.
· without a fixed point of reference against which to measure movement we cannot tell whether or not you are moving at all.
·
· Post Structuralism accuse of not following through the omplications of the views about language on which their intellectual system is based.
· Post structuralism says, in effect, that fixed intellectual reference points are pemanently removed by properly taking on board what structuralists said about language.
· We could say, to change the analogy, in space, where there is no gravity, there is no up and down, and these pronouncements about language send us into a gravity free universe, without upside or right way up.
· These are the distinctions between Structarilsm and post structuralism : 1. Origins, Structuralism derives ultimately from linguistics. Linguistics is a dicipline which has always been inherently confident about the possibility of establishing objective knowledge. Structuralism inherits this confidently scientific outlook: it too believes in method, system, and reason as being able to establish reliable truths. By contras, Post structuralism derives ultimately from philosophy. This point of view is encapsulated in Nietzsche's famous remark “ there are no facts, only interpretation “
2. Tone and style. Structuralist writing tends to toward abstraction and generalization : it aims for a detache, “ scientific coolness “ of tone. Post structuralist writing, by contrast, tends to be much more emotive. Often the tone is urgent and euphoric, and the style flamboyant and self – consciously showy.
3. Attitude to language. Structuralist accept that the world is constructed through language, in the sense that we do not have access to reality other than through the linguistic medium. By contras, post – structuralism is much more fundamentalist in insisting upon the consequences of the view that, in effect, reality itself is textual. Post structuralist