Poststructuralism is "a movement within the social sciences and humanities that express disenchantment with static, mechanistic,
and controlling models of culture, with a consequent interest in social process and agency."
Poststructuralists strive to debunk essentialism and dismantle the binary.
Poststructuralism as it pertains to "sexuality, sex, and gender"
Poststructuralism is a theoretical framework best adapted to analyzing the meanings of sex, gender, and sexuality, the history of the meanings, and how the fluidity of gender and sex can destabilize the binary. Poststructuralism is a term associated with the writings of French theorists Michael Foucault and Jacque Derrida and refers to “a manner of interpreting selves and the social with breaks with traditional epistemologies and contends that a focus on the individual as an autonomous agent needs to be ‘deconstructed’, contested, and troubled” (Namaste 221). Most significantly, relating directly to the topic of this paper, poststructuralism is a direct response to the theoretical framework of Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism. Lévi-Strauss believed that “all human thought is dualistic, dividing the world into sets of oppositional categories like black and white, male and female, and nature and culture” (Mascia-Lees 181). Since Lévi-Strauss’ theory does not leave an individual with much (if any) agency or autonomy a new theoretical framework arose in contention.
Not everything is black and white and poststructuralist theory can offer valuable insight into the ways in which gendered cultures radically challenge “normative taxonomies of gendered sexuality and provide a contemporary vision of these as deconstructed” (Hines 52). Therefore, current queer theorists have employed poststructuralism as means for providing a “model of difference provoking new insights into the continual reproduction of heterosexual hegemony and offer a specifically historicized understanding of sexual identities, politics, and communities” (Namaste 229). Since the binary places individuals in opposition to one another poststructuralists also seek to debunk the ideas of one sex being better than the other.
Mascia-Lees, Frances E. Gender and Difference: in a globalizing world. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press 2010 Print.
Namaste, Ki. “The Politics of Inside/Out: queer theory, poststructuralism, and a sociological approach to sexuality.” Sociological Theory 12.2 (1994): 220-231. Web. 10 March. 2013.
and controlling models of culture, with a consequent interest in social process and agency."
Poststructuralists strive to debunk essentialism and dismantle the binary.
Poststructuralism as it pertains to "sexuality, sex, and gender"
Poststructuralism is a theoretical framework best adapted to analyzing the meanings of sex, gender, and sexuality, the history of the meanings, and how the fluidity of gender and sex can destabilize the binary. Poststructuralism is a term associated with the writings of French theorists Michael Foucault and Jacque Derrida and refers to “a manner of interpreting selves and the social with breaks with traditional epistemologies and contends that a focus on the individual as an autonomous agent needs to be ‘deconstructed’, contested, and troubled” (Namaste 221). Most significantly, relating directly to the topic of this paper, poststructuralism is a direct response to the theoretical framework of Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism. Lévi-Strauss believed that “all human thought is dualistic, dividing the world into sets of oppositional categories like black and white, male and female, and nature and culture” (Mascia-Lees 181). Since Lévi-Strauss’ theory does not leave an individual with much (if any) agency or autonomy a new theoretical framework arose in contention.
Not everything is black and white and poststructuralist theory can offer valuable insight into the ways in which gendered cultures radically challenge “normative taxonomies of gendered sexuality and provide a contemporary vision of these as deconstructed” (Hines 52). Therefore, current queer theorists have employed poststructuralism as means for providing a “model of difference provoking new insights into the continual reproduction of heterosexual hegemony and offer a specifically historicized understanding of sexual identities, politics, and communities” (Namaste 229). Since the binary places individuals in opposition to one another poststructuralists also seek to debunk the ideas of one sex being better than the other.
Mascia-Lees, Frances E. Gender and Difference: in a globalizing world. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press 2010 Print.
Namaste, Ki. “The Politics of Inside/Out: queer theory, poststructuralism, and a sociological approach to sexuality.” Sociological Theory 12.2 (1994): 220-231. Web. 10 March. 2013.