Science.“The Poet” “The peasants”

Discourse: Definition and Example

P. 26 – 27Authority of knowledge, and exclusion of other statementsPractices within institutionsHistoricized discursive formation

Romanticism DiscourseThe forming of Romantic poetry as the canon.Literary reviews, letters, prefacesContributing historical factors: industrial rev.; french rev.; emergence, dominance and then decline of Romantic poetry.

Literary Discourse: implications

No fixed boundaries between literature and other social practices; The author is not the creator of his work. He serves as a label to put on a group of works related to him. (e.g. Wordsworth discourse) Defining some subject positions (of the author, the reader, etc.)

From Language to Discourse

Structuralism:

Focuses on language and fixed structure

FoucaultLanguage (statements) as well as social practices

Marxism:

Materialist view of history and society -- scientific

Foucault: p. 48 --not limited to class; --every knowledge is contigent.

Discourse and “Truth”

Which of the following is an objective and unchangeable fact? Madness is a mental illness. Masturbation causes sexual impotence. 帶衛生紙與手帕是乾淨的小孩． sodomy = gay = homosexual = queer = 怪胎 What is “the regime of truth” which make these statements valid?

Power and Knowledge

power – both repressive, controlling and productive -- not just top-down; it circulates, working in

multiple direction like “capillary movement.”

e.g. the operation of power in a hospital –exertion of power through spatial arrangement, the doctor’s examination, the posters, pamphlets, the different examination room, registration system, pharmacy, insurance co., etc.

Subject and Subject Position:

p. 55 – 56 Two ideas of subject: 1. Conscious & autonomous subject; 2. Subject to someone else’s control.

Foucault 1. Constituted by a discourse to represent it (hysteric woman); 2. Subject positions.

Subject and Subject Position: Victorian Women--Hysteria

Subject and Subject Position: Victorian Women--Hysteria

Subject and Subject Position: Victorian Women—Pre-Raphaelite Women

Elizabeth Siddal http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/crit.97/PRwomen/final.htm

Subject and Subject Position: Victorian Women—Pre-Raphaelite Women

Fanny Cornforthhttp://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/crit.97/PRwomen/final.htm