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Post-structuralism, Complexity and Poetics.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>10/2000
<mark>Journal</mark>Theory, Culture and Society
Issue number5
Volume17
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Post-structuralism and complexity are plural and diverse modes of thought that share a common subscription to the �anteriority of radical relationality�. They nonetheless subscribe to a different ethic of life because they address the anteriority of radical relationality in different ways. Complexity remains strategic in its bid to become a power-knowledge of the laws of becoming. It derives that strategic ethic from its scientific interest in the implicate order of non-linearity that is said to subvert Newtonian science. Post-structuralism is poetic. It derives its poetic ethic from Heidegger and from the re-working of orphic and tragic sensibilities to radical relationality with the radically non-relational. Observing that all poetry is complexity avant la lettre, the paper illustrates these points with the Odyssey and concludes that while complexity is ultimately concerned with fitness, post-structuralism is pre-occupied with justice.