Unit 9 - Post-WWII Literary Theory
UGC NET English Paper 2 Complete Study Material
📚 This comprehensive unit covers revolutionary theoretical movements from Structuralism to Postmodernism that transformed literary studies after World War II, essential for UGC NET English preparation.
Saussure's Langue/Parole, Binary Oppositions, Levi-Strauss' Myth Analysis, Barthes' Mythologies, Greimas' Actantial Model.
"The linguistic sign unites not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image." - Ferdinand de Saussure
Key Concepts: Signifier/Signified, Syntagm/Paradigm, Cultural Codes, Structural Analysis
Study StructuralismDerrida's Différance, Logocentrism, Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge, Barthes' Death of the Author, De Man's Rhetorical Reading.
1. Identify binary oppositions
2. Reverse hierarchy
3. Displace through undecidability
4. Reveal text's self-subversion
Key Terms: Aporia, Trace, Supplement, Pharmakon
Explore DeconstructionLacan's Mirror Stage, Symbolic/Imaginary/Real, Žižek's Ideology Critique, Kristeva's Abjection, Bloom's Anxiety of Influence.
"The unconscious is structured like a language." - Jacques Lacan
Key Concepts: Other, Jouissance, The Gaze, Interpellation
Analyze PsychoanalysisButler's Performativity, Cixous' Écriture Féminine, Irigaray's Speculum, Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, Queer Theory.
Key Terms: Phallogocentrism, Heteronormativity, Gender Trouble
Study Gender TheorySaid's Orientalism, Bhabha's Hybridity, Spivak's Subaltern, Fanon's Colonialism, Glissant's Creolization.
"The Orient was almost a European invention." - Edward Said
Key Concepts: Othering, Mimicry, Neocolonialism, Diaspora
Explore PostcolonialismGreenblatt's Self-Fashioning, Foucault's Power/Knowledge, Williams' Residual/Dominant/Emergent, Bennett's Textual Power.
• History as narrative construction
• Power circulates through discourses
• Texts as cultural artifacts
• No separation of literature/history
Key Terms: Thick Description, Cultural Poetics, Episteme
Analyze HistoricismIser's Implied Reader, Jauss' Horizon of Expectations, Fish's Interpretive Communities, Eco's Open Work.
"A literary work is not an object but a dynamic event." - Wolfgang Iser
Key Concepts: Affective Stylistics, Concretization, Indeterminacy
Study Reception TheoryHall's Encoding/Decoding, Hebdige's Subculture, Fiske's Popular Culture, Bourdieu's Cultural Capital.
1. Dominant-hegemonic reading
2. Negotiated reading
3. Oppositional reading
Key Terms: Hegemony, Articulation, Cultural Praxis
Explore Cultural StudiesBaudrillard's Simulacra, Lyotard's Metanarratives, Jameson's Late Capitalism, Hutcheon's Historiographic Metafiction.
"Simulation is no longer of a territory but precedes and generates it." - Baudrillard
Key Concepts: Hyperreality, Pastiche, Schizophrenia, Depthlessness
Study PostmodernismHayles' Posthumanism, Landow's Hypertext Theory, Buell's Environmental Imagination, Morton's Dark Ecology.
Key Terms: Technoculture, OOO (Object-Oriented Ontology), Anthropocene
Explore New DirectionsPost-WWII Theory Practice
Identify the Theorist
"This philosopher introduced the concept of 'différance' and challenged logocentrism in Western thought."
Match the Theory to Its Key Concept
Theory Terminology
Which term describes Judith Butler's concept that gender is constituted through repeated performances?
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