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Cultural Studies — 2026-10-20

from structuralism to post-structuralism

stalin is kill

structuralism poststructuralism foucout

1956

february Nikita Khrushchev hold his so called secret speech at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party
- denouncing the crimes of Stalin & the “cult of personality” around him which had enabled these crimes

june: workers’ protests in Poznan, Poland, violently repressed

against totalitarianism and its horrors:

• rejection of ideology in favour of scientificity
• against the biological essentialism, after Nazism, structuralist anthropology (Levi Strauss)
• Against the horrors of Stalinisim: a turn away from Marxism and its diachronic, dialectic understanding of history, influenced by Hegel
  • understanding language throughout time synchrony, look at it as in relation. contradiction to class oppositions, history advances because internal conflict in capitalism.
• a reaction against Sartre’s existentialist humanism.
  • criticised for not being politic, he joined the communist party, left in 56.

as a reaction to all of this, decentring of the subject (anti-humanism)
synchronic models (inter-structural relations)/ transhistorical models
universal applicability of these models. i.e. strauss, uses the same kind of models (western) applies this to the caribbean, india, latin america…

why reject structuralism?

• another set of thinker: whereas early structuralism was interested in approaching culture and social relatios through the lens of new techniques in the social sciences (anthropology, linguistics, semiology), the thinkers we associate with post-structuralism were philosophers (Foucault, Derrida, Guattari & Deleuze)

• May 68: “structures don’t take to the streets” (slogan, written on a blackboard at the Sorbonne)

  • people, not structures make history (lacks a theory of movement/agency)
  • structuralism’s aim to scientificity sat at odds with the movement’s unpredictability

post-structuralism:

• both comes after & is a rejection of some aspects of structuralism

retains from structuralism	rejects structuralism’s
its decentring of the subject and anti-humanism (its framework of analysis goes beyond the individual subject)	claim to scientificity & its universal character
non-essentialist understanding of meaning (it is rational)	metaphysics (or what Derrida called “logocentrism”)
non-dialectical notion of history	ahistorical epistemology (its synchronicity)

foucault

1926-1984, Fellow at the College de France 1970-1984

bkz: birth of the clinic 1963
the order of things 1966
discipline and punish 1975
history of sexuality: vol1-4

was he a structuralist or post-structuralist?

foucault was inconsistent about his relation to structuralism.
did not oppose the structuralist label before 68 but rejected it after.

“in france, certain half-witted commentators persist in labelling me as a structuralist. I have been unable to get into their tiny minds that I have used non of the methods, concepts…”

the archaeological method

his archaeological method is often described or considered as structuralist.

the works associated with this method are: History of Madness, The Birth of the Clinic, The Order of Things, and The Archaeology of knowledge

• these can be seen as “structuralist histories”

in History of Madness, Foucault evaluates the history of the meaning of madness in Europe from the middle ages until the end of the 18th century. he opposes history to archaeology, pointing out that to uncover that which has been hidden,

what has been hidden? what has been silenced?

hidden: the pre-modern relation between sanity and madness. between reason and the fool: the association of the fool with wisdom.

17th century (classical age) a split occurs. the mad, the poor, and marginal people were confined in madhouses.
- confinement helpt to give rise to an early form of psychiatry

the modern era (18th century) rise of the science of psychiatry; madness becomes medicalized and a ‘truth’ to be cured.

silenced: unreason as af orm of reason (silenced by a discourse about madness).

• we can find unreason and madness in art and literature.
  ”the life of unreason” no longer manifests itself except in the flashes of lighting found in works like those of Holderlin, Nerval, Nietzsche and Artaud”
  foucault also mentions van Gogh.

→ what does Foucault think about psychoanalysis?

• also imposes an authority of medicine that silences the mad
• because it has a pre-established ‘discourse’ it is unable to hear the voices of unreason.
• the voices of unreason can be found in art and literature.

reminiscent of the critique of enlightenment in Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s dialectic of enlightenment:

reason did not liberate us but has created its own conditions for turning into an instrument of control, of unreason itself.

• madness stigmatizes, excludes from society, and is repressed.

several concepts and notions are key to understand Foucault’s archeological method and that he developed during this period:

1. the distinction between savoir and connaissance
2. the episteme
3. discursive formations/discourse

connaissance and savoir

this lecture is getting too french

learning process, the acquisition of knowledge

unlike the french, english does not make a distinction between connaissance and savoir
often left untranslated or translated according to context with the french in parantheses
savoir: the learning process [acquisition of knowledge]
connaissance:* the particular knowledge of various objects, such as madness, crime, death, sexuality — that is connected to practices and institutions (such a psychiatry, criminology, prisons)

episteme

the order of things is the book that is most readily associated with foucault’s concept of the episteme

in the order of things foucault analyses different aspects/structures of knowledge across three main periods — the Renaissance, from the fifteenth century what he calls the classical age, from the mid seventeeth century to the turn of the nineteenth and the modern age, from then to his present.

• episteme: refers to the structure of thought that each of these epochs are characterized by. (greek root of the english epistemology)

• characteristic of the episteme: it is “more” historical than structuralism, in that it is non-universal, but it is still synchronic. foucault does not explain the transition from one episteme to another. (Heidegger’s epochs)

the difference epistemes in the order of things:

the renaissance: the world is understood in terms of resemblance or affinities between objects. for example, because aconite resembled eyes, their seeds were used to treat eye diseases.
the classical age: taxonomies and mathematical systems of classification dominate as a way to organize knowledge. the structuring factor is no longer resemblance but identity and difference—determined by means of variations, numbers and measurements. it is preoccupied with representation and well the signs and language systems were able to represent the real world.
the modern age: breaks with representation in favour of interpretation. it interprets to lay bare the world beyond representation (marxism). consequence: representation can no longer be straightforward.

discourse & discursive formations

the episteme as the structure of knowledge of a given epoch gives rise to discursive practices

you can speak of discursive formation when

“one can describe, between a number of statements. such a system of dispersion, whenever. between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can derive a regulairty (an order, correlation, positions and functionings, transformations) we will say … that we are dealing with a discursive formation” (the archeology of knowledge)

discourse is a set of statements that are correlated with each other and therefore obtain a certain regularity. it is dependent upon restriction, delimitations and authority to determine what knowledge is. in hospitals and clinics and doctors are able to pronounce medical judgements.

a structuralism

what does the archeological method share with structuralsm?

• it transcends the individual subject and the sovereign subject of knowledge
• it is language/knowledge-centered rather than for example, materialist like marxism
• the episteme is more historical than structuralism’s form, but it remains synchronous in that it does not explain movement between epistemes.
• the episteme is static within itself

break

the genealogical method
disciplinary power & povoir, savoir

in Discipline and Punish, Foucault carries out a genealogical study of the development of “gentler” (more ethically sound) modern ways of punishing criminals, rather than by torturing them or killing them. according to foucault, these developments are not necessarily less cruel. (discipline - punish)

this new modern mode of punishment becomes a model to control society at large: factories, schools, hospitals modeled on the modern prison.

control is achieved through disciplinary power. disciplinary power seeks to correct behaviour that has not yet occured. the goal is preemptive “normalization”

power-knowledge / savoir-pouvoir a key technique to exercise disciplinary control. school exams are for example a way to control and to normalize judgment. it has a controlling function that it tells those who are being examined what they know or tells those whoa re sick what their health condition s, it controls their behaviour by telling them what to study, by telling them what treatment to undergo.

disciplinary power & the panopticon & docile bodies

the panopticon: paradigmatic of modern disciplinary power.

• control is achieved not by the visibility of guards but by their invisibility (guards could potentially see you, but you never know)
• it internalizes self-control, avoiding having to use physical supervision
• these types of disciplinary power create “docile bodies” that are easier to control and improve. hospitals, schools, factories

the penal system, together with criminal psychiatry and a scientific discourse that justify imprisonment, produces a “dangerous individual”

the modern penal system does not only punish individuals for their acts, but also labels them as delinquent, dangerous subjects and therefore people are not solely judged for their act but for their “character”

biopower
first mentioned in The History of Sexuality, vol 1

foucault opposes the idea of his contemporaries that liberating sexuality from repression would unite us with some authentic sexuality
with the proliferation of discouse and scientific truth about sexuality, modern sexuality enables for a self monitoring of “healthy sexuality” → self-forming/self-monitoring subjects
for foucault, power cannot be simply escaped within the formation of the subject, it is always part of it.

foucault opposes biopower to sovereign power whereas sovereign power exercises by deduction (taking away stuff), biopower effectively administers life - through calculated management

biopower does not control living being through fear and the threat to death, but it takes care of their lives: coordinating medical care, rationalize insurance, urban planning.

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a post-structuralism?

the genealogical method corrects the synchronicity of structuralism

the genealoigcal period is not interested, in the first instance by structures of meaning (epistemology, representation, science) but foregrounds the body and practices.

like structuralism:

• it transcends the individual (or methodological individualism)
• it decentres the sovereign subject of humanism (a rational agent/free will)

late foucault

technologies of the self

in his ethical period, faucault turns to the subjective level and is interested in the possibility of freedom as resistance to normativity, domination and by a conscious and playful awareness of power relations.

he wants to overcome the universalism of humanism, which works by excluding abnormality (the mad, the sick, the criminals) to overcome this he turns to ancient greece where “take care of yourself” was the first ethical principle of conduct, leading to self-knowledge. in the modern world: a reversal of the principle.

for foucault, power is everywhere. power is not only institutional, but it is also located outside of it (discourse, sexuality). power is not necessarily bad and can be consciously engagd to avoid repression.

this conscious practice of freedom, that is aware of power relations, can be achieved through “technologies of the self”: ethical work of the self on the self.