● Semiology- study of signs and signifiers

● Companies have created needs for “new prestigious oods”, making a “regime of ‘sign
value’ “
● Advertising, packaging, display, fashion, “emancipated” sexuality, media, etc, have
created many more signs and spectacles
● Products are no longer “use value” and “exchange value” → sign value( prestige,
expressions of style and status, prestige) , changes and influences a person’s identity
● Extol = praise
● In a society where everything is a commodity that can be bought and sold→ alienation is
total
● idiosyncrasy-> physical constitution particular to an individual
● 1970s→ agreed with neo-marxian view that: cap is blameworthy because it is
homogenizing, controlling, dominating social life
○ Robs individuals of their freedom, creativity, time, etc.
○ Didn’t discuss revolution of the working class or any rev forces, agents of change
● ​Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known
or communicated.
●

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● Broadly speaking, Structuralism holds that all ​human activity​​ and its products, even perception
and thought itself, are ​constructed​​ and not n​ atural​​, and in particular that everything has
meaning​​ because of the ​language system​​ in which we operate.
● firstly, every system has a ​structure​;​ secondly, the structure is what determines the ​position​​ of
each ​element​​ of a whole; thirdly, "structural laws" deal with ​coexistence​​ rather than ​changes​​;
and fourthly, structures are the ​"real things"​​ that lie beneath the surface or the ​appearance​​ of
meaning.
● The author isnt the starting point of the text, they “inhabit existing structures” t

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● deconstruction→ destroy any loyalties to any one truth,
● All of human thinking, is at its root, the priviledging of one thing over another
○ Writing < speech, reason > passion, words > art, sight > touch
● Derrida→ not nihilistic, but says that we should value the normally undervalued
● Deconstruct the binaries and favorings
● Derrida wasnt completely left wing, says that the idea that equality is better than
inequality isnt always true.
○ Pupils/teachers, parents/children
● Derrida criticizes that there is a neat, clear solution to everything, have to look at
the “messiness”
● aporia= impass/ puzzlement
● Confusion and doubt→ adulthood and maturity of mind
● Logocentrism→ naive devotion to logic, clear reason, faith in language as the
best way to communicate
○ Words cannot communicate all feelings
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