Against Postmodernism/Poststructuralism: A Reading in Phenomenological Structuralism

Abstract

Since the 1960s, with the advent of postmodern and poststructural theories—with their emphasis on Parole—into the theoretical discourses of social science academics, a new struggle regarding the origins and nature of identity and consciousness has dominated social science and philosophical theories. The issue centers on several factors raised by postmodern and poststructural thinkers in the likes of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan against the structuralism of the sciences, (1) they question the validity regarding the Cartesian rational individual, which Foucault and Derrida deny in favor of their attempt to dissolve the subject altogether; (2) they question the interdependency of the constitution of a stable structure and a distinct subject with agency, in denying the latter they undermine the former; (3) they question the status of science; (4) finally, they question the possibility of the objectivity of any language of description or analysis. Although these factors raised in the writings of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault are theoretically legitimate and have posed tremendous problems for the social sciences and their constitution as a science based on the notion of a stable structure constituted by stable (rational) subjects with agency. This article posits that they are absurd theories, which highlight how consciousness may possibly operate at the quantum level but has no bearing on the lived-experiences of the human species outside of their relations to the means and modes of production in core or postindustrial countries in material reality.