Poststructuralism is one of those words that makes you sound intelligent at a high-class party even if none of the people around you are really sure what it means. Before reading Catherine Belsey’s Very Short Introduction, I knew it was associated with Postmodernism, but that was about it. For what it’s worth, here is Belsey’s brief definition:

Poststructuralism names a theory, or a group of theories, concerning the relationship between human beings, the world, and the practice of making and reproducing meanings. (9)

Where does meaning exist? In the traditional view, meaning exists outside of us in the things we encounter in life, the things to which language assigns words (or signifiers). Nineteenth century Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, had a problem with that explanation. If words were referential (referring to things outside of us), then all languages should have developed equivalent terms for common referents. They haven’t. This is what makes translation an art as much as a science. You’re not merely swapping out signifiers but re-conceptualizing meaning in a different referential system.

Poststructuralists turn the traditional understanding of meaning on it’s head. “[L]anguage represents a way of understanding the world, of differentiating between things and relating them to one another” (10). This is why learning a different language gives you a different understanding of the world.

Belsey’s Very Short Introduction provides an interesting (and potentially mind-bending) doorway into a movement which has influenced the way meaning is conceived.

Belsey, Catherine. Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.