How to write in a post structural context:
6 Steps to Post structural Writing
1. Examine the structure of your current writing.
2. If there were no writing rules, how would you change your current style? Do you place limits/structures on yourself within your writing?
3. How would you emphasize the play of language in you work?
4. How would you de-emphasize your idea or experience and emphasize the reader, or would you prefer to construct a reader in your text?
5. Can you accentuate or construct links between knowledge and behavior?
6. Place communication/discourse in the foreground of your narration.
I will add that for your writing to remain current, throughout your career you should renew your style by dipping it in the fountain of contemporaneous thought. If you feel like questioning certain actions or raising your voice at injustices, then let that be added as spice to the pot of thought that you are brewing within your art, your craft, your words.
I enjoy the "smart ass", challenging approach that post structural theory grants to all who embrace it. Intentional mistakes, contradictions, the use of slightly off comparisons, misspellings that somehow add interest -- all fit into the non-context. Add ingredients, fill the pot to the top, stir vigorously and taste the results. I adore this freedom. It's up to you whether you want to write a recipe, follow a recipe or allow the ingredients to evolve on their own, without the structure.
I hope all of you are willing to protect literary freedoms. I hope we never have to justify the content of our writing to anyone.
--e. smith sleigh, author and poet *
*The above list concerning post structuralism and writing is quoted from my non-fiction book
entitled Post structuralism and Related Quotes: from Jacques Derrida, Judith Kristeva and Many Others.
POST-STRUCTURALISM BLOG
(e. smith sleigh, post structural poet and writer, http://esmithsleigh.weebly.com/ )
Post structural theory is present in e. smith sleigh's work. Examples can be found in her poetry collections and fiction.
Inspiration can be drawn from Codrescu's work:
July 19, 2017 "shoelace" by Andrei Codrescu
"a real concern may turn out in a dream as 'to be continued'
or make you sleep soundly for being common currency
splintering off café tables where free-lance shrinks
keep office spreading patter butter out of which 'sex,'
the word, pops up at a higher or lower octave like a pigeon
pretending to ignore the fallen crumb of pizza shining nearby.
so that’s what you sound like, new york, no different than
you always sounded, though more at ease with pop-psych lingo,
and maybe less ability to tie your shoelace or another’s without talk.
In my absence you have acquired a lot of bla-blah underwear.
Newsprint and screens obscure 'sex,' the thing not the word,
but what do I know? I can afford to be alone, deliciously alone,
and when I gain the street I am with others tripping over their
shoelaces to get to their café therapists where they can tie their
shoelaces together. Unless they are working for the city
with health benefits uppermost in mind. When these employees
want sex they pay for it. They wear work boots tightly laced.
Dear city, the same always, making twisted nothings and steel towers.
I spent time in america and I can feel your shoelace coming loose"
-- Andrei Codrescu
The post structural theorists were simply looking for a new way to express their concerns about language, especially through a language that structures itself to judge and condemn. To sum up the theorists endeavors, two words can be used -- loosen up! Join us.