Michel Foucault's in his book “The Archaeology of

 Knowledge” analyses “Statement”, the basic unit of discourse.

 In contrast to classic structuralists, Foucault does not believe that the
meaning of semantic elements is determined prior to their articulation.

Roland Barthes proclaimed ‘the death of the author’ in a 1968 essay in which he
questioned the traditional assumption that a text is directly and solely traceable
to a single author for meaning and production, in short, for authority.
• Poststructuralist critical practice contests the category of the ‘author’ as
omniscient or the single source of power in relation to a text.
• Meaning is not fixed by or located in the author’s ‘intention’, whatever that
may be.
• What poststructuralist critics question is a text’s reliance on “a single self-
determining author, in control of his meanings, who fulfils his intentions
and only his intentions” For Eagleton, textual meaning cannot be ascribed
to authorial intention because it is “the product [] of language, which
always has something slippery about it”.

According to Derrida language has two important characteristic

a) Its play of signifiers continually defers, or postpones, meaning.
b) The meaning it seems to have is the result of the differences by which we
distinguish one signifier from another.
He coined „diffárance‟
- to defer, to differ.

How is this applied to Raisin in the Sun?

Post-structuralism example: The eggs referenced in Raisin in the Sun is an
example of Post-Structuralism. The author does not give a direct or significant
meaning to the object, leaving the interpretation up the reader. The eggs are
mentioned multiple times and can be seen as a representation of reality-based
tasks that remind Walter of his family's financial struggles. The reminder of his
lack of wealth makes him feel as if he is being kept from achieving his dreams.
The egg can also stand for multiple things: poverty, dreams, desire, life. Theres no
set definition and this interpretation is without a definition. This book and its
symbols have many, infinite meanings.