How do structuralism and post-structuralism change the way I read a novel?

Question

I am not from a literature background and have very limited ideas about structuralism and post-structuralism.

From a naive point of view, these ideas say that we can interpret the text as we want since multiple interpretations are possible. But however, to me, the possibility of multiple interpretations does not mean that all interpretations are equally valid.

To me, it seems like we can always fall back on the possible most likely interpretations or most likely intention of the author, given the available evidence and context.

This kind of compromise is not at all new thing, and we always do this in science where each theory is seen as the closest approximations that explain the observations rather than the "ultimate truth".

Also, it has been true that each new generation interprets older texts (like Shakespeare and Homer) in their own way, in the light of social changes that have happened. Also, the ambiguity of the text and multiple interpretations also are not new ideas as far as I know. Given these, why are structuralism and post-structuralism seen as radical and how does it change the way one read a novel?

Answer 1

Structuralism and post-structuralism is, roughly speaking, a distinction without a difference, so we can look at them together.

In your question, you state:

From a naive point of view, these ideas say that (1) we can interpret the text (2) as we want (3) since multiple interpretations are possible. (4) But however, to me, the possibility of multiple interpretations does not mean that all interpretations are equally valid. To me, it seems like (5) we can always fall back on the possible most likely interpretations or (6) most likely intention of the author, (7) given the available evidence and context.

Moving piece by piece, (1) S/PS does agree that we interpret texts. Here the point is that every time we encounter a text we are engaging in interpretation. i.e., we have no unmediated access to the text.

(2) S/PS rejects the idea that these interpretations are "as we want." Instead, the interpretations arise from our understanding of language which is part of what mediates our encounter with the text.

(3) S/PS agrees to some extent that multiple interpretations are possible, but here we need to be careful, because S/PS does not think these are interpretations approximating the "true meaning" of a passage.

(4) For S/PS, the multiple interpretations occur because of the structures we have in us -- or rather the structures construct the interpretations.

(5) For S/PS, the so-called "most-likely interpretation" is the one that the structures of our culture have made seem most likely -- i.e., the one that fits best with our preconceptions.

(6) For S/PS, the author is unimportant to the meaning of the text, because what is produced is a consequence of the structures moving through time. We have no access to the author's original intent, and there is no such thing on PS.

(7) For S/PS, the "available evidence and context" is just a mirage for the things our culture encourages us to interpret as so.

Maybe, to put things in context in a hyper-simplified way--

S/PS is a movement that builds on a key Kantian theme: the idea that we have no access to the things in themselves but only as they are mediated through our perceptive and cognitive faculties. Passing through a bit of Hegel, it turns out the ways our faculties work is not static (as Kant seemed to imagine) but rather have changed over time.

Hegel also has the interesting claim that what we are really discovering in all of this thinking is that we are thinking, so what we are discovering is our thoughts. Hegel is still a realist about things mind you.

The S/PS lop off that realism. All we have left them are structures of thinking and comprehension that change over time. There's no meaning inherent to be discovered in books themselves on this view; there's just the task of interpreting things as they evolve.

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Here's a few sources that look okay:

https://www.philosophybasics.com/movements_poststructuralism.html

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

Answer 2

In his answer, @Virmaior accurately describes the notion of post structuralism in the domain of literary theory: essentially, that while there is a signifier, there is no [an absence of a] signified. There is no word world relationship to speak of, texts refer only to other texts, words to other words, ideas to other ideas, beliefs to other beliefs, etc. (Something akin, in essence, to a modern day Berkleyan idelism/skepticism).

But as you seem to suggest n your exchange of comments with Virmaior, post structuralism could leach into other domains. You liken the interpretation of a text with doing science, thereby evincing the realism/anti-realism/constructivism [all the way down] debate, not only in the domain of literary interpretation, but [the philosophy of] science and traditional epistemology itself.

It is in this context that I urge you to peruse intellectual historian, John Zammito’s, A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-Positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour. (https://www.amazon.com/Nice-Derangement-Epistemes-Post-positivism-Science/dp/0226978621), which tracks 20th Century movement from traditional epistemology and philosophy of science to the sociology of knowledge and of science, which have arisen from what he considers to be hyperbolic misreadings of Quine's holism and underdeterminism, the reasonable notion of theory ladeness of facts/perceptions [myth of the unmediated given, and Kuhnian incommesurability [of theories] (from his 1962 opus, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Given your interests you will appreciate this read.

Zammito’s intention is to deflate and contextualize these pernicious hyperbolic interpretations of ideas in the philosophy of science/knowledge as put forward by "radical theorists" and sociologists of science. This project is exemplified by the title of his concluding chapter of his book: “The Hyperbolic Derangement of Epistemes," which concludes with admonitions that:

There has been a derangment of epistemes. Philosophy of Science pursued "semantic ascent" [the linguistic turn cum poststructuralism] into a philosophy of language so "holistic" as to deny determinate purchase on the world of which we speak....It is time for a hard reckoning for, for a rigorous deflation.

He notes that this does not mean that we have not learned something important from each of “these theoretical extravagances. But it does mean that it is time to take up a more moderate historicism,” lest we find ourselves plunged into the "abîmé [abyss] of an almost absolute skepticism."

As I have noted elsewhere, Zammito’s efforts have foundered. Ideas that in 2004 he found pernicious to [the philosophy of] science, to the notion of “knowledge” itself, coupled with increasingly criteria-less inclusive pluralism, have now leached into the cultural ethos and folk epistemology to such an extent that the OED named "post-truth" their word of the year in 2016, a dozen years after Zammito's book was published. And as events over the past four years demonstrate, it appears that there is no stanching the flow.