poststructuralism

Movement in 20th-century philosophy, cultural theory, and literary criticism that debates and contests the theoretical assumptions of structuralism, rejecting the conclusion that there are fundamental structures in language and cultural systems that provide a key to meaning.

Following the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, poststructuralist critics point to the free play of meaning in the ‘texts’ constituted by sign systems, which are considered to be open to a multiplicity of interpretations. As a discipline of thought, poststructuralism draws heavily on traditional categories of rhetorical study, such as metaphor and metonymy.