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Unit 32: Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction and Cultural Studies

Kristeva was an influential voice in the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from Notes
the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism.
Ultimately, this perspective criticizes the traditional view assuming a passive consumer,
particularly by underlining the different ways people read, receive, and interpret cultural texts.
On this view, a consumer can appropriate, actively reject, or challenge the meaning of a product.
These different approaches have shifted the focus away from the production of items. Instead, they
argue that consumption plays an equally important role, since the way consumers consume a
product gives meaning to an item. Some closely link the act of consuming with cultural identity.
Stuart Hall and John Fiske have become influential in these developments.
In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a text not only includes written language, but also
films, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful
artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of “culture”. “Culture” for a
cultural studies researcher not only includes traditional high culture and popular culture, but also
everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural
studies. A further and recent approach is comparative cultural studies, based on the discipline of
comparative literature and cultural studies.

Task Write a short note on cultural studies.

32.4 Summary
In a 1966 lecture “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Science”, Jacques
Derrida presented a thesis on an apparent rupture in intellectual life.
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement
beginning in the early-to-mid-20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious
break with traditional aesthetic forms.
Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different
versions of cultural studies after the field’s inception in the late 1970s.
The importance for Cultural Studies of participating in oppositional public spheres is an
underlying premise of this essay.
The problem with suggesting that Cultural Studies be counter disciplinary is that it cannot
be housed in universities as they are presently structured.

32.5 Keywords

Post-phenomenologists : Existential Phenomenology is a significant influence; one com-
mentator has argued that post-structuralists might just as
accurately be called post-phenomenologists.
Deconstruction : Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher
Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book of Grammatology.

32.6 Review Questions
1. What is post-structuralism?
2. What is Deconstruction? Explain.
3. What is growth and development in cultural studies?
4. What is importance and salient features in cultural studies?

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