- Joined
- Mar 3, 2026
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- #1
I've returned to the essays of Barthes in recent times, and, exposed myself again to the post-structuralist dialogues. To me the questions of the somatic condition, as well as the condition of 'questions' themselves are the most important critique to have.
Before committing myself as a post-structuralist, I was somewhere between the logical atomists of Wittgenstein and Russell mixed with the somatic expression of Frantz Fanon. At that point in time, language was the thing I was most suspicious of as a sociological artifact and function. I haven't really lost my suspicion but I would say it's shifted. I also enjoy the rejection of totality as a philosophical end, it doesn't claim to solve anything as much as it wants to understand how things got to their position within society. Post-structuralism can be a kind of dialectal analysis, although unlike Marxism, which can't exactly tell you how to live. Post-structuralists can grapple with things like "Transendence" however, I can't really find myself in agreement with the Kantian and Hegelian methodology. Post-structuralists also aren't really concerned with mythologizing sanctimony I find most philosophy tends to point towards.
I am a big fan of the Foucauldian analysis of history, specifically his History on Sexuality was particularly illuminating in the capital of identity. I've read a portion of D&G, although, their retreat into the purely metaphysical and the conception of something like, "radical autonomy as the rupture of violence" I thought was a bit confusing. Most, if not all post-structuralist reject the liberal idea of a fixed, "I" and yet, I am not exactly certain how someone would exist as a rhizome might, and not be fixed. I'm not sure how you would be certain you are in the middle expanding instead of being a singular fixed system. Foucault seems to accept the improbability of escaping the "system" and focused on practicing life. That is, all systems of power will have gaps and cracks, in which "resistance" is possible. That through these practices of resistance, one might find himself at the very least "liberated." Although, I am suspicious of his practice of life.
Anyway, has anyone else read any post-structuralist works? If you have, I'm curious on your thoughts!
Before committing myself as a post-structuralist, I was somewhere between the logical atomists of Wittgenstein and Russell mixed with the somatic expression of Frantz Fanon. At that point in time, language was the thing I was most suspicious of as a sociological artifact and function. I haven't really lost my suspicion but I would say it's shifted. I also enjoy the rejection of totality as a philosophical end, it doesn't claim to solve anything as much as it wants to understand how things got to their position within society. Post-structuralism can be a kind of dialectal analysis, although unlike Marxism, which can't exactly tell you how to live. Post-structuralists can grapple with things like "Transendence" however, I can't really find myself in agreement with the Kantian and Hegelian methodology. Post-structuralists also aren't really concerned with mythologizing sanctimony I find most philosophy tends to point towards.
I am a big fan of the Foucauldian analysis of history, specifically his History on Sexuality was particularly illuminating in the capital of identity. I've read a portion of D&G, although, their retreat into the purely metaphysical and the conception of something like, "radical autonomy as the rupture of violence" I thought was a bit confusing. Most, if not all post-structuralist reject the liberal idea of a fixed, "I" and yet, I am not exactly certain how someone would exist as a rhizome might, and not be fixed. I'm not sure how you would be certain you are in the middle expanding instead of being a singular fixed system. Foucault seems to accept the improbability of escaping the "system" and focused on practicing life. That is, all systems of power will have gaps and cracks, in which "resistance" is possible. That through these practices of resistance, one might find himself at the very least "liberated." Although, I am suspicious of his practice of life.
Anyway, has anyone else read any post-structuralist works? If you have, I'm curious on your thoughts!
