Poststructuralist Ideas Research Articles

Habermas and the Caring Society: A Trans-disciplinary Feminist Critique

Jürgen Habermas’s rationalistic reimagining of a more compassionate society can be imaginatively defended by feminism, and one such legitimate line of criticism would be a feminist reading of this Frankfurt School-inspired project. In this contribution, therefore, I also aim to show ‘how’ and ‘why’ these efforts of Habermas’s could be complemented. The former is an exploration of novel post-structuralist ideas on inclusive ‘both/and’ theory appropriation. I briefly outline the nuanced intellectual history of the Frankfurt School between the first and second generations, which is Habermas’s seminal contribution to this tradition. Carol Gilligan’s ‘ethic of care,’ around which a more caring, responsive society might be (re)constructed, is then applied. Against this backdrop, Lakoff’s and Gerhardt’s proposals for the caring society, based on investigations into the link between authoritarian parenting and capitalism, are taken into consideration. These ideas are supported with an outline of recent progress within neuroscience that demonstrates the benefits of both early emotional nurturing and an appropriate attachment paradigm. It is thus argued that feminism, as part of a richer interdisciplinary methodology, could meaningfully correct and thereafter complement Habermas’s shortcomings, with post-structuralism as the methodological glue that adheres Habermas’s universalistic project with feminists’ emphases on specificity. “One of the things about looking at the world through a feminist lens is [the awareness] that we are already in a dystopia.” — Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks (2018 ), part of a growing canon of woman-written dystopian fiction.

The contested status of theory/theorizing and humanism/posthumanism in Olga Petrovskaya's Nursing theory, postmodernism, poststructualism, and Foucault.

The contested status of theory/theorizing and humanism/posthumanism in Olga Petrovskaya's Nursing theory, postmodernism, poststructualism, and Foucault.

The aleatory moment of finance and the structural production of class-based inequality

ABSTRACT This article considers the conceptual role that contingency plays in class-based inequality, by examining financial insecurity in the UK following the 2008 financial crisis, austerity, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Althusser’s aleatory materialism, I counter postmodern and poststructuralist ideas of contingency as a universally disruptive challenge to power and stratification, showing instead how a pervasive sense of uncertainty drives working households into debt and diminishes savings, creating ongoing financial strain or poverty. Using Althusser’s concept of the ‘encounter’, I note how the emergence of consumer finance is historically contingent, but has become normalized in the wage relation. Financial risk, with its potential to yield high rewards for institutional investors and financial firms trading stocks, securities, and assets, amplifies uncertainty that working households face in socially reproducing themselves, because it forces those who draw an income as their main source of wealth to manage the potential risk of loss on an untradeable commodity. The encounter between financial institutions and working households is thus unevenly weighted, with precarious households unable to offload risk in unpredictable times. I connect this aleatory reading of inequality with Althusser’s earlier work on contradiction and overdetermination, to understand the implications of stratification on crisis and change.

Sacramental desire

The work considers the theoretical dispute between different concepts of desire: "classical", structuralist, and post-structuralist. This dispute unfolds in two aspects: the social desire production and desire-scarcity connection. The author shows this dispute to be axiomatic and reflect the process of transition from an industrial society, which is based on shortage and lagging consumption, to a post-industrial society, which is based on excess and advanced consumption. The author relies on Lacan's and Kojve's concepts of desire and criticizes post-structuralist ideas of Deleuze, Guattari and Lyotard, particularly the concept of unconditional and unlimited desire. The article distinguishes between the concepts of innermost and sacramental desire in order to define the boundaries of the "desiring production". This distinction is applied in the analysis of "Solaris" by S. Lem and "Stalker" by Tarkovsky.

Creating Spaces for Intersubjectivity: A Sustainable Vision for Democratic Citizenship Education

Responding to the multiculturalist critiques of deliberative democratic education, Amy Gutmann and Sigal Ben-Porath suggested a more inclusive version of deliberative democratic education that emphasizes toleration, public recognition, and mutual respect. Despite its benefits and possibilities, however, their concept of democratic education fails to embrace poststructuralist ideas regarding democratic education. In the pursuit of a sustainable vision for democratic citizenship education, this study sought to conceptualize hybrid spaces wherein an ontology of plurality is woven into Gutmann and Ben-Porath’s idea of deliberative democratic education. By proposing an alternative way to integrate poststructuralist ideas such as intersubjective accounts of self-identity and human agency into the current practice of deliberative democratic education, the authors seek to promote continued dialogue on the purposes and possibilities of education for a more sustainable and democratic society.

Bending the Structure: Jacques Lacan Along the Axis of Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Lacan wrote and generated ideas at the intersection of structuralism and poststructuralism, and the question of where he stands in this intersection is crucial to understand his conception of the subject. This essay takes the multiplicity of views on Lacan as a structuralist and a poststructuralist as its starting point and aims to weigh these labels against the background of his specific theories and views. We suggest that in his early phase when he was categorised as a structuralist, he had the seeds of his later poststructuralist phase, and when he was generating his poststructuralist ideas, he was building them on his structuralist legacy. This evolution is similar to that of Roland Barthes in that he establishes an ongoing dialog between structuralism and poststructuralism: he is both a threshold figure suggesting an amalgam of these movements, but he is also a dividing figure as his evolution points at the unbridgeable rupture between structuralism and poststructuralism.

Inviting the Spectral in Photos: A Poststructuralist Engagement With Visual Data in Qualitative Inquiry

In this article, we share some poststructuralist ideas for interacting and intra-acting with photos as visual data in qualitative inquiry. The discussion of photos as visual data has mostly drawn from representational perspectives. Furthermore, poststructuralist theorizing has been mostly utilized to discuss discursive data. Drawing from poststructuralist ideas, like Derrida’s discussion of the absent-presence, we offer a poststructuralist glance at photos as spectral visual data. We view such approach as liberating of visual texts and as denotative of the unfinalizability of meaning. To illustrate our point, we engage into a dual mode of narrative, of both words and images, that is photos. Following a brief overview situating the use of photos as data within a representational framework in qualitative research, we illustrate our poststructuralist glance inspired by a Derridean framework. As an epilogue, we share reflections in the form of questions aiming to challenge our narrative in this article.

Rhizomatic poverty in aquaculture communities of rural India & Bangladesh

ABSTRACT The paper uses illustrations from rural India and Bangladesh to develop a critical analysis of practices and experiences of poverty often overlooked in development policies. It challenges the principle measurement, calculative rationality and static representation in anti-poverty interventions that present poverty as a ‘problem’ to be resolved. It draws on poststructuralist ideas to express poverty differently and shift from problem-solving to problematisation. Drawing on the concept of ‘rhizome’ it highlights the connectivity, heterogeneity and multiplicity of poverty. Examples from interviews and photo diaries illustrate manifold poverty as a combination of heterogeneous activities, objects and affects that complicate development ethics and challenge the logic of reason in existing policies. The paper explores improvisation, experimentation, hope and repetition as mechanisms for critically evaluating aquaculture-led development and attending to overlooked objects, uncertain outcomes and untold stories of disadvantage.

Undoing Olive: Living with Alterity in Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge Books

ABSTRACT In this paper, I analyze the Olive Kitteridge books written by contemporary American writer Elizabeth Strout. Though Strout’s work can be seen within a broader context of a post -postmodern literature that has returned largely to Realist forms, I argue that Strout’s characters are undone in their relationship to alterity in significant ways. This turn to the other in Strout shows the continued relevance and power of post-structuralist ideas of alterity in thinking through contemporary literature.

SARTRE’S CRITIQUE OF DIALECTICAL REASON AND NEW MATERIALISM

Sartre’s late work – the Critique of Dialectical Reason – attempted to develop a new theory of praxis emphasizing themes that anticipate new materialist and biopolitical turns in the humanities. Specifically, Sartre stressed: (1) the “agentic” qualities of matter, insofar as matter reacts to human activity and alters its course; (2) the unintended and accruing consequences of human activity in the material world; (3) the fact that capitalism involves human subjects in relations of passive exigency that make them machines; and (4) the ways in which the biological matter constituting a human subject is systematically altered through practical activities performed in a particular milieu. The present article overviews new materialism and discusses affinities and divergences with Sartre’s Critique. It then presents Sartre’s social theory of ensembles, or assemblages, of human actors. This exposition demonstrates the potential of his theory to contribute to contemporary biopolitical and post-structuralist ideas about revolutionary collective action.

Shirley Kaneda: Doubled prisms

This article examines the work of Shirley Kaneda, the Korean-Japanese American artist. It discusses various paintings from Kaneda’s output, both from the 1990s and from the last six years, in order to draw out her concerns and intentions. In this light it also explores her statements from articles and interviews in thinking through her intertwining of both theoretical and painterly concerns. It moves from the context of her early work in the Conceptual Abstraction exhibition of 1991 at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, to the actual form and procedures that the work implements. Formalism, or post-formalism here, develops the means to deconstruct certain inherited tropes of modernism and provide a new re-formation of them, and here Kaneda draws both on feminist, modernist and poststructuralist ideas. This also has implications for the viewer and how the work frames and proposes material for an encounter with these elements. The bracketing of early and recent work highlights ongoing continuities and differences within Kaneda’s oeuvre.

Идеи переосмысления мусульманской истории в работах арабских интеллектуалов конца XX – начала XXI в.

In the 21st century, Muslim reformist thought is going through a period of rapid devel-opment, during which the ideas of the renovators of the 19th – 20th centuries are being trans-formed and developed. In the late 20th – early 21st centuries, major Arab intellectuals put for-ward various ideas for rethinking the Muslim reformist paradigm by changing approaches to the study and understanding of the history of the Muslim Ummah and overcoming the non-historicity of discourse. Within the framework of this article, for the first time, an attempt was made to classify the approaches of the largest Arab representatives of the Muslim reformist movement to the study of the history of Muslim civilization from the point of view of changing the paradigms of modern humanitarian knowledge. Muhammad al-Ashmawi, within the frame-work of the positivist concept, advocated a reinterpretation of the era of the “righteous caliphs”. Faraj Fuda, who stuck to a post-positivist position, put forward the idea of an inductive rethink-ing of Muslim history. Muhammad al-Jabri, being a representative of structuralism, proposed to build a clear referential framework for the periodization of the history of Muslim civilization. Finally, Muhammad Arkun, analyzing the ways of solving the indicated problem, relied on the post-structuralist ideas of “applied Islamology” based on the progressive-regressive historical method. The presented classification clearly demonstrates the diversity of modern Muslim re-formist thought and the multi-stage nature of its development. The proposed division of ap-proaches to the study and understanding of the history of the Muslim Ummah by Arab authors can be further correlated with the typology of the development of reformist ideas in other re-gions of the Muslim world.

Review

Review

“Dark Ontology” in the Historical Context of the Denial of Consciousness

We discuss the “axioms of dark ontology” proposed by the US philosopher Levi Bryant. The axioms are analyzed in a context of the historical development of diverse philosophical viewpoints united by the concept of the denial of consciousness. The “deniers” declare the direct conscious experience to be an illusion. As for the philosophical provisions that will not fit into their very limited conceptual straitjacket, they proclaim those inimical to science and therefore subject to elimination from the epistemological discourse altogether. Analyzing the viewpoints of the denialist philosophers, we show their inner contradictions that primarily are related to their inability to apply their assertions about consciousness to their own methods, arguments, and conclusions. We review the historical development of the critique regarding the denialists’ views taken from sometimes very diverse philosophical corners. We show that Bryant’s assertions are not axioms in any logical sense, but rather a scientism manifesto created in response to a technocratic demand for dehumanization. We also show how Bryant’s rejection of the human-centered position of philosophy follows from deconstruction practices undertaken by the structuralists and poststructuralists. To advance his ideas, Bryant imitates Ludwig Wittgenstein’s forms of discourse. He also engages moralizing and sophistry. We show that Bryant’s failure to create a robust, coherent system demonstrates weaknesses in the poststructuralist ideas that his concepts stem from. We conclude that the process that the doctrine of the denial of consciousness becomes mainstream attests, in Heidegger’s terms, the final stage of European nihilism and the crisis of science and philosophy of knowledge.

Electronic Literary Text in the Framework of Post-Structuralism Textology

The article features the phenomenon of electronic literary text. The research objective was to identify the structural and semantic features of electronic literary texts within the framework of post-structuralism. The electronic literary text resulted not only from the development of information technology: it is also the product of the development of philosophical and linguistics ideas of post-structuralism. The post-structuralism perspective was not repeated exactly on the technological level of the electronic text representation. However, the post-structuralist text theory was reflected in the electronic literary text structure, i.e. its rhizomatic, decentered, fragmentary, intertextual, and simulation character. In particular, the attempt to build cohesion of semiotically diverse components in the electronic environment reflects the post-structuralists idea of chaos and disorganization. The attempt to provide the navigation in this multi-component unity by the key-word hyperlinks reflects the idea of the total interconnectivity of all structural components, i.e. intertextuality. The phenomenon of intertextuality defines the culmination of decenterment and nomadism in the text theory. It is connected with the rhizomatic concept and hypertextuality. The research used electronic literary texts based on Adobe Flash and HTML. The research employed general scientific methods, such as monitoring and description, in conjunction with the method of comparative linguistic analysis. The author concludes that the text perception and electronic virtual world immersion become much more important than the artifacts in the electronic literature of XXI century. The electronic literary text became the poststructuralist concept of the new esthetic object, lost its integrity and composition stability, and opened itself to external input.

Nonsense, Play, and Liminality: Putting Postintentionality in Dialogue With De/colonizing Ontoepistemologies

In this article, I put postintentionality in dialogue with de/colonizing ontoepistemologies to identify where these perspectives converge and diverge. Informed by Vagle’s notion that a particular idea may have virtue in one discipline while considered a given in another, I explore the possibilities of hybridized, interdisciplinary work that crosses various borders. By placing these fluid disciplinary discourses in dialogue, I identify a shift in my thinking that situates nonsense and play as de/colonial moves by highlighting the subversive and lasting effects of a children’s text written in India during British rule. Certain poststructural ideas have become so well established in my discipline (and others) that they have become a given, which has prompted me to immerse myself in exploring the role of nonsense and play in de/coloniality.

Poststructural Democratic Education? Assessing the Potentialities of a Non-Individualistic, Non-Instrumental, "Action"-Oriented Democratic Education

This research is a philosophical study into the potentialities of realising a poststructural democratic education through considering the reflections of educators involved in various "democratic" educational programmes. Utilising the conceptual tools of Biesta (2006), as inspired by Arendt (1998), this study explores what it would entail to create a non-individual, non-instrumental, "action"-oriented democratic education. It seeks to do this motivated by a lacuna of research into the question of translating a poststructural educational theory into practice. The findings reveal that the educational programmes that the educators are involved with resemble poststructural ideas in their pedagogy, and most notably in their educational structures, but the guiding philosophy and overall aims of the programmes appear to endorse more moderate visions of democratic education. In taking this idea further, this study suggests that the enactment of poststructural democratic education demands a social context that too is democratic in the poststructural way envisioned. In this way, it can be said that this research exposes the limitations and challenges of the realisation of such a philosophy where the surrounding climate is not in harmony with its ideals, as it would remain disconnected from the very society it seeks to democratically interact with.

When the Brain Leaves the Scanner and Enters the Clinic

Addiction neuroscience promises to uncover the neural basis of addiction by mapping changes in the “diseased brains” of people with “drug addictions.” It hopes to offer revolutionary treatments for addiction and reduce the stigma experienced by those seeking treatment for a medical, rather than moral, condition. While the promises of addiction neuroscience have received considerable attention, relatively few studies have examined how neuroscientific discourses and promises play out in drug treatment settings. Instead of asking how neuroscience might measure or treat a preexisting addiction “problem,” we draw on poststructuralist ideas to trace how neuroscientific discourses produce addiction as a certain type of “problem” and the effects of these particular problematizations. Based on interviews with a range of different types of treatment providers working in Victoria, Australia, we discuss three themes that reveal neuroscientific discourses at work: (1) constituting pathological subjects, (2) neuroplasticity and “recovery,” and (3) the alleviation of guilt and shame via references to the “diseased brain.” On the basis of our analysis, we argue that dominant neuroscientific discourses produce patients as pathologized subjects, requiring medical treatment. We also contend that the intersection of neuroscientific and recovery discourses enacts “recovery” in terms of brain “recovery” through references to neuroplasticity. Further, when neuroscientific and moral discourses intersect, addicted subjects are absolved from the guilt associated with immoral behavior emerging from a “hijacked brain.” We conclude by emphasizing the need for future critical work to explore the complex ways in which neuroscientific discourses operate in localized care ecologies.

An entry into a creative, rhizomatic narrative inquiry into young people’s identity construction

Located in a larger study that attempted to challenge taken-for-granted or homogenizing assumptions about constructions of adolescent identity and to interrogate radically the process of qualitative research in this field [O’ Grady, G. (2012). “Constructing Identities with Young People using Creative Rhizomatic Narrative.” PhD Thesis. Queen’s University Belfast], the paper picks up the narrative of the research journey at a moment of meeting with Kim Etherington, Professor of Narrative Research at the University of Bristol. It opens with the conversation that ensued and my introduction to the figure of the rhizome [Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. ([1987] 2004). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. London: Continuum, 8) which, alongside other poststructuralist ideas, I subsequently used to conceptualize and frame the inquiry. In grappling with the questions posed in our conversation, I hope to make visible three interweaving themes in this paper: My difficulties initially in ‘inhabiting’ the philosophical positions I took up in this creative narrative inquiry; my growing commitment to a form of narrative inquiry that challenges inherited dominant understandings of subjectivity and research methodologies and finally, my encounters with ‘otherness’ in the construction of self/other as a thematic thread that interwove all the narratives of the young people in the larger study.

Fiction in the “Post-Truth” Era: The Ironic Effects of Autofiction

ABSTRACTAutofiction occupies a liminal space between fiction and nonfiction that requires continuous adjustments to the reading process as the novel vacillates between biographical fact and outright fiction. “Post-truth” may have been Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 Word of the Year, but the popularity of autofiction demonstrates that, while readers like to toy with the idea of truth being in the eye of the beholder, they ultimately maintain a line of demarcation between fact and fiction. Despite poststructuralist assertions to the contrary, there remains a difference in effect between a factual story and a fictional one. On the other hand, readers’ ability to navigate autofiction’s narrative intricacies demonstrates the wider cultural acceptance of those same poststructuralist ideas. Autofictions consciously play with readerly expectations about memoir and fiction, thwarting both, thereby simultaneously calling into question, and making a case for, the importance of distinguishing between fact and fiction.