Page "Postmodernism" Paragraph 15

Post-Structuralists generally reject the notion of formulations of “ essential relations ” in primitive cultures, languages, or descriptions of psychological phenomena being forms of Aristotelianism, Rationalism, or Idealism.

Another common thread among thinkers associated with the Post-Structuralist movement is the criticism of the absolutist, quasi-scientific claims of Structuralist theorists as more reflective of the mechanistic bias inspired by bureaucratization and industrialization than of the inner-workings of actual primitive cultures, languages or psyches.

Generally, Post-structuralists emphasize the inter-determination and contingency of social and historical phenomena with each other and with the cultural values and biases of perspective.

Such realities were not to be dissected, in the manner of some Structuralists, as a system of facts that could exist independently from values and paradigms ( either those of the analysts or the subjects themselves ), but to be understood as both causes and effects of each other.

For this reason, most Post-structuralists hold a more open-ended view of function within systems than did Structuralists and were sometimes accused of circularity and ambiguity.

Post-structuralists countered that, when closely examined, all formalized claims describing phenomena, reality, or truth, rely on some form or circular reasoning and self-referential logic that is often paradoxical in nature.

Thus, it was important to uncover the hidden patterns of circularity, self-reference and paradox within a given set of statements rather that feign objectivity, as such an investigation might allow new perspectives to have influence and new practices to be sanctioned or adopted.

In this latter respect, Post-structuralists were, as a group, continuing the philosophical project initiated by Martin Heidegger, who saw himself as extending the implications of Friedrich Nietzsche's work.