Poststructuralism represents a new formulation of materialist philosophy.  It retains the dynamic and relativistic character of Marxian materialism, but rejects the methodology of dialectics and the goal of formulating strict scientific laws of causality as the goal of social inquiry.  Influence by the epistemological position of Friedrich Nietzsche, poststructuralism employs and an aesthetic model of knowledge that allows for a formulation of materialism that is a synthesis of the interpretive and the empirical. It incorporates a dynamic of change, with an understanding that the basis of all our claims to social and historical knowledge are human-centric in character and, therefore, relative to the prejudices, constraints, power relations, and cultural norms found within a society.   Like Marx, the human body is still the starting point for analysis, and there is still the general interest in the historical forces that act to constrain the self-directed action of human bodies.  But poststructuralism is also interested in the subtle forms in which power is exercised through the influences of institutional norms in the process if identity formation.   This takes the notion of material causality beyond the Marxian focus on production.  Causality is found within the totality of forces that constitute the domain of social action.  Poststructuralism begins with the concept of historical context, a broad category of experience that encompasses both our sensual contact with the world and the content of socialization that has as its objective the directing of human behavior.