MediaSpace Wiki

Media Crit Spr2010 Session20

Mini-Lecture: Post-Modern Criticism

Post-structuralism

• Structuralism, as executed in semiotic analysis, isn't a perfect method
  • it has assumptions that presume that signs are static
  • it frequently ignores history (any context beyond that which is visible in the text)
  • it ignores the audience
    • the critic gets to pick and choose what matters
    • and what it means
    • it is easy to be wrong on both points
  • in presuming that a signified need not have a referent, it raises the possibility that there is no real meaning
• Post-structuralism is a name that is generally applied to methods that seek to resolve these and other issues
  • Deconstruction, for instance, exposes myriad meanings in demonstrating that these is no meaning
  • And audience-centered criticism looks to audiences for what matters.
• In other words, we aren't worried about post-structuralism right now, except to note that it is possible to use a structuralist analysis as the starting point for a survey or experimental study

The call for postmodern criticism

• Postmodern Criticism
  • At this point more a recognition of need than a reality
  • Built on an invented distinction
    • "Modernism" versus "Postmodernism"
  • and an ideological sensibility
    • Control of media privileges
    • Consumption of media subjugates or oppresses
    • Sort of a generalized notion of what Innis discusses
      • in a world where new media are a constant rather than an occasional reality
    • A presumption that signs are an instrument of power across media and content
  • We live in a the midst of a battle over signs and meaning in which many groups try to gain power by appropriating signs to their ends