Derrida and his fellow theorists were marginalized in the Algerian class structure in which they matured. Due to the narration of the time, they found themselves ‘strangers in a strange land’ (from Heinlein’s 1961 book by that title). Robert Heinlein published A Stranger in a Strange Land five years before Derrida read his now famous paper. Derrida’s “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourses of Human Sciences,” delivered in 1966 Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University struck a near death blow to Structuralism.
What do humans do when they are bullied and threatened, they usually retaliate. The post structural theorists began by couching the significance of structurally set language in ambiguity. Derrida and his intellectual compatriots acted with their minds instead of weapons. It was brilliant. The dispersal of French Algeria’s constructs left post structural thinkers with predetermined efforts to not only revise colonially occupied Algerian culture and way of thinking, but extend their conquest to colony-building Western Civilization as a whole. These theorists set an example for the marginalized worldwide. They attempted to tear down structures in every system that perpetuated the old, feudal, ways of thought, speech, and action.
In a similar vein, five years earlier, after publishing his book, Robert Heinlein declared he wanted to “slaughter the biggest, fattest sacred cows of western society” with his story. One wanders if Heinlein’s publication of A Stranger in a Strange Land extended to Algeria or environs. Perhaps I will publish this research in another blog.
Other than literary hypotheses, the following is a current list of satellite issues spawned by Post structural theory:
- New Historicism, Cultural Studies
- Post-Colonial Criticism
- Feminist Criticism
- Critical Disability Studies
- Gender Studies and Queer Theory
- Critical Race Theory
-- e. smith sleigh, poet, author, post structural blogger and historian
author of Post Structuralism and Related Quotes http://bit.ly/kEdBcp post-structuralism advocate and online pioneer in post-structural theory