2018
This publication is inspired by, and symbolically represents, ideas of Post-Structuralism—an intellectual current associated with a group of mid-20th-century French and continental philosophers and critical theorists who rose to international prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. The term ‘Post-Structuralism’ reflects its oppositional relationship to Structuralism, a European intellectual movement of the early to mid-20th century that argued human culture could be understood through the application and analysis of Structural Linguistics.
Although post-structuralist thinkers offer varying critiques of Structuralism, common threads include a rejection of the idea that structures are self-sufficient or stable, and a critical interrogation of the binary oppositions that underpin those structures. Writers whose work is often associated with Post-Structuralism include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, and Jean Baudrillard—though many of them resisted such labelling.
A lot of Post-Structuralist ideas are based on the phenomenological idea that knowledge could be centred on the human knower and that is rejected by Structuralism. In phenomenology, this foundation is experience itself. “By contrast, Post-structuralism argues that founding knowledge either on pure experience (phenomenology) or systematic structures (Structuralism) is impossible. This impossibility was not meant as a failure or loss, but rather as a cause for "celebration and liberation."” (Wiki).
Based on these findings and ideas, a representation was created through the combination of two texts and the implementation of a third, visual narrative within the publication. The pairing of Plato’s Phaedo and Didier Debaise’s essay What is Relational Thinking? reflects binary oppositions in literary style and modes of storytelling. Additionally, the Phaedo text is edited to remove the narrator, echoing post-structuralist arguments that the reader, rather than the author, becomes the primary subject of inquiry. The third narrative takes the form of a visual essay, in which each successive image serves as an association to the previous one—creating a chain of intimate, interconnected visuals.