Page 136 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

ContCultural Theory Text Pages 4/4/03 1:42 PM Page 127

Semiology: from structuralism to post-structuralism

philosophical game, whose conventions he respects, even in the
ritual transgressions at which only traditionalists could be
shocked, he can only philosophically tell the truth about the philo-
sophical text and its philosophical reading, which (apart from the
silence of orthodoxy) is the best way of not telling it’ (Bourdieu,
1984, p. 495). At its best, as in Foucault or in Derrida at his least
playful, post-structuralism can be much more than this; at its
worst, as in the silly word games about even sillier television
programmes that sometimes seem to fill cultural studies journals,
it can be very much worse.

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