As what we often mentioned in class, poststructuralism is a reaction against the modernist and structuralist philosophies that put emphasis on order or “the center.” Modernism follows the enlightenment which operated on the belief that Truth is objectively present in the world and man’s task is to find it.[1] Such “objective” truth then is the modernist “center” that is utilized to assure order of ideas and order of the world in general. Structuralism further added that there is a kind of a ruling network that would determine the correctness and appropriateness of interpretations of things or ideas. Hence, it believes on the concept of a grand narrative, of a center, that would determine the truthfulness or validity of a proposition in so far as such is a faithful articulation of the standards of the used structure.
Postructuralism reacted against these trends and claim that there is no such structure that would determine the truthfulness of a particular interpretation. Postructuralists believe that every structure is also an incarnation of power, hence all structures are but also arbitrary impositions of the will of those who are in privileged positions. Furthermore, postructuralism is a critique of the philosophy of presence that has once ruled the philosophy of the west which was known as metaphysics. Metaphysics, and even structuralism, wishes to look at the world as a unified whole. Hence, as a reaction, poststructuralism emphasized the pluriformity of the phenomena of the world. Poststructuralism rejected the hegemony of grand narratives and rather acknowledges the legitimacy of the mini-narratives of peoples and cultures.
With this at the background, for this reflection, allow me to state four major concepts of poststructuralism in order to articulate the kind of world that postructuralism could possibly postulate. These concepts are: absence and silence, decentering, deconstruction and freeeplay.
Postructuralism as the philosophy of absence and silence
As mentioned, poststructuralism is a reaction to the hegemony of presence. It was a reaction to the ordered world of the medievals and the moderns because of the poststructuralist belief that such “order” was also both unjust and oppresive. The “order” of the past shuts down the voices and rights of the many minor classes and cultures. Colonization and racism are among its most visible expressions.
Colonization is grounded on the belief of the Westerners that they possess a superior culture and it is their responsibility to educate and civilize the yet uneducated and uncivilized (undiscovered) parts of the world. As a consequence, they conquered lands and impose their cultures on others under the pretext that they are doing service for these lands and peoples. This paradigm totally rejects the value and potentials of the cultures of minority. Eurocentricism, as the philosophical rationale for colonization, disregard all other cultures as inept, inferior and useless.
Racism is also the same. This is also supported by the same philosophy of eurocentrism except for the fact that racism can be practiced not just by Europeans but by any other culture. Even minorities can become racists by their simple disregard, indifference and even at times, contempt against the visiting or foreign culture. Both eurocentrism and racism are governed by the so-called politics of identity, which is a modernist politics.[2]
Postmodernism, on the other hand, emphasizes not the politics of identity but the politics of difference.[3] When colonists and racists aim at making things identical, postmodernists agree that meaning is created by establishing one’s difference from the rest.[4] Uniqueness and difference are the basic characteristics of postmodernism.
Postmodernism takes this basic stand because of the belief that Being is not just about presence. This is partly influenced by Heidegger’s attempt to recapture the Being of the early Greeks who, for Heidegger, thought of Being as physis or aletheia.[5] In both cases, Being is an act: that of coming out and unfolding respectively. Heidegger believes that these aspects of Being were disregarded by Western metaphysics, which reduces Being simply as essence or that which is eternally or permanently present.[6] For Heidegger, metaphysics disregards the letheic character of Being, and such disregard gives rise to the birth of a kind of politics of identity beginning the time of the Scholastics down to the era of the modern thinkers.
With the postmodern emphasis on the letheic character of Being, absence and silence (as Levinas’ unsaid) has now also become a philosophical issue. Hence, Being cannot just completely be described by a single narrative because every narrative necessarily also involves a kind of concealment. Every articulation always left something unsaid, and such unsaid could now constitute the difference of the Being of the other.
Hence, postmodernism allows us to realize that we could not give a complete narrative of anything. Any narrative is but a meaningful account of something, but it does not necessarily constitute its totality. This then allows the poststructuralist to claim that any other thing which may be at variance from an established norm can be as valid as that norm. There is no such thing as an abnormal phenomenon. The once abnormal things are now conceived simply as the hiddenness, the silence, or the absence of Being which was concealed from the hitherto accepted norm of understanding.
In the postmodern world, otherness becomes a virtue[7], not a crime. When in the past, to become different is sinful, in the postmodern world, to be different or to be unique is the only way to establish one’s identity. The poststructuralist identity is now in being an other.
Poststructuralism and the value of decentering
If poststructuralism gives emphasis on the silence or absence of Being, which gives better appreciation of the politics of difference over the politics of identity, postmodernism now paves the way for the movement of decentering.
The concept of decentering was introduced in the area of literary criticism especially from those who were working on textual hermeneutics. It was a type of response given to the question about the relevance of the intention of the author in the interpretation of a text. It began with Schleiermacher’s claim that the author is already dead in the text. Interpretation is no longer an attempt of cognizing the meaning intended by the author. Rather, meaning is created with the reader’s appropriation of the text. Later, Gadamer used this in his claim about the fusion of the author’s and the reader’s horizons in interpreting the text. Illustrating this same argument, Dr. Hornedo quoted Prof. M.H. Abram’s text from A Glossary of Literary Terms:
Like the authors who produce literary texts, their readers are subjects who are shaped and positioned by the conditions and ideological formations of their own era... Insofar as the readers’ ideology differs from that of the writer, they will appropriate the text – interpret it so as to make it conform to their own cultural prepossessions.[8]
With the concept of decentering, the Poststructuralists were able to strengthen the claim that there is no privileged status. The center is a modernist and structuralist concept which is supposedly the source of meaning. The center assures “order.” In literary criticism, the center is the author’s intended meaning. In Biblical studies, for example, the search for the center is the search for Jesus’ intention (or at least of the hagiographer) in saying (writing) the text. Searching the origin, or the center, or the source, is an assurance of truthfulness and order.
But, with the poststructuralist decentering, the search for order, conformity and truthfulness is already overcome. What matters is meaning or relevance. There is no ruling paradigm, no ideal race, no privileged status, no correct or wrong interpretation. There is no structure that dictates how things should be done. The periphery is as important as the center, and there is no exclusion of anything, no matter how novel or variant a thing may be. Dr. Hornedo again says, “For postmodernism, the only real danger is from any totalizing grand narrative which cannot tolerate any differing reality-frame or other narrative other than itself. It is thus that Postmodernism is open to extreme pluralism – ‘nothing is excluded except exclusion itself’.”[9]
The Poststructuralist Deconstruction
With the poststructuralist call for decentering, there is another correlative motion that needs to be undertaken, that is, the deconstruction. This is a notion introduced by Heidegger in his Being and Time where he said that there is a need for a destruction of the traditional ontology.[10]
The call for deconstruction becomes an imperative because the concept of the center, essence or presence, has already been long engraved in the philosophy of the west through the introduction of the Platonic Ideas or Forms. Some historians of philosophy assert that the entire history of western philosophy is but a following of this attempt to name Being as essence or presence.[11] Hence, when poststructuralism argues for the hiddenness or absence of Being, there arose the real need to deconstruct the already fortified metaphysics of the west.
Thus, because of the fact that the ruling paradigms have already taken deep root in the history of ideas, it became difficult to proceed outside or without them. The only way to proceed outside them is to start with something new, an alternative, or what Heidegger would call as a new way of thinking. Racism and eurocenterism, for example, had already taken deep roots in history that there was a need to uproot them from the consciousness of the many. There was a need for a deconstruction in order to make people understand that there is nothing wrong in being a native, with being an Asian, an Indio or a Filipino.
If poststructuralism promotes pluralism that acknowledges the concealment or hiddenness of Being, then it has to deconstruct the old exclusive and elitist systems. It has to deconstruct the grand narratives in order to prove that the little narratives are also as reflective of Being.
The concept of Freeplay in poststructuralism
With the removal of the center, what kind of reality would poststructuralism produce? Derrida introduces the concept of freeplay. With the absence of the center, and thus the affirmation of extreme pluralism, the rules and laws of the game are also denied because the imposition of a rule in a game is already a recognition of a center. Hence, if there is no center, then there is freeplay. Everything can be done. Everything becomes possible. Everything is freeplay. Any form of control, of censorship, of vetoing, or of regulation becomes an instantiation of a center, which for poststructuralism is also arbitrary and even oppressive.
Hence, the poststructuralist world is a world that is constantly changing. There is no certainty, and there is no constancy. Everything is temporary for to establish something permanent is again an imposition of a kind of a center.
This is where the challenge for poststructuralism and the poststructuralist thinkers surfaces. What kind of world would poststructuralism provide? If there are no rules, if there are no regulations, if there is no guideline, if there is nothing to abide and if everything is reduced to mere personal whims and caprices, then what will this world become? This is perhaps the reason why Derrida calls our postrstructuralist world a monstrosity. We are not sure of our future. There is no definitive plan for the future because even plans entail impositions. The future is there but is never fully unfolded in our mind. The future remains to be uncertain, and in a sense, unthinkable. With the type of progress that we are getting: in communication, in transportation, in social relations, in space explorations, in genetic engineering, and in many other things, the lines of normalcy is no longer established and we would never know where all these things would lead us. Certainly, we are now at risk. We are now in a precarious condition, not knowing what kind of world we would have for the years to come.
Freeplay is the basic character of our time. Anything can happen. A rich person may become poor, while a poor person may become rich. A mother may be sent to prison by her own children while children are sold to human trafickers by their own parents. A once respected religious leader can now turn to become a villain while a villain may turn out to be the real hero after all. Things change beyond our expectations, and these changes can even happen when we don’t anticipate them. We can never become complacent that the world that we now live, or the relationships that we now have, or the joy that we now feel will still be there when tomorrow comes. Everything is subject to change.
Everything has become so fluid especially our political and economic conditions. We are now currently experiencing difficulties in our economy, wherein millions of US dollars are dissolved in matters of minutes. The fluidity of human existence is a basic characteristic of the poststructuralist world, and there is hardly anything we can do to avoid it.
Hence, as existents in a world of poststructuralism, it becomes our responsibility to confront the plurality and fluidity of our world. No one can be excluded from it. Furthermore, we are all compelled to harmoniously co-exist with others. This is even aided by the fact that the world can now be easily accessed or reached. The world has become one locality, and everyone has become neighbors of each other, and they would have to harmoniously co-exist by mutually tolerating their differences.
Furthermore, we must cope with the reality of freeplay. Certainly, absolute freeplay can never be possible, and there has to be structures somewhere. But such structures no longer enjoy the same permanency that they had in the past. Even structures are now fluid and temporary, and they can be changed at any time.
Poststructuralism is an invitation for coping. We need to cope up. In fact, Dr. Hornedo emphasizes the value of structuration that is, the creation of alternative structures that would serve as updated effective guildelines for the harmonious co-existence of people. However, with the structuration, we are again reminded that the structures that we build are also temporary depending on their effectivity in ordering the lives of peoples. Hence, despite the presence of structures, the people of the poststructuralist world could no longer remain to be complacent. Rather, our vigilance is needed. We are invited to constantly reflect about the world in order to properly direct its progress without committing the old crimes of impositions, manipulations and even exclusions.
[1] Cf.Florentino Hornedo, Pagpapakatao and Other Essays in Contemporary Philosophy and Literature of Ideas (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2002), 15.
[2] Cf.Hornedo, 2002, p.19.
[3] Cf. Ibid.
[4] Cf. Ibid., p. 20
[5] Cf. Martin Heidegger, End of Philosophy, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p.4
[6] Charles Guignon, in his ‘Introduction’ for the Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p.18, says that ‘As a result to the first dawn of history, being comes to be thought of as what endures, what is permanent, what is always there. It is the continuous presence of the substance (ousia) that which remains through all changes...”
[7] Hornedo, 2002, p. 20.
[8] Ibid., p.147.
[9] Ibid., p.19.
[10] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edwad Robinson. (Tubingen: Neomarius Verlag, 1963), p. 41.
[11] See Guignon, 1993, p.18.
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