The criticism of bases and claims of post-structural geography

Abstract

In contrast to structuralists, who sought to achieve a fixed and static framework of meanings by referring concepts and content of knowledge to dominant structures and discourses, denying structures and meanings, post-structuralists abandoned the content of knowledge from any constraint and involved it in fluidity and ambiguities, and denied any pre-designed semantic structure. According to the post-structuralism view, there is no fixed semantic framework and no reliable foundation for knowledge, and everything is in the process of continuous decay and disintegration and every meaning is exposed to a continuous process of semantic dialectics in the dual oppositions between different and conflicting interpretations, and experiences changes, and this process continues and there is no end for it. In the field of geography, meanings are produced in the process of communication between spaces, and there are no independent meanings and identities for geographical space and place alone. According to the authors of this article, post-structuralism, despite the great noise, is a non-scientific and non-epistemic viewpoint, and before having an epistemic nature, it is considered as a political and social movement and approach. A look at the fundamentals and assumptions of this school suggests that this view has conceptual and epistemic contradictions. Relying on the claims of this school, the possibility of any scientific research, and the ability to communicate between geographic spaces and to reach the fields of interaction and dialogue between individuals, groups and spaces are lost. Therefore, the article authors' opinion is that, basically and logically, post-structuralism is something impossible, unreasonable, dimensionless, and a meaningless term.