School of thought
Post-Structuralism
Movement
Classification
- Period
- c. 1966 CE onward
- Regions
- europe
- Domains
- Philosophy of Language , Political Philosophy
Overview
Post-Structuralism radicalizes and critiques Structuralism's assumptions, arguing that structures are not stable, universal, or self-contained. Derrida showed that meaning is always deferred and unstable (differance), Foucault analyzed how discourse produces power and knowledge, and Deleuze developed a philosophy of difference, multiplicity, and becoming that resists all totalizing systems.
Key ideas
- Differance: Derrida's neologism: meaning is always deferred, never fully present. Every sign refers to other signs in an endless chain — there is no transcendental signified anchoring the system.
- Power/Knowledge: Foucault: power is not merely repressive but productive — it produces knowledge, truth, and subjects. What counts as 'true' is shaped by systems of power.
- Rhizome: Deleuze and Guattari's alternative to hierarchical thinking: knowledge and reality are rhizomatic — non-hierarchical, multiply connected, with no center or foundation.
Key figures
Jacques Derrida · Michel Foucault · Gilles Deleuze · Julia Kristeva
Methods used
Influenced by
- Marxism
Adapted the Marxist analysis of ideology and power — via Althusser — while rejecting its economic determinism and totalizing philosophy of history.
- Nineteenth-Century European Nihilism
- Phenomenology
Reacts to
Later connections
- Feminist Philosophy Influenced by this tradition
Drew on post-structuralist analyses of discourse and the constructed subject — notably Butler's account of gender as performative — to denaturalize sex and gender.
- Neo-Pragmatism Influenced by this tradition
- Postmodernism Influenced by this tradition
References
- Gary Gutting, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Postmodernism
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Michel Foucault, §3.2
- Of Grammatology — Jacques Derrida
- Discipline and Punish — Michel Foucault
- A Thousand Plateaus — Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari