Poststructuralism deals with non-dualism primarily by dismantling the very conditions that produce binary thinking while resisting any move toward a metaphysical unity. While non-dual traditions (such as Advaita Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, or Daoism) seek to dissolve distinctions to reveal an underlying oneness, poststructuralism disrupts the very notion of stable categories without affirming any essential unity beneath them.
1. Deconstructing Dualisms Without Reaffirming Unity
Poststructuralism (Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze) critically interrogates the binaries that structure thought: presence/absence, self/other, subject/object, truth/falsehood. However, instead of resolving these into a higher unity (as in traditional non-dualism), it keeps them in play, emphasizing difference, deferral, and relationality.
• Derrida’s Différance: Meaning is always deferred, never present in itself. There is no stable “One” behind dualities—only an infinite play of traces.
• Foucault’s Power/Knowledge: Subjectivity is a product of power relations, not a pre-existing unity waiting to be realized.
• Deleuze’s Multiplicity: Instead of reducing dualities to a single truth, Deleuze emphasizes rhizomatic thinking—a network of shifting, interrelated forces without a central foundation.
→ Non-dualism in poststructuralism is not a return to unity but an escape from fixed oppositions into multiplicity.
2. The Subject: Dispersal Instead of Dissolution
Non-dual traditions often propose the dissolution of the ego into a larger, undivided reality. Poststructuralism, on the other hand, critiques the very formation of the subject without offering a stable alternative.
• Lacan’s Split Subject: The subject is always alienated from itself through language (je suis un autre).
• Foucault’s Technologies of the Self: The self is a shifting product of discourse and social forces.
• Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Subjectivity is an assemblage, not a unified whole.
→ While both non-dualism and poststructuralism reject the ego, poststructuralism does not replace it with a higher self or unity—only the flux of becoming.
3. Language and the Limits of Expression
Non-dualism often turns to paradoxical language (Zen koans, Daoist reversals) to break conceptual distinctions. Poststructuralists, particularly Derrida, similarly challenge the assumption that language can ever fully capture reality.
• Derrida and Apophatic Discourse: Just as mystical traditions speak of the ineffable, Derrida sees meaning as always in excess of any signifier.
• Deleuze’s Minor Literature: Language is a deterritorializing force, undoing fixed meanings rather than affirming any final truth.
• Foucault on Madness and Silence: What escapes discourse is not unity but a radical outside—a rupture rather than a return.
→ While non-dualism often reaches toward silence as a higher truth, poststructuralism sees silence as another site of power and exclusion.
4. Ethics: Levinas, Derrida, and the Non-Dual Responsibility
Where poststructuralism and non-dualism most interestingly converge is in ethics—particularly in Levinas’ notion of the Other (which influenced Derrida).
• Levinas and the Infinite Responsibility: Ethics emerges not from an abstract unity but from the irreducible face-to-face encounter with the Other.
• Derrida’s Hospitality: The Other always exceeds conceptual categories, resisting both dualism and monism.
• Buddhist Ethics: Compassion arises when the illusion of separation collapses—though Buddhism often frames this in ontological terms, whereas poststructuralists resist any essentialist grounding.
→ Both traditions reject self/other binaries, but while non-dualism affirms an ultimate unity, poststructuralism stays within the realm of undecidability and openness.
5. Immanence vs. Transcendence
Many non-dual philosophies (Vedanta, Zen, Daoism) are immanentist—seeing all distinctions as ultimately unreal. Deleuze, in particular, shares this emphasis on immanence:
• Deleuze’s Plane of Immanence: Reality is an interconnected field of becoming, but without any One behind it.
• Buddhist Śūnyatā (Emptiness): Nagarjuna’s emptiness doctrine suggests that all things lack inherent existence, which resonates with Deleuze’s idea of univocity—everything exists on the same plane but without a single, foundational truth.
→ Deleuze’s immanence may be the closest poststructuralism gets to non-dualism, though it remains a dynamic field of difference rather than an underlying unity.
Conclusion: A Non-Dualism Without Unity?
Poststructuralism engages non-dualism by:
1. Rejecting fixed dualisms (but without affirming unity).
2. Dismantling the self (but without positing a higher Self).
3. Undermining language’s ability to express truth (but without resolving into mystical silence).
4. Challenging subject-object distinctions (but keeping ethics grounded in alterity rather than transcendence).
5. Affirming immanence (but as an open multiplicity, not a monistic ground).
If non-dualism seeks to reveal the One beyond distinctions, poststructuralism dissolves distinctions without ever positing a final truth, unity, or absolute. The result is a non-dualism of difference—a fluid, ungrounded, always-unfolding field of becoming.
