By pure chance I have come across a surprisingly interesting article by Stanley Fish from 2000 about, of all things, what it takes to make a good university administrator. But he starts off succinctly appraising poststructuralism from a pragmatic point of view, and moves on to an interesting comparison between poststrucuralism and the thought of Machiavelli.
Teaser:
I think that the poststructuralist account of how things work (or don't work) is right, but I also think that its rightness doesn't matter, is of no consequence. Indeed, given the argument of poststructuralism, its rightness could not have any consequences, at least not the consequence of generating a program or a strategy or even a minimal list of dos and don'ts. To put the matter as concisely as possible, poststructuralism can't tell you what to do or what not to do. Its lesson is a modern and somewhat inflated update of the proverbial "the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray"; but that lesson cannot, without contradiction, be made into a basis for future action.Posted by Alan Hogue at August 15, 2004 03:39 PM