• Introduces the basics, taking nothing for granted in its exploration of why poststructuralism has been so influential.
• Offers important, understandable examples to explain each theory.
• Addresses the resistance and misrepresentation poststructuralist theory often faces.

New to this Edition:

• A thoroughly updated edition that includes detailed discussion of contemporary issues, with greater focus on female theorists, such as Sarah Kofman and Julia Kristeva.
• Contains a new chapter on the relationship between meaning and the world

   
Poststructuralism challenges traditional ways of thinking about human beings and our relation to the world. Language, meaning, and culture are all reappraised, and with them assumptions about what it's possible for us to know. More interested in posing sharply focused questions than in reassuring with certainties, its theorists tend to clarify the options, while leaving them open to debate. At once sceptical towards inherited authority and positive about future possibilities, poststructuralism asks above all that we reflect on its findings.
    
In this Very Short Introduction, Catherine Belsey traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture. In this new edition, such well-known figures as Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida are joined by less famous theorists, and examples are drawn from both high art and popular culture. Shakespeare features alongside advertising and Christmas cards, as well as Lewis Carroll, Marcel Duchamp, Toni Morrison, and the tantalizing lithographs of M. C. Escher.