Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Russian Formalism
- STRUCTURALISM: ITS RISE, INFLUENCE AND AFTERMATH
- 2 Structuralism of the Prague School
- 3 The linguistic model and its applications
- 4 Semiotics
- 5 Narratology
- 6 Roland Barthes
- 7 Deconstruction
- 8 Structuralist and poststructuralist psychoanalytic and Marxist theories
- READER-ORIENTED THEORIES OF INTERPRETATION
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
8 - Structuralist and poststructuralist psychoanalytic and Marxist theories
from STRUCTURALISM: ITS RISE, INFLUENCE AND AFTERMATH
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Russian Formalism
- STRUCTURALISM: ITS RISE, INFLUENCE AND AFTERMATH
- 2 Structuralism of the Prague School
- 3 The linguistic model and its applications
- 4 Semiotics
- 5 Narratology
- 6 Roland Barthes
- 7 Deconstruction
- 8 Structuralist and poststructuralist psychoanalytic and Marxist theories
- READER-ORIENTED THEORIES OF INTERPRETATION
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
One of the more evident manifestations of the transition from structuralism to poststructuralism is the process whereby a fairly unified methodology has dispersed into a plurality of theoretical approaches. Within this diversity Marxism and psychoanalysis are, along with deconstructionism, the two most important strands. Both are concerned to challenge the idealist conception of the subject – i.e., the subject as centred in itself, essentially conscious and ‘free’ in the sense that it pre-exists social or other determinations. Structuralism itself of course also rejects such a conception of the subject, and in its insistence on the determining role of language-like structures provides a basis for a materialist theory of subjectivity. But the Saussurean view of the sign in practice reinstates a different form of idealism, as Coward and Ellis argue in their Language and Materialism; a genuinely materialist account of the subject has to break out of the confines of a ‘pure’ linguistics-based structuralism, and the Marxist and psychoanalytic perspectives are above all ways of doing this. Conversely, however, structuralism has undoubtedly forced Marxism and psychoanalysis to rethink some of their basic tenets in a rigorous and productive way; as Robert Young puts it in his introduction to Untying the Text, poststructuralism would not have been possible without structuralism. Specifically, the theoretical developments that Lacan has introduced into psychoanalysis and Althusser into Marxism are both heavily influenced by, and extremely critical of, structuralism. Lacan and Althusser are the principal figures in question here, and both develop an anti-humanist conception of the subject determined by the unconscious and/or by ideology. These issues go far beyond the practice of literary criticism, but they have opened up a new kind of access to the literary text, and generated a substantial body of critical readings.
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- The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 197 - 252Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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