Unlearning the Routines of Intelligibility: A Reading on Roland Barthess Postmodernist/Poststructuralist Stance

Abstract

Roland Barthes’s theoretical attack on the intelligibility of structuralism has always sounded like philosophical reasoning that should be revered as such. His theory is a paradigm shift in human effort in the creation of a better life and its understanding. Through a written text, it is possible to view cultural entities that reveal the forwarding of the world’s civilization being conveyed by the author. This possibility is granted by individual/reader’s cultural background, which varies with the variation of the latter’s life conception. In this context, do we consider the author’s biography or his/her imagination in our construction of the text’s meaning? In other words, should we perceive life through the same lenses of the author by the help of the text? This article has argued that Barthes’s stance on poststructuralism/postmodernism is not a philosophical reasoning but a necessary step in the human free psychological development. On the other hand, confining a written passage to the author’s intended meaning (which is not feasible), does not verify the human cultural diversifications; and finally, both poststructuralism and postmodernism are aiming the same cultural objectives which do not go for the understanding of the world through a single discourse.