Assertion (A): poststructuralism emerged as a response to and critique of structuralism. Structuralism provided the foundational ideas and methodologies that poststructuralist thinkers then engaged with, critiqued, and expanded upon.
Reason (R): Structuralism, as developed by thinkers like Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes, tends to downplay individual human agency in favor of underlying structures (such as language, myths, and social systems) that determine human behavior and cultural phenomena. Thus, structuralism is generally seen as anti-humanist because it focuses on impersonal systems rather than human agency.
Structuralists believe that language structures our perception of reality. Poststructuralism also considers language crucial, but it critiques structuralism's notion of stable meanings and emphasizes the fluidity and instability of meaning in language.
Year-wise PYQs
