Poststructuralism

Definition

Poststructuralism is the intellectual movement, emerging in 1960s–70s France, that radicalizes and ultimately breaks with the structuralist project. While structuralism (following Saussure) sought to uncover the universal, underlying structures that generate meaningful cultural phenomena, poststructuralism (Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard) destabilizes the very idea of stable structures: meaning is always deferred (Derrida's différance), power and knowledge are inseparable (Foucault), and systems are characterized by flows, breaks, and lines of flight (Deleuze). For architecture, poststructuralism provided the theoretical lexicon — deconstruction, rhizome, fold, heterotopia — that underwrote the formal experiments of the 1980s–90s avant-garde, though Coyne argues that Derrida's radical potential was domesticated into a style.

Key Thinkers

• Jacques Derrida — deconstruction; différance; the critique of presence and logocentrism.
• Michel Foucault — power/knowledge; the analytics of discipline, biopower, and governmentality.
• Gilles Deleuze — the fold, smooth/striated space, deterritorialisation.

Related Concepts

• Structuralism — the precursor that poststructuralism both extends and undoes.
• Deconstruction — Derrida's poststructuralist practice of reading.
• Différance — the non-concept at the heart of poststructuralist accounts of meaning.
• Trace — the poststructuralist alternative to the structuralist sign.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Derrida for Architects — poststructuralism and architectural deconstruction.
• Foucault for Architects — Foucault's poststructuralist spatial analytics.