This book takes you on a journey through a group of theories known collectively as poststructuralism. It's not a single, rigid system, which makes sense, because one of its key ideas is difference itself. At its heart, poststructuralism challenges some pretty traditional ways of thinking about how we relate to the world, to others, and even to ourselves, especially focusing on the role of language and meaning. One of the very first places the book takes us is into a delightful conversation from Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking Glass_, between Alice and Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty, in his rather scornful way, insists that when he uses a word, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less". Alice, using her good common sense, naturally objects, pointing out that meaning isn't really at our personal whim if we ever want to communicate. So, who's right? Alice seems to have the conventional wisdom on her side. We learn language, and in doing so, we learn the meanings that are already established by others. If everyone made up their own meanings, dialogue would be impossible. Language, in this sense, precedes us and guides how we use it properly. Think about how children learn to distinguish things like ducks from squirrels; they're taught the existing categories and terms. "Glory" just doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument," no matter how triumphant Humpty Dumpty feels. However, the book suggests that maybe, just maybe, that disdainful Humpty Dumpty has a point after all. While language certainly transmits the knowledge and values of a culture – and thus isn't entirely ours to command – there's also the possibility of change. Reproducing existing meanings without question means reaffirming the norms and values of the past. Institutions, like schools setting exams, enforce the conventional use of language and mark down those who misunderstand or misuse the vocabulary. Meanings can, therefore, feel like they control us, encouraging obedience to the established order. This isn't just about formal education or institutions. The book gives the powerful example of feminist campaigners who, a generation ago, recognized how the word "woman" was tied to stereotypes of domesticity, nurturing, and dependence. Anti-feminist jokes reinforced these limited ideas. This brings us back to Humpty Dumpty's question: "which is to be Master - that's all". While the word "Master" wasn't helpful for the feminist cause (and "Mistress" had its own problematic connotations), the core issue was changing how language defined women. Language can feel unruly, having a "temper, some of them," as Humpty Dumpty also notes. Masculine and feminine values weren't (and aren't) symmetrical, and the culture itself wasn't balanced. So, feminists set out to modify language, using terms like "chairperson" and "s/he," refusing to engage with misogyny and the accusation that they lacked a sense of humor. Dialogue did indeed become a kind of competition, which the book suggests it perhaps always is, in a way. While language isn't personal or private, individuals _can_ alter it, but only if others adopt those changes. Great poets, philosophers, and scientists all change our vocabulary, and new disciplines coin terms to say things differently. Poststructuralism itself uses familiar words in new ways or invents new ones, which can be met with resistance. This leads to a big question the book wants us to consider: How much should the language we inherit limit what we think is possible to think? Poststructuralism, then, is a theory (or set of theories) about the deep relationship between us, the world, and how we make and remake meanings. It argues that our consciousness isn't the source of language or how we recognize things; instead, it's _shaped by_ the meanings we learn and reproduce. But, and this is where Humpty Dumpty's point about change comes in, communication is always shifting, and we _can_ choose to intervene to alter meanings, which means altering the norms and values our culture takes for granted. So, that question of "who is to be in control?" posed by Humpty Dumpty is central to poststructuralism. The book promises to explore the arguments poststructuralists use to challenge traditional ideas about language, culture, knowledge, and what it means to be human. It offers a controversial view of our place in the world. Most of the time, we don't even notice the language we're using; we're focused on what it helps us _do_, like buying a ticket or getting a neighbor to quiet down. But language, along with other symbolic systems, is profoundly important, influencing our social relations, our thought processes, and our understanding of ourselves. Even basic needs like food and shelter are shaped by language. Think about how a menu describes a dish ("succulent, corn-fed baby chicken") versus something less appealing ("scrag end stew"). Or how houses are labeled "quaint" or "decrepit". Paint manufacturers even know we prefer "Morning Sun" over "Custard," even if the color is the same. Language acts as an intermediary between us and the world. The book uses the example of a blindfolded game where you guess foods to illustrate this point: guessing means classifying based on the system of differences our language provides (sweet/savory, hot/cold, etc.). Poststructuralism suggests that the distinctions we make aren't just inherent in the world but are _produced_ by the symbolic systems we learn. How else would we know the difference between mythical creatures like pixies and gnomes, or distinguish a March Hare from a talking egg like Humpty Dumpty? We learn language so early that it feels like a transparent window onto the world, even for imaginary things learned from stories. This challenges a traditional view that ideas are the source of meaning. Poststructuralists believe the opposite: our ideas are actually an _effect_ of the meanings we learn and reproduce. Our idea of Humpty Dumpty comes from stories and illustrations, not some pre-existing concept of a talking egg. So, what exactly is meaning, and where does it come from? Let's take the word "modern" as an example used in the book. Its meaning isn't fixed; it changes with context. "Modern" in relation to poststructuralism might mean "new," but "modern history" refers to a period since the 17th century, while "modern furniture" usually means 20th century or later. These don't define a common timeframe. The "modern challenge" of poststructuralism is only from the last few decades. The book explains that "modern" has no positive, fixed content; its meaning comes from _difference_. It means "not medieval," "not ancient," "not antique," or simply "not traditional" in different contexts. Even "Modernism" (a style from the first half of the 20th century) isn't the latest thing, and in "postmodern," modernity is paradoxically in the past. Despite this lack of a fixed meaning, we usually understand and use "modern" easily. How? Here, the book introduces Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist from the early 20th century. Saussure proposed a revolutionary idea: "in language there are only differences without positive terms". This idea profoundly influenced later thinkers across disciplines. Poststructuralism begins by exploring this account of how we can mean, viewing humans as creatures shaped by this ability to work with differences. We are, the book says, "creatures of difference". Saussure argued that meaning doesn't come from words referring to things or ideas that exist independently outside language. If that were the case, words would have exact equivalents across languages, making translation easy. But anyone who's tried knows translation is hard because meanings don't line up perfectly. The book uses the French word "sage" as an example; it translates roughly to "good," but "a good time" isn't "sage" – "sage" implies wisdom or sense. Grammatical differences, like genders of nouns or tenses, also show that languages categorize the world differently. This simple inference that meaning is _differential_, not _referential_, has deep and often controversial implications for how we see our relationship with the world. The story of poststructuralism, especially in France after WWII, is about how Saussure's ideas were taken up and expanded, with "difference" being a key term. Traditionally, words were seen as signs _representing_ something that existed elsewhere. Meaning was thought to be "behind" the words. Saussure changed this by arguing that meaning is _in_ the sign itself. He divided the sign into two parts: the _signifier_ (the sound or visual form of a word, phrase, or image) and the _signified_ (its meaning). Usually, these two are linked, but if you hear an unknown language, you hear signifiers without understanding what they signify. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is, crucially, _arbitrary_. There's nothing inherently "doggy" about the English word "dog". The concept of the animal (the signified) is attached to different signifiers in other languages, like "un chien" in French or "Schwein," "maiale," and "pore" in other European languages for "pig". Children learn the meaning (the signified) when they learn the word (the signifier). Knowing how to use a term correctly means knowing its meaning. Grown-ups keep learning, especially in the realm of ideas. The book notes that we don't first have the idea of "poststructuralism" and then find the name; we learn the use and meaning of the term together. Saussure believed that language doesn't start with pre-existing ideas or sounds, but with conceptual and phonic _differences_ that arise from the linguistic system itself. The book gives the example of Rene Magritte's word-paintings, like _The Interpretation of Dreams_, which play on this arbitrary relationship. The painting shows images of objects with labels, but only one is labeled "valise" (suitcase) correctly. The others are mislabeled ("The Door" under an image of a horse, "The Wind" under an image of a clock, "The Bird" under an image of a cup). The images are placed against a background that looks like black windowpanes, suggesting language isn't a transparent window onto the world but rather opaque, with the signifier and image on the same side. It could also be seen as an ironic blackboard, where instruction is deliberately misleading. What if "bird" really meant "jug"? The book asks what difference that would make. This points to the arbitrary nature – the connection is by convention, not inherent link. A quick point about jargon: why use "signifier" instead of just "word"? Because signs aren't just words. Traffic lights, gestures, yawns, paintings – these can all be signifiers. Sometimes, a group of words acts as a single signifier, like "How are you?" which functions as a greeting, not a literal question about your symptoms. Saussure chose to analyze language in its existing state (synchronic) rather than historically (diachronic). He believed that because translation involves seeking approximations, meaning must rely on difference, not direct reference to things or concepts. Interestingly, Saussure's _Course in General Linguistics_ was compiled by his students after his death, making it ironic that such an influential figure for poststructuralism wasn't the conventional author of his own book. But perhaps this isn't so ironic, given that Humpty Dumpty turned out to have a point. Magritte's painting itself can be seen as treating words and images as different kinds of signifiers, inviting the viewer to make their own connections and stories, keeping the final meaning open. This leads to the idea of the _primacy of the signifier_. Poetry, for example, works by suggesting connections between signifiers, inviting readers to link seemingly distinct things. Ezra Pound's "On a Station in the Metro" compares faces in a crowd to "Petals on a wet, black bough". While the faces and petals exist as things in the world (referents), the poem isolates these images and their signifiers, creating associations (like the fragility of faces) that draw attention away from the simple reality. These associations rely on differences (crowds vs. faces, dark vs. pale, substantial vs. fragile). The word "apparition" itself creates a haunting quality through its sound and suggestion before we even get to the visual image of petals. Julia Kristeva calls this signifying capability that isn't tied to the literal meaning of words the "semiotic". She links it to the sounds small children make before they can speak, suggesting it exists prior to meaning and is connected to primal drives. These sound effects in poetry are musical and patterned, disrupting rational argument and drawing on a sense or sensation beyond surface meaning. William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow" is another example where the simple arrangement and sound of the words are significant. If meaning isn't fixed by reference to the world or by a single, inherent connection, how do we interpret texts like poems or paintings? Traditional criticism might say we should ask the author or research their life to understand their intention. But poststructuralism, influenced by the idea that language precedes us and meanings are effects of language, disagrees. If poems come from language, not purely from the author's ideas, then there's no single, final answer to what a specific instance of language means. This doesn't mean meaning is entirely arbitrary, like Humpty Dumpty claiming "glory" means "a nice knock-down argument". A purely private language wouldn't allow for communication. But a specific piece of language can mean whatever the _shared and public possibilities_ of those signifiers, in that order, allow. In 1968, amid social upheaval, Roland Barthes proclaimed "The Death of the Author". This wasn't literal, of course, but a declaration that the author's intention isn't the ultimate key to a text's meaning. Instead, meaning arises from the language itself and its interaction with the reader. Barthes argued that the "space of writing is to be ranged over, not pierced," meaning we should look _at_ the text, not try to look _through_ it to find a hidden authorial intention. His famous declaration is that "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author". Who is this "reader"? Barthes doesn't mean you, as a specific individual with your personal associations. He means an ideal reader, a "space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost". This ideal reader doesn't exist in reality, but it emphasizes that meaning arises from the text's relationship to the vast network of language and other texts it draws upon (intertextuality). While we, as real readers, will see different possibilities in a text, and the text itself doesn't reveal a single "right" meaning, it is still possible to be wrong – if we don't know the words, aren't paying attention, or miss cultural allusions. How do works of art signify? By difference, the book reiterates. Magritte's painting signifies by alluding to and differing from old school primers. Its "window" differs from real windows, its "blackboard" isn't ordinary. It also alludes to the tradition of Renaissance realism but differs by placing objects in unlikely spots, marking it as modernist. Imagist poems work similarly, alluding to and breaking with lyric traditions. They are like fragments but differ by offering a complete statement. The ideas of poststructuralism aren't limited to high culture like art and literature. Any arrangement of signifiers can be seen as open to interpretation, with meanings that might be more complex than we realize. The book uses the example of old Guinness posters proclaiming "Guinness is good for you!". On the surface, it might refer to the stout's perceived nutritional value. But the posters also featured playful cartoon animals. These visual signifiers linked the drink to pleasure and laughter. Were they saying that enjoying yourself was "good for you"? That the sociability of the pub or the alcohol would make the world look brighter, like the posters' colors? The advertisers, the book suggests, were exploiting the plurality of the signifier, leaving the final meaning open. Like the poem, the simplicity was deceptive, and the reader produced an interpretation without external guarantees. Moving beyond individual texts, the book delves into how meaning functions in culture, drawing heavily on Roland Barthes' _Mythologies_. Barthes, influenced by Saussure's idea of a "science that studies the life of signs within society" called semiology (or semiotics), analyzed everyday cultural phenomena. While he spoke of "science," in his time claiming scientific status was a way to value new knowledge. _Mythologies_ isn't strictly scientific but offers insightful readings of things like cleaning products, striptease, and celebrity faces. Barthes aimed to expose what was happening in the representation of the everyday. Adverts for bleach used war imagery ("make war on germs"). New detergents, appearing after WWII, used imagery of decisive separation without violence, framed as maintaining "public order". Skincare ads used terms like "infiltrate" and "penetrate". Barthes implies these silently cited Cold War imagery, linking cleanliness or youth to virtue. The advertisers relied on consumers unconsciously recognizing the values reaffirmed by this imagery. The book notes that secondary schools teaching Media Studies, with their focus on subtle signifying practices in advertising, owe a debt to Barthes. Barthes' analysis extended to the commonplace things we take for granted, which can be as revealing of cultural values as our consciously held opinions. He saw wine, steak, and frites signifying "Frenchness," bringing with them a "morality" of national identity, like self-control in drinking or assimilating strength by eating steak. Travel guides celebrating "undulating scenery" might signify puritan values linking clean air and hard work to picturesque landscapes. Even details in a film, like the forward-combed hair signifying Roman-ness in _Julius Caesar_ (1953) or the sweating signifying thinking, can reveal cultural values. The book wryly notes that our own anti-intellectual values promote "laziness... to the rank of rigour" by seeing thought as unnatural enough to cause perspiration. Barthes' wit and fluency in _Mythologies_ can make us feel gratified, like we're seeing "through" cultural masks. However, the book cautions against this idea of seeing "through". If Saussure is right about language not referring directly to external ideas or values, then culture consists of the meanings its members produce and reproduce. Even analyzing culture means taking up a position within it, one that culture itself allows or can be made to allow. The book offers a small exercise here: look at a passage from a novel like George Eliot's _Adam Bede_ as a semiologist would. Ignore the author and look for the cultural values being affirmed or reaffirmed in the text. The example passage describes a carpenter's workshop, focusing on the sun, wood, tools, and a dog. The suggestion is to look for what these details signify about the cultural values of the time (or the time the book was written). What does this kind of reading achieve? Does it matter? Barthes argued that certain forms of language and representation, which he called "myth," could make cultural constructions seem natural. In one essay, he claimed a peasant was condemned to death because his trial depended on psychological "truths" drawn from 19th-century novels, which seemed self-evident to his educated accusers but not to him. Two different ways of making meaning clashed, but only one had legal force. Another example is a _Paris Match_ cover showing a black soldier saluting the French flag. Barthes argued this photo _naturalized_ imperialism, making it seem obvious and good that all French subjects willingly served the empire. Similarly, realist fiction naturalizes ideas like "character is destiny," and _Adam Bede_ naturalizes class difference by showing a working man gladly serving someone entitled to land, making it seem natural that the deserving poor work for others' benefit. The book points out how our own time naturalizes products of history, like the triumph of the Free West after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, as the universal "human condition". At this point, the book notes that _Mythologies_ uses terms from Marxism. Barthes wasn't strictly a Marxist, but Marxism offered an existing framework for understanding culture. Marx and Engels had developed the concept of "ideology" as forms of social exchange that stabilize society. Louis Althusser, a philosopher in Paris, reread Marx in light of Saussure and semiology, developing the idea of "Ideological State Apparatuses" (ISAs). Althusser argued that capitalist society maintains itself not just through force (the Repressive State Apparatus, like the police and law) but also through institutions that produce and reproduce meanings and values. These ISAs (religion, family, politics, media, education, etc.) present our relationship to our real conditions of existence in an "imaginary" way, making the existing order seem natural, obvious, or in our best interest. Ideology isn't simply a lie forced on people. It often contains elements of truth but isn't the whole truth. It works by securing our conscious or unconscious consent to "the way things are". The book gives the example of a BBC interview where the idea of an alternative to liberal democracy seemed unthinkable to the interviewer, illustrating ideology at work by making capitalism seem obviously better than communism, with no other possibilities. Althusser's list of ISAs includes education as supremely important. Schools don't just train people for jobs; they also teach obedience, deference, and the values of liberal democracy. Those involved in teaching in the 1970s found Althusser's ideas exciting because it meant, as radicals, they had a site of struggle right in their workplace. Who participates in this reproduction of ideology? Althusser calls them _subjects_. The word "subject" has two meanings: the agent of a verb (the one who acts, says "I") and someone who is subjected to something (like rules or authority). We are subjects in both senses. When we speak or write, we reproduce (or challenge) ideology, acting as sources of initiatives, but we do so using the language and structures that language permits. We are "subject to [our] reproduction of the accepted signifiers". The book even suggests we might be "condemned to citationality," constantly drawing on pre-existing language and meanings. This idea of being shaped by forces outside our conscious control can feel a bit depressing, like being conditioned robots. The book acknowledges this but clarifies that poststructuralism doesn't deny choices. While our deepest convictions might not originate solely within us, we _can_ make choices, and our views can change. The ruling ideology might confirm the status quo, but specific ideologies (like Marxism or poststructuralism itself) can challenge it. The "obvious" can be incoherent when examined. Contradictions within the ruling ideology create possibilities for new beliefs and alternative ways of being subjects. Althusser, as a Marxist, saw society driven by conflict, including theoretical disagreement. He wanted to frame Marxism as "science," but the book notes his anxiety about combining certainty with Saussure's ideas. Ideology itself is a site of struggle, and so is the subject, who is the destination and reproducer of ideology. Our internal beliefs might even contradict each other. Is it "ideology" or "myth"? The book explains there's overlap between Barthes' "myth" and Althusser's "ideology". "Ideology" signals a Marxist perspective and can be confusing because it also means a consciously held political doctrine. Also, Marxists disagree on its definition; before Althusser, it was often seen as "false consciousness," but Althusser saw it as a lived, "imaginary" relationship to reality, not simply a delusion to be shaken off by recognizing the "truth". Given Saussure, how could we be sure of "the truth" anyway? "Myth" is also equivocal. Greek myths are fictions but tried to make sense of the world. Barthes' use of "myth" was partly a tribute to the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss rejected ethnocentrism and looked for common ground in the meaning of customs across cultures, seeing seemingly disparate practices like tribal potlatch ceremonies and Western Christmas gift-giving as having parallels in signifying worth and competitive exchange. Levi-Strauss, aiming to avoid philosophy, sought invariant elements among superficial differences. He often analyzed cultural practices using binary oppositions (raw/cooked, nature/culture). This structuralist approach was influential in the 1960s, promising a key to all human practices by finding a single structure. Russian Formalist Vladimir Propp, analyzing fairy tales, found a single structure of characters and actions, which Levi-Strauss and others developed further. The structuralist goal was to see all stories within a single framework, but Barthes, later, would find this approach tedious and undesirable because "the text thereby loses its difference". Barthes' _Mythologies_, while influenced by structural anthropology (looking for recurring themes like confusing nature and history), isn't purely structuralist. The confusion of nature and history isn't a universal structure but specific to our "bourgeois moment". _Mythologies_ doesn't reduce phenomena to a single theme and is interested in surprising parallels. Barthes' comparison of Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn is an example. Garbo's face is seen as a timeless, ideal "Idea," like a mask. Hepburn's charm is individual and of its time, an "Event". While this uses a binary opposition reminiscent of Levi-Strauss and philosophical distinctions (timeless/transitory), Barthes uses it ironically to comment on how we reduce diversity to order, rather than declaring a universal truth. This contrast also marks a historical shift in cinema and ideals of beauty, making a local and historical point. Barthes uses Levi-Strauss's method but moves towards emphasizing historical and individual differences, propelled by Saussure's focus on difference. Althusser's ISA essay, being more abstract and focused on bourgeois ideology, could be seen as structuralist or poststructuralist. However, the book argues that what points forward in Althusser's work is the element of _struggle_ involved in constantly reproducing ideology. Ideology isn't monolithic but divided against itself, and the subject, as its effect and support, is also "other than it is". This subject is the next concern. Liberal societies pride themselves on having "free subjects," entitled to express views and challenge the status quo. But this freedom comes with a condition: subjecting ourselves to culturally defined norms. Refusal to conform can lead to being labeled and discredited. The book uses the case of Herculine Barbin, a 19th-century hermaphrodite whose memoir was collected by Michel Foucault. Herculine's story made sense as long as she could identify with the cultural categories of language (female convent girlhood). When she was legally reassigned as male (Abel), without having male experiences or history, the narrative voice collapsed into incoherence. He could say "I" but couldn't attach an intelligible story to it beyond expressing unhappiness. Poststructuralism, prioritizing language in identity construction, sees identity in terms of available grammatical categories and classifications. Abel lost one identity based on cultural classification without finding another. Michel Foucault, like Althusser, analyzed how culture shapes our ability to understand ourselves. He saw cultural categories not just making self-accounts possible but also calling us to account, enforcing norms and proprieties. Societies recruit us as subjects, subject us to values, and encourage us to be accountable citizens who explain themselves using terms learned from society. Foucault's _Discipline and Punish_ contrasts older forms of punishment (public torture, displaying the state's cruel power) with modern ones (prison regulations enforcing a detailed regimen). While modern discipline seems more humane, Foucault argues it's more effective at subjecting inmates "body and soul," training them to internalize discipline and become conforming, docile subjects who work by themselves in submission to society's values. Power, in Foucault's view, isn't just repressive but _creative_; it produces ways of being and ideals. His work on sexuality, for instance, showed how societies construct "arts of love" and ethics of conduct that recruit subjects to internalize discipline for their perceived benefit. Every morality involves "codes of behavior and forms of subjectivation". Does this mean we can't resist? Foucault insists there's "no power without the possibility of resistance". Resistance is power's defining difference. Crime resists law, eccentricity resists norms, "vice" resists conventional ethics. Power is a relation of struggle. Foucault highlighted figures who struggled against subjection, even if doomed. One of Foucault's key arguments was that "homosexuality" didn't exist as a category until the 19th century. While men had sexual relations with other men before then, they weren't classified as "homosexuals," seen as having a specific identity defined by their sexual practices and regarded as deviant. The modern classification of sexual subjects had a dual effect: it limited the range of available pleasures by pressuring individuals to identify as gay or straight, but also created a category that people could identify with, defend, insist on rights for, and use to organize resistance ("reverse discourse"). Foucault's work focused on how power relations control what counts as reason, knowledge, and truth. He believed modern discipline is more effective than overt power displays, and resistance is power's necessary opposite. Poststructuralism isn't a unified system because difference is its key term. Althusser the Marxist and Foucault the critic of disciplines agreed on the subject being shaped but disagreed on things like Marxism and psychoanalysis, which Foucault saw as other forms of discipline claiming truth. Psychoanalysis, particularly the Lacanian rereading of Freud, is another major influence. Althusser himself read Marx through Lacanian psychoanalysis. Jacques Lacan reinterpreted Freud using ideas from Saussure and Levi-Strauss, proposing a subject divided against itself, "other than it is," dissatisfied, and desiring. Lacan introduced the concept of the "big Other" (with a capital O) to represent language and culture. This big Other exists outside us, precedes us, and we learn it from other people (who are themselves products of it). When we ask for what we want, we must use the terms provided by the big Other. This process separates the human organism from its surroundings and forces it to articulate demands using the language's existing differences, which can feel alienating. Something is lost in this process – the "real". The real isn't external reality (which culture tells us about). The real is the pre-signification, organic being that we can't know because it has no signifiers in the world of names the subject inhabits. The real is repressed but makes its effects felt in dreams, slips of the tongue, jokes, or physical symptoms. This lost real creates a persistent dissatisfaction. The gap between the organism and the signifying subject is where desire is born. Desire, for Lacan, is unconscious and for nothing nameable. It's a structural consequence of the loss of the real, a perpetual condition. We attach this desire to "love-objects," hoping they will make us feel whole, but they can't ultimately heal the rift. Lacan draws on Freud's idea of the "forbidding Father" (capital F, a structural position). In learning language, children submit to the Father's "no" and his name (a pun in French: Non/Nom). To be a "good" subject means reproducing the signifying practices of the big Other, taking up a place in society. Lacan calls this the "symbolic order" because signifiers are symbols and language is a discipline that recruits and forbids. The book uses Titian's paintings of Venus to illustrate desire. Even the goddess of love, Venus, is a subject of desire, not just an object. Shakespeare's Venus, cursed to find passion always painful, reflects Lacan's view that there's no perfect sexual rapport. Desire is not primarily erotic but stems from the lack created by losing the real. Sexual relationships become a site for desire because they involve language lyrically and the body sensitively, but they aren't the source or solution of desire. Lacan's writings can be difficult, mimicking the unconscious. His seminars were directed at psychoanalysts needing to listen closely to patients to hear the unconscious voice. For some, his style itself evokes desire – the longing to finally grasp it. Ultimately, the desire for knowledge, to push back the limits of the symbolic order, might be the most compelling and never-satisfied passion. Julia Kristeva's _Strangers to Ourselves_ explores foreignness. Being an immigrant means constantly navigating a new language that never feels fully yours, lacking the authority of native fluency. You become foreign to those left behind, a "cultural orphan". Yet, the prohibitions of the old symbolic order might be suspended, offering a sense of liberation, even if accompanied by solitude. The book asks why we fear foreigners. They show us alternative ways of being, revealing our own ways aren't inevitable or "natural". Disparaging others might be a way to feel better about ourselves. The encounter challenges the taken-for-granted "we". Kristeva concludes that psychoanalysis shows we are all foreign to ourselves. We leave something behind (like the child who feels "other" when not meeting parental expectations). We are also inhabited by a stranger, the unconscious, that contests our conscious values. "The foreigner is within us," and fleeing foreigners is fighting our unconscious. In this context, identity itself becomes an object of desire, especially for those subjected to oppression. Derrida explored this in _Monolingualism of the Other_, reflecting on his experience growing up Jewish in French Algeria, where Arabic and Hebrew were treated as foreign while French was the language of the colonizer, the property of others. Derrida argued that all culture is "colonial" in a sense, imposing names and rules; no culture is natural. We are all exiles. The culture we belong to is never perfect. Nationalists yearn for a past or future perfect identity. Perfect identity always seems to belong to others. With these ideas from Kristeva, Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault – the subject as constructed, subjected, divided, and resisting – poststructuralism has a radical edge. Its view of the subject is particularly scandalous in the West, where institutions assume the human being is a unified, independent origin of meaning and choice. The Western idea of freedom is tied to conscious thought. This goes back to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am," which sees the self as primarily a conscious origin of ideas and values. Poststructuralism questions this Cartesian view, seeing consciousness as an _effect_ of signification (borrowing meanings from the big Other). Psychoanalysis deepens this by adding unconscious processes. The "free individual" is neither individual nor free in this account. The term "subject" is not just jargon for "self". The self/person/individual is the whole package. The subject is divided: conscious (rational) and unconscious (motivated by desires). Unconscious desires can conflict with conscious ones. The subject is tied to the body but distinct; each is understood at the cost of the other. As a pure organism, you wouldn't be a subject; you can't be a pure subject because you are an organism. We are born human organisms but _become_ subjects through cultural construction and its repression of the real. Using the binary oppositions provided by language (like masculine/feminine) makes it hard to describe figures like Herculine/Abel/Alexina accurately. Derrida might say the hermaphrodite deconstructs the masculine/feminine opposition. The book adds that psychoanalysis deconstructs the mind/body opposition. This brings us to deconstruction itself. Chapter 4 explores "Difference or truth?" and the idea of "Objective knowledge?". The book uses literary examples like Jeanette Winterson's novel with an unnamed narrator of uncertain gender or Toni Morrison's _Beloved_ with a potentially supernatural child. These novels, like films at the end of the 20th century (_The Truman Show_, _eXistenZ_), question the difference between fiction and reality. The book suggests this focus is a cultural symptom. Popular culture, in posing these questions, aligns with Saussure's implications. If meaning comes from differential systems, not direct reference, we can't be sure our language or other signifying systems accurately describe the "actual state of affairs," because how would we know the state of affairs _independent_ of the signifier? Different languages and cultures divide the world differently. What makes "our" account more true than "theirs," apart from habit? Multiculturalism has made us (grudgingly) acknowledge other world pictures. Racism, the book suggests, feeds on the anxiety that if other cultures work with different views, our own might not be as authoritative as we think. This doesn't mean authors or directors necessarily read Saussure; rather, multiple factors (new theories like sociology, ethnology, psychoanalysis showing beliefs are shaped by unrecognized motivations) converged to create this uncertainty about what we know. The focus isn't whether the world exists, but what we can _accurately say_ about it. Truth exists at the level of the signifier. When we claim truth, we draw on the big Other; our beliefs, even if they feel subjective, are culturally permitted. Poststructuralism argues the subjective/objective antithesis is unstable because the subject is produced externally. The subject doesn't originate everything, so we can't appeal to it as the absolute source of views. Views are learned. Yet, there's no purely objective knowledge either, because knowledge requires a subject. The subject is invaded by the objectivity of what it knows. This process – the inevitable invasion of the other into the selfsame – is what Derrida identifies as _deconstruction_. Jacques Derrida, born in Algeria and educated in Paris, developed deconstruction. His work challenges the tradition of Western philosophy, focusing on language, writing, ethics, and politics. His book _Of Grammatology_ (1967) challenged the entire tradition by focusing on writing. Western culture, Derrida argues, relies on _binary oppositions_. Structuralism continued this tradition. These oppositions are typically hierarchical, with one term valued over the other (e.g., nature over culture, speech over writing). But these pairs are unstable because the meaning of each term depends on the _trace_ of the other within its definition. Derrida deconstructed Levi-Strauss's "A Writing Lesson" from _Tristes Tropiques_. Levi-Strauss saw writing as secondary to speech, closer to nature, and associated writing with exploitation, blaming himself for introducing power relations into a seemingly innocent tribal culture (Nambikwara) by teaching them writing. Derrida, using only Levi-Strauss's account, showed the Nambikwara weren't innocent; they already practiced deceit and oppression, even the children. Levi-Strauss idealized them, reversing the traditional hierarchy (valuing the "primitive" over the "civilized") but staying within the same ethnocentric framework. Derrida's point wasn't to privilege writing over speech, but to show that the valued term (speech) isn't pure or free from the negative qualities attributed to the rejected term (writing). Names, like language, differentiate and classify, not just denote unique individuals as their "property". Derrida's target is _phonocentrism_, the idea that the human voice has a pure, immediate presence lost in writing, which leads to sentimentalizing a non-existent innocence. Saussure, too, was prone to phonocentrism, inherited from Western tradition. Linguistics often prioritizes speech, seeing writing as mere transcription. Saussure himself used strong negative terms to describe writing (monstrous, sinful, unnatural, perverse, tyrannical, pathological). This betrays a sense that writing threatens something important. What does writing threaten? It signifies in the absence of the writer. We can read ancient texts like Homer's _Odyssey_ even without the author's presence or knowledge of the world described. We can make sense of it. Writing demonstrates that sense might be something _we make_, not a single, true meaning guaranteed by the author's intention or a pure, present idea (the "cogito" of consciousness) expressed in speech. This challenges _logocentrism_, the belief that ideas/meaning exist first and are then expressed in language. Logocentrism places meaning at the center, imagining a pure concept. But Derrida argues the signifier supplants this imagined pure concept. Only the signifier is truly present. The imagined presence of meaning is _deferred_, pushed away by the signifier. Derrida also critiques the idea of a _transcendental signified_. This is the single, ultimate truth or foundation that holds all other meanings in place and answers all problems (like God for Christianity, reason for the Enlightenment, laws of nature for science). If meaning is an effect of language, not its cause, these foundations lose their ultimate, unquestionable status. This doesn't turn beliefs into mere fiction but removes their absolute anchorage. Truth is no longer an unquestionable source of authority. While science and technology still work, this implies humility about our reasoning and theoretical maps. Success in practice doesn't always prove the theory's perfect accuracy. Derrida's writing can be difficult due to his philosophical references, meticulousness, and deliberate style that disrupts conventional linear prose. Part of the difficulty is intentional, demonstrating that language itself complicates simple presence and meaning. Deconstruction is not the same as _critique_. Critique finds flaws in an argument to refute it and replace it. Deconstruction, however, respects the text it analyzes and points out internal contradictions rather than just dismissing it. Derrida shows how Saussure's own book records how writing _invades_ speech (e.g., spelling changing pronunciation), contradicting the opposition it tries to maintain. Neither speech nor writing has logical priority; they are not true opposites. This brings us back to _differance_ (with an 'a'). This term, coined by Derrida (a pun on the French word "differer" meaning both "to differ" and "to defer"), captures the core idea that meaning is always the effect of the _trace_ of the other in the selfsame. How do we define "nature"? By reference to what it is _not_ - the absence of culture. Yet we can only identify nature _from within_ culture. Meaning relies on difference. Differance also invokes _deferral_. The signifier takes the place of the signified; the imagined presence of the pure idea is deferred, postponed. Only the signifier is present in language. Differance is a process, neither active nor passive. It's the only source of meaning but has no content itself; it's not a concept or even a word until Derrida uses it. It's impossible to hear the difference between "difference" and "differance"; you need the spelling. This demonstrates how writing invades speaking. Derrida's translator leaving the word in French unfortunately causes English speakers to miss this point. Differance isn't a signifier (until used) or a signified (no presence). Yet, it's the only origin of meaning. It's not full (of an idea) or empty, not foundational, but it enables understanding, to the degree that we achieve it. What are the practical implications of deconstruction and differance? The book examines the case of Marcel Duchamp's _Fountain_. In 1917, Duchamp (under the pseudonym Richard Mutt) submitted a readymade urinal, turned on its side and signed, to an exhibition with "no jury, no prizes". The exhibition organizers refused to show it. Duchamp resigned. A photo of it was published, defending it as art. _Fountain_ became a key 20th-century artwork. The original is lost; modern copies are displayed. _Fountain_ questioned the criteria for art: Was it art if not beautiful, requiring no skill, rejecting expression, not fitting existing categories of painting or sculpture? The art world eventually said yes. Who was right? The book argues the question is probably _undecidable_ because the definition of art isn't fixed by law. It might seem subjective, but our choice depends on conventional meaning ("art"). If you define art by beauty/skill, it's not art; if you define it as what the art world or artist calls art, it is. The debate is linguistic: Who defines terms? Who decides meaning? Poststructuralism says no one can definitively say what art is. The meaning, the "truth" of art, is differed and deferred by the signifier. _Fountain_ doesn't strip "art" of meaning; it changes it. Non-art (the urinal) invades art; the trace of the other appears in the selfsame. The meaning becomes undecidable; "art" is no longer a pure concept to judge things by. Perhaps it never was. The implications of undecidability are significant. It democratizes language. Binary oppositions are unstable. The trace of otherness prevents pure or absolute concepts. Meanings (of terms like "democracy," "terrorism," "human rights") aren't personal or subjective because they come from language. But they aren't fixed by nature or authority either. Yet, meanings are lived; they have real-world consequences (prices, wars, laws). Since meanings aren't fixed but are lived, they _can_ be challenged and changed. This involves everyone, not just authority figures. Chapter 5, "Dissent," explores the practical implications of poststructuralist ideas. A common misreading is that poststructuralism makes us powerless, like programmed robots, because the subject is seen as an effect of meaning rather than a free origin. The book rejects this as binary thinking. Deconstruction implies meanings _can_ be changed. Foucault emphasizes the possibility of _resistance_, noting that power only exists over someone capable of disobeying. Power is mobile and flexible. Both Foucault and Derrida imply choice and responsibility. Slavoj Zizek and Jean-François Lyotard also assume conflict and choosing sides. Much of Derrida's later work concerns ethics and _responsibility_ in a world without foundational truths. Religions appeal to God's will as a universal, ultimate foundation. Secular beliefs find other foundations like reason or natural law. But if values come from language and differ across cultures, there's no universal ground. The book notes that different sides in conflicts often claim the same foundations (God, reason, nature) for opposing causes. Can there be an ethics of deconstruction without metaphysics? Derrida is skeptical but "affirmative". The difference within cultures, languages, subjects, undermines totalizing systems. This doesn't remove responsibility. Values have history and internal differences, meaning they _can_ be changed in the future, not based on a fixed ideal of the good, but in the hope that the trace of an alternative within them might be realized. Derrida calls this "messianicity" - the hope for a different future "to come". What about an ethics from psychoanalysis (Lacanian)? Lacan argued we shouldn't give up on our desire because neurosis (repression) is destructive. This is complex; desire is unconscious, and its conscious objects are just stand-ins. The "primordial object" (linked to the Mother, a structural position) is lost to the subject in the real. We can't escape the real, but we can't return to it except in death, which dissolves the subject and desire. The lost object in the real promises enjoyment but leads to dissolution. Pursuing desire is dangerous. Lacan saw _heroism_ as pursuing the lost object whatever the cost. His example is Antigone, who defies King Creon's law to bury her brother, driven by kinship, not "the goods" (duty, good sense, etc.). She chooses her fate, returning alive to the real (walled in her tomb). Lacan saw her as driven by contradictory compulsions – love of the lost object and the death drive intertwined. He used her story to illuminate the drive that pushes people beyond conscious wishes. This reading of Antigone links to contemporary debates about resistance. Lacan also connected these ideas to the possibility of using weapons of mass destruction, seeing the conflicting impulses of love and the death drive (projected outwards as aggression) at play. Slavoj Zizek, a key Lacanian heir, adapts these ideas for political analysis. He sees the gap between the symbolic order and the real leaving a "traumatic kernel" in the unconscious projected outwards as _antagonism_. This links unconscious desire to the death drive. Zizek argues society masks this ineradicable structural antagonism with a "sublime" fantasy figure (demonized) who is blamed for tensions. Eliminating this supposed enemy (communists, Jews, Islamic fundamentalists) is wrongly seen as a way to make society whole. The actual antagonism remains because it's structural. Zizek believes social theory must account for this antagonism instead of just suppressing it (totalitarianism) or civilizing it (liberal democracy). Zizek's work is energetic, witty, and combines philosophy, psychoanalysis, and popular culture, though his own relationship with the label "poststructuralist" is complex. Jean-François Lyotard, another figure discussed, uses Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea of _language games_ to analyze communication. Utterances follow rules and create relationships between speakers. A statement of fact makes one speaker a knower, the other agreeing or disagreeing. A question reverses roles. An instruction claims authority. Speaking is like playing a game, a succession of maneuvers. We don't always play to win; there's pleasure in linguistic inventiveness. Humpty Dumpty's conversation with Alice is a perfect example of language games. Lyotard's account describes this process whether speakers are conscious of it or not, but becoming conscious allows us to shift power relations by replying unexpectedly or dissenting. Lyotard sees everyone located at "nodal points" in communication circuits, receiving and re-transmitting messages. Even slight interference can change content or the addressee's position, altering power relations. Retelling stories from a different perspective (like Jean Rhys retelling _Jane Eyre_ from Bertha Mason's view) or redefining terms ("war on terrorism" becoming "war against Islam") are examples of this. Lyotard is known for defining the _postmodern condition_ as "incredulity toward metanarratives". Metanarratives ("grand narratives") are totalizing explanations of the world (like the progressive emergence of reason or the inevitable triumph of the working class). They reduce "little narratives" (individual stories, histories) to their own terms. Little narratives show cultural values but also demonstrate heterogeneity and incommensurability. Lyotard values heterogeneity and paralogy (breaking or inventing rules). He argued disputes between incommensurable positions cannot be resolved without injustice. In art, Lyotard argued for continued _dissent_ from the avant-garde. He critiqued "realism" as an illusion that makes us feel we grasp truth or reality. Realism in painting (fixed-point perspective) or literature (plausible plots, familiar characters) orders the world from a single viewpoint and confirms our status as knowing subjects. It protects us from doubt. Duchamp's _Fountain_ can be seen as a postmodern challenge to realism, offering "reality itself" but exposing its cultural relativity. Experimental art (modernism/postmodernism) at the start of the 20th century broke with realism, acknowledging the inaccessibility of truth at the signifier level. Modernism lamented this loss, while postmodernism (Lyotard's preferred term for challenging experimentalism) rejoiced in the freedom this offered. Postmodernism celebrates the signifier's ability to create new forms and rules. James Joyce's _Ulysses_ is an example, using wordplay and challenging linear narrative and plot, with pleasures residing in the signifier and intertextuality. The postmodern avant-garde works without rules to discover what they will have been. It's too early for the public, too late for the artist to know its reception. It poses a question: "Are you able to think beyond the limits of what is already recognizable?". The book notes that both Nazism and Stalinism, believing they possessed absolute truth, suppressed the avant-garde and promoted realist art that reaffirmed their views. Lyotard associates the fantasy of possessing truth with _terror_ – the entitlement to kill in its name. What about a postmodern narrative genre? No rules beforehand, only new or repurposed forms. Lyotard's "A Postmodern Fable" reinvents an old genre. Unlike traditional fables, it offers little consolation, poses a question rather than giving answers, and embraces scientific findings. It starts at the end, with the Sun's inevitable explosion. It asks if "we" can survive, suggesting survival might require becoming something other than we are. The protagonist isn't human but energy itself, with humans being a temporary effect of energy conjugation. The fable uses scientific facts but remains fiction, an organization of language. It asks for reflection, not belief. It rejects the teleological structure of grand narratives that assume history is motivated towards a fixed good end. Instead, it sees time as discontinuous states of energy and the subject as temporary. It's bleak but not pessimistic, leaving the future open and suggesting our fate is partly in our hands through our ability to use science and imagination. Ultimately, poststructuralism, as presented here, offers an opportunity for _reflection_. It provides a new vocabulary and ways of relating ideas. It's more useful for prompting uncertainty and questions than providing final answers. It sharpens undecidability, clarifying options while leaving them open to debate. By emphasizing that we make our own story within certain constraints, it is skeptical of inherited authority but affirmative about future possibilities. Above all, like Lyotard's fable, it asks us to reflect on it. So, there you have it – a whirlwind tour through the core ideas of "Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction"! We've touched upon language, meaning, the subject, power, truth, and culture, seen through the lenses of Saussure, Barthes, Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, Kristeva, Derrida, Lyotard, and even Humpty Dumpty. **Further Ideas and Questions to Explore:** - How do the differing perspectives of thinkers like Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault (even those labeled "poststructuralist") on the subject or psychoanalysis reveal the very idea of "difference" at work within the theory itself? - The book suggests that understanding "myth" or "ideology" involves seeing how cultural values are made to seem natural. Can you identify examples of contemporary myths or ideologies in advertising, media, or politics today? What values do they naturalize? - Considering the discussion of the subject being shaped by language and culture, how might this change the way we think about personal responsibility or authenticity? - If meaning depends on difference rather than reference, and truth exists at the level of the signifier, what implications does this have for fields like science, law, or history, which often rely on claims to objective truth or accurate representation of the past? - Deconstruction shows binary oppositions are unstable because each term contains a trace of the other. Can you think of other binary oppositions in Western thought (besides nature/culture, speech/writing, subject/object, mind/body, masculine/feminine) and try to see how they might rely on or contradict each other? - Lyotard suggests that language games involve power maneuvers and that individuals at "nodal points" can alter messages. How might this play out in online communication or social media? - If postmodernism is characterized by "incredulity toward metanarratives," what happens when people feel a strong need for overarching stories and explanations? How might this relate to contemporary political movements or cultural trends? - The book ends by suggesting poststructuralism prompts reflection and leaves future possibilities open. What does this "openness" feel like to you? Is it exciting because it implies freedom and change, or unsettling because it questions certainty?