International Journal of Arts and Humanities (IJAH)

This paper argues that Karl Marx opened-up a discourse on critical materialism that sought to identify and analyze the sources of oppression in the nineteenth century. However, the use of the scientific paradigm of knowledge by Marx, which focuses on strict causal necessity, is insufficient to assess the multiple sources of oppression found within society. This paper will assert that poststructuralism’s use of an aesthetic paradigm of knowledge and a framework seeking interpretation and understanding provides a methodology that is both materialistic and able to account for the multifaceted nature of oppression. Arguing that language is metaphorical and self- referencing, the poststructuralist approach begins with the empirical acts of oppression and seeks to identify the material and cultural conditions that gave rise to the logic of oppression. Using this method, poststructuralism avoids the construction of transcendental subjectivity and eliminates the discourse on human essence as the starting point for critique.