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Post-structuralism encompasses the intellectual developments of continental philosophers and critical theorists that wrote with tendencies of twentieth-century French philosophy. The prefix "post" refers to the fact that many contributors such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva rejected structuralism and became quite critical of it. In direct contrast to structuralism's claims of an independent signifier, superior to the signified, post-structuralism views the signifier and signified as inseparable but not united. The Post-structuralist movement is closely related to postmodernism--but the two concepts are not synonymous. While post-structuralism is difficult to define or summarize, it can be broadly understood as a body of distinct reactions to structuralism. There are two main reasons for this difficulty. First, it rejects definitions that claim to have discovered absolute 'truths' or facts about the world.[1] Second, very few people have willingly accepted the label 'post-structuralist'; rather, they have been labeled as such by others. Consequently, no one has felt compelled to construct a 'manifesto' of post-structuralism. Indeed, it would be inconsistent with post-structuralist concepts to codify itself in such a way.[2] Post-structuralism emerged in France during the 1960s as an antinomian movement critiquing structuralism. The period was marked by political anxiety, as students and workers alike rebelled against the state in May 1968, nearly causing the downfall of the French government. At the same time, however, the French communist party's (PCF) support of the oppressive policies of the USSR contributed to popular disillusionment with orthodox Marxism. As a result, there was increased interest in alternative radical philosophies, including feminism, western Marxism, phenomenology, and nihilism. These disparate perspectives, which Foucault later labeled "subjugated knowledges," were all linked by being critical of dominant Western philosophy and culture. Post-structuralism offered a means of justifying these criticisms, by exposing the underlying assumptions of many Western norms. Two key figures in the early post-structuralist movement were Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. In a 1966 lecture "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Science", Jacques Derrida presented a thesis on an apparent rupture in intellectual life. Derrida interpreted this event as a "decentering" of the former intellectual cosmos. Instead of progress or divergence from an identified centre, Derrida described this "event" as a kind of "play."
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