5POSTSTRUCTURALISM
CATHERINE BELSEY
A WAY OF READING
From the point of view of a critical theorist, the main interest of poststructuralism is its invitation to read differently. Although it is often presented in the form of a set of prescriptions and precepts, poststructuralism developed in a series of practical encounters with texts: the critic Roland Barthes (1915–80) read Balzac and instances of French popular culture; psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–81) read Freud and Hamlet and Sophocles; while the philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) also read Hamlet, as well as Rousseau, Marx and a succession of other works, many of them philosophical. At the same time, poststructuralism is not reducible to a methodology. Instead, it offers ...
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