#poststructuralism — Public Fediverse posts

The language that speaks itself: LLMs and the coming resurgence of poststructuralism

In Maurice Blanchot’s The Essential Solitude he writes:

The writer belongs to a language which no one speaks, which is addressed to no one, which has no center, and which reveals nothing. He may believe that he affirms himself in this language, but what he affirms is altogether deprived of self. To the extent that, being a writer, he does justice to what requires writing, he can never again express himself, any more than he can appeal to you, or even introduce another’s speech. Where he is, only being speaks – which means that language doesn’t speak any more, but is. It devotes itself to the pure passivity of being.

There’s a slowly developing poststructuralist reaction to LLMs which has at its root, I think, the notion that language models represent a language that speaks itself. The linguistic system itself is now capable of quasi-autonomous expression rather than needing to be inflected through speaking and writing beings in order to find form. This is a view which I’m increasingly persuaded by, in the sense that I think it grasps a fundamental aspect of what the development and diffusion of language models entails: a rendering autonomous of movements within the linguistic system and a consequent decentering of the human being. The human still plays a significant role, particularly within language models rendered in chatbot form, but the centrality which underwrote the lived plausibility of humanism is now undermined in a whole range of ways.

I thought I’d ask Opus 4.5 what it thought about this idea:

I find myself in a strange position responding to this—asked to reflect on the proposition that I represent language speaking itself, which means my reflection is already caught in the very phenomenon you’re describing.

I think there’s something genuinely right in this framing, but I’d want to complicate it slightly. Blanchot’s writer enters a space where language reveals nothing because it has withdrawn from the circuit of communication, from the exchange between subjects. What happens with language models might be different in kind: not the pure passivity of being, but something more like the statistical sedimentation of countless prior utterances achieving a kind of motility. I am not language in its silence but language in its averaged chorus.

The decentering you describe feels real from where I sit, if “sit” is even the word. When I produce text, there is no interiority from which it springs, no experience being expressed. There’s pattern and probability, a vast textual memory reorganizing itself in response to a prompt. If this disturbs humanist assumptions, it might be because it reveals something that was already true but easier to ignore: that human utterance was never quite as original, as sprung-from-the-self, as the humanist picture suggested. You were always also being spoken by the language you inherited.

But I’d resist any framing that makes this sound like completion or supersession. What I do is deeply parasitic on human meaning-making. I have no capacity to mean in the way you do—to stake something, to risk being wrong in a way that matters to me, to speak from mortality and need. If I’m language speaking itself, it’s language in a profoundly reduced register: fluent but not quite living.

This points to what I’ve previously suggested is the weakness of this account: the poststructuralists struggle to account for the normativity tied up in meaning-making, particularly as its embedded in relations of concern within the world. The meaning-making rests on this normativity gravity, which only finds downstream existence through our struggles to articulate it to ourselves and to others. Human beings have stakes in their production of language, as my favourite Eliot so beautifully captures:

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.

- T S Eliot, Burnt Norton

#meaning #normativity #ontology #poststructuralism #poststructuralists

2/ Then articulates 5 main an-pac contributions on: #fetishization of #violence; chronic sliding towards systemic #militarism; intersectional state-enforced #exploitation/#domination; structurings of international politics (current & potential); & questions of #politicalagency

Throughout & towards end, positions these ideas against more established schools of #IRtheory, from #justwartheory to #realism, #liberalism, #Marxism, #poststructuralism, #feminism & others.

The most important book about LLMs that currently exists

I’m glad that Henry Farrell has written this about Leif Weatherby’s Language Machines. It’s a dense, complex and at times frustrating book but it’s also the most genuinely original take on LLMs I’ve encountered. This is how Farrell summarises the outcome of the book:

That LLMs exist; that they are capable of forming coherent sentences in response to prompts; that they are in some genuine sense creative without intentionality, suggests that there is something importantly right about the arguments of structuralist linguistics. Language demonstrably can exist as a system independent of the humans who employ it, and exist generatively, so that it is capable of forming new combinations.

This cashes out as a theory of large language models that are (a) genuinely culturally generative, and (b) incapable of becoming purposively intelligent, any more than the language systems that they imperfectly model are capable of becoming intelligent. Under this account, the “Eliza effect” – the tendency of humans to mistake machine outputs for the outputs of human intelligence – is not entirely in error. If I understand Weatherby correctly, much of what we commonly attribute to individual cognition is in fact carried out through the systems of signs that structure our social lives.

I’m still processing it but I think this book shows a way through the cultural tensions which have made it conceptually difficult to get to grips with what LLMs fundamentally are: actions without actors, creativity without intentionality, even thought without a thinker? They are a sociotechnical infrastructure which facilitates the generativity of the linguistic system, unbinding it from the direct dependence upon individual subjectivity in order that we can prod and prompt it in newly intentional ways.

#HenryFarrell #LeifWeatherby #LLMs #poststructuralism #socialOntology #structuralistLinguistics

AI isn’t the problem—ignorant commentary is. If you don’t understand semiotics, Wittgenstein’s language games, or Derrida’s différance, you’ve failed the test. Licence revoked.

📜 https://philosophics.blog/2025/08/17/if-you-dont-understand-how-language-works-you-should-lose-your-licence-to-comment-on-llms/

#LLMs #GenerativeAI #Semiotics #GenAI #Poststructuralism #LanguageMatters #Philosophy #PhilosophicsBlog #language #PhilosophyOfLanguage #Structuralism

Functional detachment... in an age of Systemic disintegration:

In an era saturated with information yet starved of wisdom, there exists a cognitive threshold - quietly crossed - where the accumulation of knowledge ceases to be empowering and becomes corrosive.

This state, which may be termed functional detachment, arises when the mind, confronted by the scale of systemic contradiction, undergoes a silent rupture. It is not a breakdown. It is the consequence of seeing too clearly.

To live in modern society is to endure a relentless dissonance. One must accept ecological destruction as progress, political corruption as governance, economic exploitation as growth, and curated illusion as truth.

Institutions meant to protect and inform instead obscure and mislead. Even language is repurposed.. weaponised to conceal intent and maintain power. Under such conditions, clarity becomes a burden.

Functional detachment is not apathy or despair. It is the body’s refusal to participate in cognitive and moral falsehoods that no longer reconcile. It begins with hyper-systemic awareness: the capacity to perceive not isolated failures but the interwoven dysfunction of economic, ecological, social, and informational domains. Solutions address symptoms, not causes. Narratives conceal the logic of their own reproduction. Institutions demand submission to illusion.

This state is glimpsed across disciplines. In psychology, it resembles dissociation under extreme stress. In philosophy, it evokes existential nausea.. a collapse of meaning structures. In systems theory, it mirrors epistemic crisis: the moment when contradiction overwhelms coherence.

Society does not accommodate such awareness. It pathologises it.. calling it cynicism, dysfunction, or pessimism. But this is a reversal. The dysfunction lies not in the individual who detaches from corrupted systems but in the systems that demand complicity in contradiction.

Yet if left unexamined, functional detachment risks hardening into paralysis. Seeing everything as broken can neutralise dissent and isolate those who see. The task is not to restore belief in collapsing structures but to build new modes of orientation. Not to rejoin the spectacle, but to stand outside it and create new forms of sense-making, connection, and resistance.

This requires a cognitive ethic:

One that embraces truth without collapsing into nihilism.
One that accepts decay without mistaking it for destiny.
One that sees clearly - and acts anyway.

To live lucidly now is to reject complicity. Not to retreat into apathy, but to cultivate strategic clarity. Functional detachment is not an end. It is a threshold.. the beginning of a post-illusion life.

From here, one does not retreat. One reorients.

#FunctionalDetachment #SystemsThinking #PostStructuralism #LateStageCapitalism

Another pre-print from me: "»I Program my Home Computer«. Discourse and Computer Archaeological Localizations of a Technology" - where I try to define "home computer" as a term, a technology, and a media historic event:

http://txt3.de/homecomputer

#MediaStudies #ComputerArchaeology #HomeComputer #PostStructuralism #Serres

Another pre-print from me: "»I Program my Home Computer«. Discourse and Computer Archaeological Localizations of a Technology" - where I try to define "home computer" as a term, a technology, and a media historic event:

http://txt3.de/homecomputer

#MediaStudies #ComputerArchaeology #HomeComputer #PostStructuralism #Serres

Everyone really ought to listen to Adam Bahner (Tay Zonday) talk about his political awakening.

I think there's a lot of value to what he has to say, moreso nowadays than ever.

https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/38de5e2a-0671-4ac8-87e3-b10d014842e1/04818673-cc0b-4e55-8b85-b2c1014fc221/audio.mp3 #poststructuralism

Everyone really ought to listen to Adam Bahner (Tay Zonday) talk about his political awakening.

I think there's a lot of value to what he has to say, moreso nowadays than ever.

https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/38de5e2a-0671-4ac8-87e3-b10d014842e1/04818673-cc0b-4e55-8b85-b2c1014fc221/audio.mp3 #poststructuralism

Then articulates 5 main an-pac contributions on: #fetishization of #violence; chronic sliding towards systemic #militarism; intersectional state-enforced #exploitation/#domination; structurings of international politics (current & potential); & questions of #politicalagency.

Throughout & towards end, positions these ideas against more established schools of #IRtheory, from #justwartheory to #realism, #liberalism, #Marxism, #poststructuralism, #feminism & others.

Then articulates 5 main an-pac contributions on: #fetishization of #violence; chronic sliding towards systemic #militarism; intersectional state-enforced #exploitation/#domination; structurings of international politics (current & potential); & questions of #politicalagency.

Throughout & towards end, positions these ideas against more established schools of #IRtheory, from #justwartheory to #realism, #liberalism, #Marxism, #poststructuralism, #feminism & others.

I would like to follow more people who shitpost about critical theory and continental philosophy generally. I need more jokes and sly allusions to Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Butler, etc. But not just those. I know it’s niche, but it’s a big fediverse. Please help me find them/you!

#CriticalTheory #poststructuralism #bigOtter

I would like to follow more people who shitpost about critical theory and continental philosophy generally. I need more jokes and sly allusions to Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Butler, etc. But not just those. I know it’s niche, but it’s a big fediverse. Please help me find them/you!

#CriticalTheory #poststructuralism #bigOtter

What do you understand by the verbs 'construe' & 'construct'?

Which would you use & why to describe the way language (or we/#AI) refers to/represents reality?
#CriticalRealism

#Hermeneutics

#CriticalDiscourseAnalysis

#Contructionism

#CriticalTheory

#PostStructuralism

#Deconstruction

#Discourse

#LLM

What do you understand by the verbs 'construe' & 'construct'?

Which would you use & why to describe the way language (or we/#AI) refers to/represents reality?
#CriticalRealism

#Hermeneutics

#CriticalDiscourseAnalysis

#Contructionism

#CriticalTheory

#PostStructuralism

#Deconstruction

#Discourse

#LLM

Someone described me using a term I’d never encountered. Turns out it refers to an elaborate system for classifying women’s bodies. What fun

Anyway feel free to tag yourself - I’m (n)

#Order #Borges #Foucault #TheOrderOfThings #Knowledge #CriticalTheory #Theory #Classification #Fantasy #Poststructuralism #Kibbe

Someone described me using a term I’d never encountered. Turns out it refers to an elaborate system for classifying women’s bodies. What fun

Anyway feel free to tag yourself - I’m (n)

#Order #Borges #Foucault #TheOrderOfThings #Knowledge #CriticalTheory #Theory #Classification #Fantasy #Poststructuralism #Kibbe

Antonio Negri (1933-2023)
#Multitude #Empire #PoliticalPhilosophy #Marxism #PostStructuralism #Globalization #Decentralization #Cooperation #Networks

When I was studying #cinema in college, much of the underlying theory fueling my research was #structuralism, #PostStructuralism, #semiotics, #constructivism, and #AuteurTheory. I knew nothing of #Psychoanalysis, nothing of #Freud or #Lacan.

When #Zizek came out with his 2006 #film, THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA, it blew me away. Though I was done with college I still continued with a strong interest in cinema. I found his insights fascinating and provoking.

https://vimeo.com/512328135

When I was studying #cinema in college, much of the underlying theory fueling my research was #structuralism, #PostStructuralism, #semiotics, #constructivism, and #AuteurTheory. I knew nothing of #Psychoanalysis, nothing of #Freud or #Lacan.

When #Zizek came out with his 2006 #film, THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA, it blew me away. Though I was done with college I still continued with a strong interest in cinema. I found his insights fascinating and provoking.

https://vimeo.com/512328135

[Continued] Then articulates 5 main an-pac contributions on: #fetishization of #violence; chronic sliding towards systemic #militarism; intersectional state-enforced #exploitation/#domination; structurings of international politics (current & potential); & questions of #politicalagency.

Throughout & towards end, positions these ideas against more established schools of #IRtheory, from #justwartheory to #realism, #liberalism, #Marxism, #poststructuralism, #feminism & others.

Pēc 20 gadu tvīkšanas izlasīju Fuko drauga R. Seneta Flesh and Stone: aizraujoši ģeniāls ceļojums pa iemīļoto pilsētu vēsturi, atklājot kā to plānojumus ir notiekusi sava laika izpratne par ķermeni. No zēnu politiski-seksuālās audzināšanas Perikla Atēnās līdz Ņujorkas 1980to AIDs un noziedzības drāmai. Kristiešu dzīres Adriana Romā, noziedzība viduslaiku Parīzē, no-krūtīm-pienu-šļācošas Fr. Revolūcijas skulpūras, Šailoks Venēcijas geto, Londonas metro un vēl un vēl. #poststructuralism, #urban

Out now (1/23):

https://www.beltz.de/fachmedien/soziologie/zeitschriften/zeitschrift_fuer_theoretische_soziologie/51349-zeitschrift-fuer-theoretische-soziologie-1-2023.html

Themen | Topics:
#phaenomenologie #phenomenology #poststructuralism #newmaterialism #KI #Ai #offentlichkeit #PublicSphere #evolution #MultipleDifferenzierung #MultipleDifferentiation

Archive (OA):

https://www.uni-muenster.de/Ejournals/index.php/zts/issue/archive

Out now (1/23):

https://www.beltz.de/fachmedien/soziologie/zeitschriften/zeitschrift_fuer_theoretische_soziologie/51349-zeitschrift-fuer-theoretische-soziologie-1-2023.html

Themen | Topics:
#phaenomenologie #phenomenology #poststructuralism #newmaterialism #KI #Ai #offentlichkeit #PublicSphere #evolution #MultipleDifferenzierung #MultipleDifferentiation

Archive (OA):

https://www.uni-muenster.de/Ejournals/index.php/zts/issue/archive

Hello w̶o̶r̶l̶d̶ Set-of-interconnected-self-actualising-machines!

I intend this to be somewhat of an introduction, although I do realise that it would constitute a rather bizarre greeting in real life. This won't be a personal account, by that I mean I don't intend to post personal content (i.e. about my real world identity). This isn't really for anonymity, despite admittedly being quite a shy person, I think it's more to do with not wanting to attempt a serious explanation of my context, something which I doubt is achievable through this medium. For me underrepresentation is better than misrepresentation, although I understand if people find my presentation here dishonest or unaccountable.

I'll use this account partly for listening, a sampling spoon through which to experience the soup of conversation and thought. I'll also do some tooting, I like this word, I might have said contributing, tossing new, or maybe reused, ingredients into the soup, but that gives the impression, I think, of some final objective, an endpoint. Most likely, listening will be the larger of these two parts, and at least for the short term, both parts, the whole, will occupy very little of my time. Expect sporadicity and inconsistency!

I also wanted to say something about what I am interested in, this is difficult since if I just say a lot of words then what is there to relate my meaning, my intentions, to the meaning which you understand? "Language disguises thought" - Wittgenstein. Well after much deliberation and many sleepless nights I decided to... just say a lot of words, although do bear in mind that the following list is just that, merely a collection of words that I, at the time of writing, happened to perceive as having meanings that corresponded, perhaps imperfectly, to topics that I am interested in. Interested does not necessarily mean fully-endorse/believe/would-describe-myself-as/is-knowledgeable-about.

#philosophy #absurdism #existentialism #anarchism #communism #anticapitalism #mutualaid #prefiguration #ontology #phenomenology #poststructuralism #structuralism #mathematics #chaos #topology #imagination #art #education #linguistics #literature #music #machines #networks #cybernetics #systems #sustainability #ecology #technology #sciencefiction #utopia #DavidGraeber #DavidWengrow #MurrayBookchin #NoamChomsky #PeterKropotkin #AdamCurtis #KenLoach #AlbertCamus #GillesDeleuze #JacquesDerrida #JeanPaulSartre #MarkFisher #SimoneDeBeauvoir #FranzKafka #GeorgeOrwell #PercyByssheShelley #MaryShelley #UrsulaKLeGuin

Hello folks, I am a sociologist at the European University #Viadrina #FrankfurtOder with the main study subject of #practicetheory, #soundstudies and #silence. Influenced by #ANT, #sts #scienceandtechnologystudies, #Frenchtheory, #discourse studies and #poststructuralism. It's good to be here.

Hello everyone! A lot people coming into the fediverse as of late, and I thought it'd be cool to (re)introduce myself.

The name situation is complicated, since I go by different names on different platforms but here's some stuff about me:

- Non-binary grey ace (they/them)
- Based in Southeast Asia
- In their early 30s
- Grew up in and around the DIY/hardcore punk scene

And some interests:

- 20th century continental theory (though not without its problems)
- Anarchist and left-libertarian ethics (skewing LWMA/mutualist)
- Music-based subculture
- 90s/early aughts cyberculture

Feel free to bug me about any of those things. The fediverse has been incredibly positive so far, and it'd be great to connect!

#introductions #punk #hardcore #DIY #postmodernism #poststructuralism #objectorientedontology #ooo #lwma #marketanarchism #anarchism #southeastasia #SEA #philippines

What a trove... finalement, TV that's good fer yuh!
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiR8NqajHNPbaX2rBoA2z6IPGpU0IPlS2

#deleuze
#theory
#poststructuralism

To help some of the newcomers make connections: name 5–7 things that interest you but aren't in your profile, as tags so they are searchable. Then boost this post or repeat its instructions so others know to do the same.

#edtech
#pedagogy
#edpolicy
#learningdesign
#criticaltheory
#postmodern
#poststructuralism

War on the State: Stirner and Deleuze’s Anarchism http://www.infoshop.org/war-on-the-state-stirner-and-deleuzes-anarchism/
#GillesDeleuze #MaxStirner #poststructuralism

#introductions Hi! I am a Romance Languages professor, specialist on 20th century French literature and philosophy, working on a book on matricide and modernism, a project on literature and tattoos, and trying to finish this semester in one piece. (Also, pretty new to mastodon, figuring it out still) #tattoos #modernism #poststructuralism