Poststructuralist Thinking Research Articles

From sign to inscription

This paper extends the author's work on inscriptions as a new theory of contemporary architecture. Using the concept of unary trait from Lacanian theory, the paper analyses two works of architecture. First, from the late 1970s, Peter Eisenman's project for the Cannaregio district of Venice is read as borrowing the form of the grid from Le Corbusier, enacting Lacan's unary trait. Eisenman's treatment of the grid is interpreted as evidence of poststructuralist thinking in architecture. Second, Atelier Deshaus's Riverside Passage in Shanghai is read as using the demolished fragments and existing retaining wall of a former coal storage wharf as architectural symptom. The architects' treatment of the wall and remnants from the demolition is, again, interpreted as evidence of poststructuralist thinking in recent architecture.

Gendered conditions of higher education access: advancing a gender prism analytic through the case of Haryana, India

ABSTRACT This article argues that a holistic, nuanced analytical framework for analysing gender and access to higher education (HE) would be of great benefit to the field, especially in an era where many country contexts are declaring that gender inequalities in HE access are solved due to the use of the gender parity index (GPI) as a measure of success. As such, this article proposes a framework to analyse gendered conditions of access to HE, referring to the various ways in which young people of different genders arrive in HE but with different gendered backgrounds behind them and different gendered expectations of their futures ahead of them, even when they were born into the same families and communities. Drawing on feminist sociological and poststructuralist thinking, the proposed framework promotes a refractive perspective to unpack the varied gendered influences that shape young people’s educational trajectories. The article illustrates the framework with the case of the north-Indian state of Haryana, based on an in-depth mixed-methods empirical study of gendered HE access in government colleges. The analysis reveals enduring gendered disparities that are otherwise masked by the use of GPI, including gendered differences in the perceived purpose of HE for young people, which results in differentiated prioritisation of e.g. quality of institution or subject choice. The article aims to provide future studies in this area with a framework that can be applied in and beyond the Indian context.

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.

Oscar del Barco editor: la construcción de una política de la teoría en Ediciones Caldén

In this paper, we look at how theory and publishing practices were intertwined in Argentina between 1967 and 1976. We do so by analyzing “El hombre y su mundo” [“The Man and His World"], a collection of books directed by Oscar del Barco for Ediciones Caldén (Argentina) during that period. We hold that del Barco´s multifaceted work as editor, translator, compiler, and essayist, created a politics of theory, focusing on two interrelated aspects: 1) a poetics of publishing, with translations of works by political theorists, structuralist and poststructuralist thinkers coming together in a unique collection mediated by del Barco’s critical texts, and 2) a "smuggling" publishing practice –as texts were selected, translated and shaped into small books from foreign magazines with no copyright permission. We see a performative force in such interrelation of theory and publishing strategies, as “El hombre y su mundo” made available books through practices and materialities that acted upon what those very books were calling for.

Fictocritical improv for a new author paradigm, or How to render the messiness of string figure research

This paper explores the complexity of collaborative authorship in the humanities, proposing the string figure as a dexterous model with which to map connections amongst a broad network of contributors. Drawing on the recent work of Donna Haraway, in addition to post-structuralist thinkers like Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, string figures (eg cat’s cradle) are rendered as adequately supple and striated to the diagramming of creative synergy. To this end the authors deploy fictocritical and experimental writing techniques, as well as images, probing the complexities of joint composition. Their text takes on the shape of a string game passed back and forth across a motley crew of agents and actors.

Det naturlige og æstetiske køn: Køn og kroppe hos Mary Wollstonecraft

Since the 1970s, there has been an increased focus on gender in the research literature concerning British philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, which most likely is caused by the increasing interest in the social aspects of gender inspired by poststructuralist thinking. Although such readings have been illuminative and fruitful, focusing on the social and the interconnections between Wollstonecraft and modernity seems to have brought with them a neglect of two interesting aspects of Wollstonecraft’s notion about gender. On the one hand, her thoughts on the body seem somewhat underexposed, while her impact on the subsequent British romanticists is equally neglected. The article focuses on these two aspects. Here the analyses are based on Wollstonecraft’s discussions with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke about the relations gender has to nature, bodies, and aesthetics; discussions which inform a conception of gender that the later romantics would take inspiration from.

Post-structural Meditations of Jacques Lacan on Human Subjectivity

The present article explores psychoanalytical discourse of Jacques Lacan on human subjectivity. Jacques Lacan is an important psychoanalyst who extends Freud’s ideas about the human mind. If closely seen, Lacan’s theory of psychoanalysis is far different from Freud’s psychoanalysis. As stated above, Freud’s emphasis was on intra-psychic processes that take place during childhood and their role in making an individual to be a member of the civilization. They have greater impact on entire life of the individual. Freudian theory of psychoanalysis was later expanded by Jacques Lacan. He, like Freud, made his contribution to the development of psychoanalysis. Poststructuralist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Louis Althusser (1918-1990), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Roland Barthes (1915-1980) and Jacques Lacan, disagreed with the humanistic notion of an individual as rational being capable of thinking and understanding the outer reality and as separate from the ideological structures. The individual becomes subject of unconscious with the imposition of language and culture which are already there before the birth of an individual, says Lacan. The present article also unfolds his analysis on the three registers of human life i.e. imaginary, the symbolic and the real. The role of unconscious into psychic development of human subject is also discussed.

The Enlightenment's Linguistic Dimension, or, How We Came to be Socially Constructed

While a traditional source of controversy, the modern critical interplay between humanism and the Enlightenment can be used to excavate the way we have come to think of ourselves as posthuman even within a historicist field. This essay posits conceptualizing the Enlightenment to allow for ambivalence and messy boundaries, without requiring an artificial separation between Enlightenment and postmodern or poststructuralist thinking. Its primary method uses a close reading of Miltonic and other poetical texts—and the innovative writers who read him, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Eliza Haywood—to show how Enlightenment thinking helped to prize open a linguistic dimension of humanistic thought well in advance of the twentieth century. For writers like the latter three, wary as they were of patriarchal structures, there comes the gradual realization that "woman" is not a referent but a mutable sign, and that humanity itself is not so self-evident to Enlightenment writers as a more traditionally foreclosed version of literary history would have us accept.

Friedrich Kittler and the Reception of French Post-Structuralist Thinking in Germany

Considered one of the most prominent German media theorists, Friedrich Adolf Kittler, even though he personally contests this description, reveals himself as one of the most promising contemporary philosophers of German thought about the media, with wide acceptance in the United States and Europe. This article seeks to recover aspects that are still not very widespread about his biography and thinking in Brazil and presents it from the historical perspective of the reception of the ideas of the so-called French theory in Germany, or post-structuralism, whose matrix faced all kinds of resistance in German universities, and surpassed, in part, by the strength of will of this German intellectual.

(Re)politicizing harm reduction: Poststructuralist thinking to challenge the medicalization of harms among people who use drugs

Poststructuralism, with its critical interpretations of knowledge, discourse, truth, and power, offers a set of compelling analytic tools for disentangling and deconstructing the ways in which health-related phenomena exist and are understood. This paper adopts a poststructuralist stance to outline the impacts of medical hegemony on the lives of people who use drugs, as well as responses to the harms experienced by this population. This analysis reveals how structuralist projects have narrowed the scope and impact of harm reduction through processes of medicalization, neoliberal responsibilitization, and medical co-opting and depoliticization. Nomadic thinking is then introduced as a means for health policy makers and practitioners to transform the boundaries of dominant approaches to harm reduction – particularly, in ways that (re)politicize harm reduction through forms of equity-promoting and social justice-oriented action. Implications for (re)politicized, community-engaged, and structurally responsive approaches to harm reduction in health policy and practice are then discussed.

Theorizing large-scale societal relations through the conceptual lens of cross-border assemblages

The concept of assemblage has recently become fashionable in studies of cross-border, global and transnational relations. In addressing the most important elements of this approach, the article provides an analytical vocabulary for analysing the processes of societalization in the context of global and transnational realms. After critically reflecting on the classical sociological approaches to society and social differentiation, the article argues that, because of its poststructuralist basis, the concept of assemblage is the appropriate conceptual tool for studying societal macro-relations of power and inequality while avoiding the modernist heritage of classical social theory. Furthermore, by synthesizing poststructuralist thinking, intersectional theory and multiscalar approaches to space, the article suggests that the assemblage theory can be used to better understand the current forms of cross-border social inequalities in the multiple and partly overlapping contexts of postcolonialism, postsocialism and the EU political project. In a nutshell, it is not a plea to adopt the assemblage approach as a new ‘grand theory’ but rather as a flexible conceptual tool that allows an inductive theory-building.

The (Im)possibility of Global Citizenship Education in School Geography

Despite increasing concerns about the politics of curriculum for certain ideologies of global citizenship, there is scant literature focusing on critical understandings of school geography in relation to global citizenship (GC). This article examines the complicit relationship between dominant discourses of GC and South Korean curriculum policy and world geography textbooks. The language of global others is analyzed via postcolonial and post-structural thinking. Four themes of modernity, dichotomization, discrimination, and objectification emerge. This article articulates the ways in which these link closely to Western discourses of GC by legitimating certain types of geographical thinking while obscuring others.

Experiences of Family Violence Committed by Relatives With Severe Mental Illness: A Grounded Theory.

In forensic psychiatry, family violence perpetrated by a loved one suffering from severe mental illness is a significant problem thought to affect nearly half of families. To examine this poorly documented issue, a qualitative study using a grounded theory research strategy was conducted with family members who have experienced violence committed by a relative with severe mental illness. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 14 participants who had experienced this type of violence. The works of poststructuralist thinkers Jacques Donzelot and Michel Foucault inform the theoretical framework. Qualitative analysis of the data led to the emergence of five major themes: medicolegal apparatus, experience of violence, family's responsibility toward the violent relative, exclusion and stigmatization, and suffering and resilience. The main results of this qualitative study indicate that families are governed through specific mechanisms, including instrumentalization of the family's role and transfer of the violent person's care to the family. Obstacles preventing families from being included in their relative's care were also raised. This research contributes to nursing by shedding light on clinical interventions and health policy in family care. It also offers insight into the provision of appropriate quality care in particularly complicated family situations.

“We Can Hate This World With Love”. An Interview

Philosopher Andrew Culp in this interview explains the main aspects of his dark Deleuzianism. Culp notes that his work owes much to the theories of Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thucker. He develops their ideas further, first among them the concept of asymmetry, which means that radical politics arises from a formal dissimilarity between the sides involved in a conflict. From Culp’s point of view, it was the idea of dissimilarity that made poststructuralist thinking attractive to many political philosophers because it allowed them to conceive of political power beyond the categories of power, hegemony, and domination. The philosopher explicates the main concepts that he has introduced, in particular productivism and connectivism. Culp characterizes the form as a specific consequence of cold war dynamics accompanied by maximization of productivity. He claims that the rejection of labor will allow us to pay attention to alternative aspects of social life. By connectivism Culp means the belief that communication can solve any socio-political problems. Culp criticizes this approach, which is associated especially with Bruno Latour, and argues that there is now no lack of information or communication. However, this has not facilitated solving urgent problems, most of which are political rather than technological or informational. Culp comments on the differences between his project and accelerationism. From his point of view, left-wing accelerationists try to retain the good aspects of technology and discard the harmful ones, which makes their approach similar to Proudhon’s. In discussing universal basic income, Culp points to the dangerous intersection of left-wing accelerationism and libertarianism. The philosopher also notes the fundamental divergences between his position and the techno-futurism of Nick Land. Culp goes on to clarify the political model of conspiratorial communism that he proposed in Dark Deleuze and also comments on the idea of hatred for this world as a form of utopian thinking.

Post-Yapısalcı Lensler İle Bir Yahudilik Okuması

There are various, sometimes contradictory, perceptions about definitions or boundaries of Jewishness. For some, Judaism is a nationality or a cultural identity while for others it represents a religious tradition. There is also a common assumption that Judaism was born as a religion, then, gradually grew into a broad formation including culture and nationality. This article is an inquiry into the ways in which we can understand constructions of Jewish traditions and multiple versions of Judaism. I argue that religious texts, practices, law, and thought of Judaism have been produced through and in relation to various structures of power, whether these structures are institutional, cultural, material or discursive. In order to illuminate the inter-articulation of Judaism and forms of power in particular contexts, I employ a Foucauldian conceptualization of power. This post-structural conceptualization of power enables us to illustrate the ways in which practices, thoughts, and perception within religious traditions are constituted in relation to dominant structures within a particular time and place. Based on this post-structuralist thinking, I examine two concepts in two different periods of Jewish history, gender in Roman Period Judaism and Zionism in Europe. Through examinations of these concepts in different time and places, I articulate the ways in which Judaism or Jewishness have been formed in relation to hybrid social constructions during its encounter with various civilizations, cultures, and authorities. Therefore, I argue that a study of Judaism must be attentive to forms of constitutive and regulative forces in a particular era.

“Towards eliminating viral hepatitis”: Examining the productive capacity and constitutive effects of global policy on hepatitis C elimination

In 2016 the World Health Organization published the first global health strategy to address viral hepatitis, setting a goal of eliminating viral hepatitis as a major public health threat by 2030. While the field has been motivated by this goal, to date there has been little critical attention paid to the productive capacity and constitutive effects of this policy. How is governing taking place through the mechanism of this global strategy, and how are its goals and targets shaping what is made thinkable (indeed, what is made as the real) about hepatitis C and its elimination? And with what effects? Taking the Global Health Sector Strategy on Viral Hepatitis, 2016–2021 as a text for analysis, we draw on poststructural thinking on problematisation and governmental technologies to examine how ‘elimination’ – as a proposal – constitutes the problem of hepatitis C. We critically consider the conceptual logics underpinning the elimination goal and targets, and the multiple material-discursive effects of this policy. We examine how governing takes place through numbers, by analysing ‘target-setting’ (and its accompanying practices of management, quantification and surveillance) as governmental technologies. We consider how the goal of elimination makes viral hepatitis visible and amenable to structuring, action and global management. Central to making viral hepatitis visible and manageable is quantification. Viral hepatitis is made as a problem requiring urgent global health management not through the representation of its effects on bodies or situated communities but rather through centralising inscription practices and comparison of estimated rates. It is important to remain alert to the multiple makings of hepatitis C and draw attention to effects which might be obscured due to a primary focus on quantification and management. To do so is to recognise the ontopolitical effects of governmental technologies, especially for communities ‘targeted’ by these strategies (including people who inject drugs).

POLÍTICAS PUBLICAS: ABORDAGENS ACERCA DA ALTERAÇÃO DE NOME E DE GÊNERO DE PESSOAS TRANS

O presente artigo tem como objetivo realizar uma abordagem sobre a possibilidade de pessoas transexuais conseguirem realizar a alteração do nome e do sexo no Registro Civil. A importância do assunto se faz necessária pelo fato de que atualmente a alteração do nome e do sexo no registro civil é uma forma de atender ao princípio da dignidade da pessoa humana. Para atingirmos o objetivo proposto, utilizaremos a pesquisa bibliográfica realizada em livros, periódicos especializados, além de outras publicações, com dados relacionados ao assunto em estudo. Pelo fato do presente trabalho ser de caráter interdisciplinar, nos basearemos no Pensamento Pós-Estruturalista, com suas expansões pelos Estudos de Gênero e a Teoria queer que têm contribuído com as reflexões sobre gênero, corporeidade, sexualidade, além das discussões identitárias e sociais da contemporaneidade.

Governance as multiplicity: the Assemblage Thinking perspective

Governance, the process of steering for collective action, is being theorized and empirically explored on a variety of subjects, private and collective issues and spatial levels. Depending on epistemological and theoretical preferences, studies adopt a hierarchical/centralized or a relational/decentralized conception of governance although they increasingly recognize that ‘hybrid governance,’ a mix of multiple models and modes, prevails in practice. Theoretical and empirical studies alike discuss sparingly, if at all, ontological issues, i.e., the nature of the ‘what’ is governed, despite their prominence for meaningful empirical analysis. A ‘system’ ontology is mostly presumed that usually produces static, context-insensitive accounts of dynamic governance phenomena and one-size-fits-all and ‘best practices’ recommendations. Since the 2000s, Assemblage Thinking (AT), a current of poststructuralist thinking, is being utilized on the grounds that the assemblage ontology better supports, conceptually and methodologically, the situated study of governance. This paper offers an overview of the application of AT in governance studies and an introductory exploration into the capacity of AT to frame a compleat approach for the applied study of governance conceived not as unitary process but as multiplicity. After summarizing the discourse on governance, the paper highlights the main features of AT and critically reviews selected assemblage-based governance studies. Then, it discusses the conceptual affinities between governance and assemblage, reconceptualizes governance, outlines the contours of an assemblage-based methodology and proposes an AT-based approach to governance. A discussion of the value of AT for applied governance studies and future research challenges conclude the paper.

Jean Hyppolite, Hegel in Baltimore

Jean Hyppolite, Hegel in Baltimore Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod In his book French Theory, François Cusset claims that the symposium held in Baltimore in October 1966 was the birthplace for poststructuralism and French theory, even though these movements were not yet coined as such (Cusset 27). Cusset underlines the building of a united vision of French philosophy in the United States; he also details that this community was exclusively negative (19), that is to say that the poststructuralist thinkers shared common enemies rather than common positions. Among these enemies, Hegel was certainly the most prominent one. At the beginning of the 1960s, the richest and most vivid French thought was also the most severely opposed to Hegelianism. In many works, such as Jacques Derrida's, Michel Foucault's, Emmanuel Levinas's, Louis Althusser's, Gilles Deleuze's or Jean-François Lyotard's, G.W.F. Hegel was once considered the "dead dog" of philosophy. So the question I would like to address is: what is the meaning of this anti-Hegelianism in Baltimore in 1966? In their preface to The Structuralist Controversy: the Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato agree with the idea of a general anti-Hegelianism in French philosophy, and they claim that "Nietzsche has now come to occupy the central position that … was held by the Gallic Hegel" (xii). Yet, there is something wrong about the golden legend of the replacement of Hegel by Nietzsche: through Jean Hyppolite, Hegel was indeed present in Baltimore: in his talk, "the voice of Hegel" was heard at the very moment when anti-Hegelian structuralism was being promoted (Foucault 807). So how can we account for this? Is it an anachronism, as suggested by Donato and Macksey, Hegel's swan song in a way—and we know that Hyppolite died less than two years afterwards? Or can we [End Page 999] read here something else: a French philosophy far less anti-Hegelian than it claims to be? I would like to show that Hyppolite's lecture reveals the need for a more complex reading of French theory, with fewer prejudices against Hegel. Hyppolite compels us to consider that, back then, a reading of Hegel was possible and that it would have been compatible with some poststructuralist ambitions. Therefore, I shall start with a presentation of the way in which Hyppolite understands the project of Hegelian philosophy; then I shall examine in what sense he presents Hegel as a precursor of Husserlian phenomenology and of structuralism. Finally, I will see how he maintains that Hegelian philosophy also overcame those phenomenological and structuralist models and announced a new thought that would be concordant with poststructuralism. The Project of Hegelian Philosophy Hyppolite's lecture is entitled "The Structure of Philosophic Language According to the 'Preface' to Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind." Its first sentence reveals the deep awareness Hyppolite has of the apparent anachronism of his talk: "Isn't it too late to speak of Hegel in our age … ?" (Macksey and Donato 157). This delay would also be the delay of "metaphysical thought" compared to the progress of positive sciences. In fact, both the natural and the human sciences intend to avoid philosophy, which is reduced to a "criticism of metaphysics" (157). And Hyppolite quotes Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, the three "masters of suspicion," as Paul Ricoeur called them. Overtaken by the sciences, philosophy is only left with the negativity of criticism, essentially its own criticism. If Hyppolite suggests a return to Hegel, it is precisely because he appears as the last great metaphysician—provided that one understands metaphysics as the positive task of philosophy. As Hyppolite says: "It is precisely because Hegel is the last of the great metaphysicians … that his thought interests us" (157–158). Hyppolite specifies what he understands by his return to Hegel. He does not intend to bring the Hegelian system back to life, and even insists on the fact that his encyclopaedic system is less important than what is at stake in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic. What truly interests Hyppolite in Hegel's philosophy is the elaboration of a philosophical discursivity which would not be...

Reading Digital News: Hypertextual Usage Habits and Learning Practices Among U.S. Communication Undergraduates

Hypertext as a nonlinear, computer-based or digital text that is now used along with conventional, linear printed text and can be described as a relatively advanced text type. Moreover, hypertextuality is among the characteristics which differentiate online news from printed news. While digital writing has become more advanced with hypertextuality, its impact on users’ reading habits has gained importance as an underlying matter. In this context, the present research aims to provide an analysis of users’ experiences of reading digital news in the context of hypertextuality. This study begins by summarizing the studies on hypertextuality and news users. Following this, a case study is presented to analyze newspaper users’ reading habits in a digital setting to propose empirical evidence for the theoretical ideas of poststructuralist thinkers on hypertextuality. This part focuses on the hypertext reception practices of UMASS/Amherst Department of Communication undergraduate students through analysis of their news consumption patterns via an online survey. Based on the findings, this study contributes to the literature regarding journalism, technology, and digital writing by identifying the advantages and disadvantages of reading digital news. Although hypertextuality invites both writers and users to think in a nonlinear and cooperative way, it also leads to polarized opinions and newly emerging ethical issues.