Poststructuralism is characterized by a radical skepticism about the nature of meaning and value. According to this current intellectual orientation, all value in art is relative as are all notions of morality. It is argued that there are simply no absolutes. Given the breadth of issues covered by this phenomenon, I will first address the general themes that constantly reappear in poststructuralist texts. Then I will explain what I see as the major errors in reasoning of three of the most important poststructuralist thinkers: Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Stanley Fish, and Jacques Derrida. Smith's notion of the “contingencies of value” is highly respected in the poststructuralist camp of “critical” thinking, an orientation that is essentially humanist in outlook. Derrida is the creator and leading figure of the “deconstructionist” camp, which I see as profoundly antihumanist. Stanley Fish occupies a middle ground with his characterization of literature as a “self-consuming artifact.” Whereas Fish's rhetoric of self-consumption is reminiscent of deconstruction, his approach is essentially humanist in its search for meaning. The chapter ends with a consideration of “intertextuality” and base metaphors.

Art and Culture

To a great extent the attack on value in the arts is tied to a critique of political injustice. Poststructuralists have attempted to reformulate Enlightenment ideals about liberty, equality, and fraternity in terms of a theory of the radical relativity of all thought as related to a model of oppression and victimization.