Divergences within Post Structuralism: Foucault- Derrida- Lyotard

 

Working Paper 99

Vikash N Pandey

Institute of Rural Management Anand 388 001

April 1996

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The paper is to bring out the inner-differences within poststructuralism. Based on the critique of Cooper and Burrell’s (1988) writing, the paper argues that there are at least two legacies within poststructuralism thinking, one Saussarean and the other, Nietzschean. These different shades of social theories exemplified through Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard, posit the distance between deconstructionism and postmodernism and between these two stands the Foucauldian critique of modernism. The central concern of the paper is the trinity of poststructuralism and the overlapping in their positions, without going into the merits/demerits of each one of them for an alternate critique of organisational analyses.

* Associate Professor, Institute of Rural Management, Anand, PB No.60, Anand 388 001.