Performativity, fetishism & the aristocracy of everyone.
I’m currently writing the methodology section of my Ed.D. thesis. The (non-?)structure I’m using for the whole thing is the philosophy of Pragmatism, which would take at least the rest of this post to describe adequately. Suffice to say that it’s a philosophy of action that rejects absolute, objective points of view.
Within the methodology section I have, of course, got to explain why I’m not using other theories as a framework so I’ve been reading up on Critical Theory and Post-structuralism. It seems to me that whilst they all have their appeal and elements of overlap, there’s important differences between them.
It’s always best for me to visualise things in order to understand them, hence the Venn diagram below (click to enlarge):
I’d love to hear any feedback: people too often see infographics and visualizations as stone tablets from heaven, whereas this is very much a work in progress! :-p
As with any 'large' field of research, there are a number of variabilities. I wouldn't say for example that all post structuralism was anti-humanist as Sartre always talked about 'becoming' human which has a great similarity with Laclau's idea of emancipations.
That's the thing about post-structuralism, I suppose – it's defined more in terms of negatives than positive and is, by it's very nature, a hodge-podge of ideas! :-)
The things at the centre shouldn't be "anti…"