ABSTRACT
Any -ism, from antinomianism to zoroastrianism, typically encodes a central thesis, which can be given a strong and simple formulation. Poststructuralism, however, is unusual among -isms because it initially appears to lack a core set of statements; indeed, its temporal prefix post makes its status as an -ism heavily dependent on its dominant predecessor, namely, structuralism. Many have claimed that this is an essential weakness in conceptualizing the poststructuralist position (Barth 1980, Kostelanetz 1982, and the aptly named Newman 1984). Its intellectual role in historical terms is one that might be assigned to a footnote; it (merely) constitutes a critical commentary on the great structuralist enterprise which spanned the middle decades of the twentieth century. Recent arguments by critics such as McHale (1987), however, challenge this marginal view of the postmodernist phase. 1 McHale suggests that there has been a marked philosophical shift in the transition from a structuralist perspective, which embodied a poetics dominated by epistemological issues to a poststructuralist perspective, wh ich incorporates a poetics dominated by ontological issues.
