The 'Post-' as Prefix in Popular Culture and the Social Sciences (PDF)

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: A, University of Calcutta (Department of English, University of Calcutta), course: MPhil in English Literature, language: English, abstract: The gradual emergence of the 'post-'as prefix in the discourses of popular culture, academic enquiry and the social sciences have been overlooked and categorically neglected. Yet when encountered at a semantic level and part of morphological compounds such as post-colonial, post-modern, post-human or post-liberal [among others] one displays certain conservativeness with respect to its precise meaning(s) and semantic value(s) depending upon the free morpheme the post- adds itself to. This skepticism and semantic doubt is not external to the post-as-prefix but is inherent to its interior structure as an 'undecidable' belonging outside the logic of binary production. This essay would attempt to trace this post-as-prefix as a Derridean supplement [undecidable] that both adheres to and deviates from the semantic value of its root term, thereby displaying a double attitude of fidelity and infidelity towards it. It would further explain the 'post-as-prefix', among other such supplemental bound morphemes [neo-, pan- or trans-] that indicate the coming of a new epoch in social, cultural and political spaces in the world, an epoch that reveals and revels in the true nature of the linguistic sign [as a supplement for the thing], and subsequently the true movement of history and historical production.