Post-structuralism: paradox as a method

Abstract

The article draws a conceptual distinction the (French) structuralism of the 50's-60's and the post-structuralism of the 70's, which are discussed as overlapping in their intellectual paths; their mutual dynamics is defined as a reaction of the intelligence to the pressure of depersonalized unified schemes within the logic of structuralism against free improvisation and loose interpretation instead of total explanations in the post-structuralism interpretation. The article establishes a conceptual identity of sthe paradoxical nature between post-structuralism (and deconstructionism, which is homogeneous and identical thereto in a number of aspects), on the one hand, and constructionism with its specific process of language dismantling -social/ideological languages, social group dialects, on the other hand, which naturally leads the authors to the analysis of the paradoxicality principles, defined by post-structuralism (five principles of paradoxicality of Gilles Deleuze – paradox of regress, paradox of sterile reiteration, paradox of neutrality, paradox of absurd, paradox of Lévi-Strauss); post-structuralists' paralogisms are examined through paradoxical denotation; the late Roland Barthes' phenomenon of paradoxicality, becoming a plot-forming principle of narration, is analyzed. Post-structuralism is conceptualized in the article as the first decisive step of post-modernism; the affinity of post-structuralist and post-modernist commitment to parody, game and irony is stated; the theory of language games in post-modern interpretation is explored; one of those games – a game of carnival – is explored within the diachronic retrospective; the affinity of parody and carnival tradition of post-structuralism and post-modernism to the romantic irony of the XIX century and its inconsistency with the popular culture of laugh is established. The genesis of post-structuralism and post-modernism is connected with the ideological restart of the Western society before the "very end" of the Resistance ideas and the disappointment of the left European intellectuals in the "great legends" and illusions of Marxism. The blurred concepts of relativism are connected with the mutual disproportion of different layers of historical experience.