One More Quick Response to Barthes
I find it hard to believe that a post-structuralist would ask us to choose an either/or. This just seems to be a bit against the thrust of the post-structural attack on the nature of truth, center, and play. Is this an article or a book you are reading from? In any case, this is a follow up to the longer response. Perhaps you could explain how a post-structuralist could advocate a centered idea with binary options.
4 Comments:
I'm not really sure Barthes is a poststructuralist to be honest. But yes the either/or is pretty evident in this relatively early work (Mythologies). I think later on he repudiated this sort of politics.
Binary option: either everything is ideological or it's not. Granted, I'm interpreting it as a binary option. Barthes doesn't allow for any other options.
Besides I think you are generalizing quite a bit when you describe the qualities of a "poststructuralist"! They don't all get along.
i agree about the diversity of post-structuralism, but one thing they cannot be is structuralist...my demand for semantic consistency (my structuralism!) requires that much. from what i have read by barthes i think he would say everything is imbued with ideology. he essay on encyclopedia plates is essentially a study of the ideology that saturates, and even gains autonomy within, encyclopedia plates.
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