Most Famous Post-Structuralism Philosophers
Post-structuralism is a broad current of late 20th-century continental philosophy and theory that emerged in France in the 1960s and 1970s, in critical engagement with the structuralism of Saussure, Levi-Strauss, and others. Its leading figures include Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Julia Kristeva, though many of these thinkers rejected the label. Post-structuralism is characterised by suspicion of stable meaning, the unmasking of conceptual oppositions, attention to the entanglement of knowledge and power, and an interest in the historical conditions and exclusions of dominant discourses. The movement decisively shaped subsequent literary theory, gender and queer theory, postcolonial studies, and political philosophy. Despite its origins in continental philosophy, it has had global influence.
Philosophers in this tradition
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Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault was a 20th-century French philosopher, historian, and social theorist, one of the most influential figures of post-war continental philosophy. His major works, i...
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Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze was a 20th-century French philosopher, one of the most influential figures of post-structuralist continental philosophy. His early monographs on Hume, Bergson, Sp...
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Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a 20th-century French philosopher, born in French Algeria, who developed the influential approach to philosophical, literary, and political analysis known as...
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Jean-Francois Lyotard
Jean-Francois Lyotard was a 20th-century French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist, one of the leading figures of post-structuralism and a central exponent of postm...