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Post-structuralism is a body of work that followed in the wake of structuralism, and sought to understand a world irrevocably dissected into parts of systems, as in deconstruction.
Post-structuralists are most clearly distinct from their structuralist predecessors due to their rejection of structuralism's
reductivist methodology. Instead, they pursue an infinite play of signifiers and do not attempt to impose, or privilege, one
reading of them over another. Appropriately, within the discipline of post-structuralism there are few theories in agreement, but
all take as their starting point a critique of structuralism. Post-structuralist investigations tend to be politically oriented,
as many of them believe the world we think we inhabit is merely a social construct with different ideologies pushing for
hegemony.
Key post-structuralists are the philosopher Jacques Derrida, the
historian Michel Foucault, and the sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno
Latour.
See also
postmodernism -- structuralism
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