Poststructuralism: A View from Charles Bridge

In this article poststructuralism is treated as a bundle of trends in intellectual history united by a common endeavor to revise structuralist assumptions, theories, and methods, and to cultivate themata the structuralists neglected. Four trends are considered: deconstruction, interactional pragmatics, empirical study of literature (empirische Literaturwissenschaft), and Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics. Poststructuralism is commonly contrasted with its immediate predecessor, French structuralism of the 1960s. This article examines the theoretical parallels between poststructuralist trends and the first system of structuralism, the pre-World War II system of the Prague school, an examination that indicates the contrast between poststructuralism and structuralism has to be considerably mitigated. Many of the theoretical ideas and methods of analysis advanced in the poststructuralist period were introduced in the structuralist thought of the Prague school.