Johannes Angermuller-Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France PDF

Why There Is No
Poststructuralism in France
Why There Is No
Poststructuralism in France
The Making of an Intellectual Generation
Johannes Angermuller
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2015
A French version of Chapters 1 to 4 has been published in
Le Champ de la Thorie: Essor et dclin du structuralisme en France, Angermuller,
Johannes (Paris: Hermann, 2013)
Johannes Angermuller, 2015
Translated into English by Walter Allmand and Johannes Angermuller
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Contents
Preface
1 Introduction: The Intellectual Field in France
1.1 Poststructuralism: An international misunderstanding?
1.2 Structuralism and poststructuralism in the sociology
of intellectuals
2 Structuralism versus Poststructuralism: The Birth of an
Intellectual Generation
2.1 The transformations of Theory: From structuralism
to poststructuralism
2.2 Why there is no poststructuralism in France: Foucault,
Derrida & Co. in the French intellectual field
3 Rise and Decline of the Structuralist Generation
3.1 From modernity to postmodernity: The intellectual field since
the Enlightenment
3.2 The boom of the human sciences in the 1960s and 1970s
3.3 The formation of the structuralist generation
3.4 The neoliberal turn of the 1980s
vii
1
1
5
15
15
20
41
41
45
55
60
4 From Theory in France to French Theory: The Making of

Poststructuralism in the Post-national University
69
5 The Moment of Theory: The Social after Society
83
Notes
References
Index
103
113
135
Preface
This book was initially inspired by a seminar given by Fredric Jameson
at Duke University in 1995, which aroused my passion for what is called
Theory today the critical debate in the social sciences and the humanities
led by seminal figures from Europe and the USA such as Jacques Derrida and
Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Slavoj iek. While pursuing my PhD
under Dominique Maingueneaus supervision in Paris 12, Crteil (20003), I
became interested in Theory as a discourse which refers to its social contexts
of reception. When I arrived at cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales
in 2012, where some of Theorys pioneers such as Roland Barthes and Jacques
Derrida once taught, I felt it was time to account for Theory as a historical
phenomenon, having fired the imagination of generations of followers and
commentators and now canonized in the disciplines.
This book starts out with a socio-historical account of the rise and decline
of structuralism in France against the background of Pierre Bourdieus field
theory of symbolic production. By contextualizing a body of rather exclusive
theoretical knowledge, this study takes Theory as a discourse originating in a
certain time and place, namely in France in the late 1960s. Theory started with
the controversial debates over structuralism, which have mostly been received
under the banner of poststructuralism in other parts of the world. In the light
of the different ways the protagonists of Theory have been received inside
and outside France, this book stresses the social and institutional contexts in
which the same body of theoretical texts can be written and read. Yet Theory
will also be taken as a source of inspiration for current social theory. What
this book aims to do then is to situate Theory socially and historically no
longer in the closed, constituted order of society, but in the social as an uneven
and shifting terrain of fragile links and ties, of heterogeneous practices and
processes, of polyphonic identities and subjectivities.
This book is the product of the many encounters I have had with my friends
and colleagues in Paris, among whom I would especially like to mention
viii Preface
Dominique Maingueneau and many others who I first met at CEDITEC in

Paris 12. I benefited immensely from the Lacan reading group led by Guy
Pariente, the Groupe danalyse du discours philosophique, led by Frdric
Cossutta, the seminars I organize at EHESS with Josiane Boutet, Marc Glady,
Juliette Rennes and Franois Leimdorfer and the kind support from Albert
Ogien. Daniel Marwecki and Clare Simmons have helped translate parts of
this manuscript. Valuable remarks and help have come from members of my
research team at Warwick and EHESS, Johannes Beetz, Julian Hamann, Ronny
Scholz, Marta Wrblewska as well as from Jens Maee, Iro Konstantinou,
Jaspal Singh and Veit Schwab.
Introduction: The Intellectual Field in France
1.1 Poststructuralism: An international misunderstanding?

For thirty years now, French theorists of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Michel
Foucault and Jacques Derrida, have been discussed in international intellectual discourse as representatives of a paradigm commonly known as
poststructuralism (and sometimes as [French] Theory, postmodern theory,
or deconstruction, less frequently as constructivism or anti-humanism). Yet,
in France itself the label poststructuralism is unfamiliar. It is undisputed that
theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques
Lacan, Louis Althusser, Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes enjoyed widespread
attention during the structuralist, Freudian and Marxist controversies of the
1960s and 1970s. But in France, one wonders why these theorists, whose
theoretical projects reached the peak of public interest around 1970 and who
otherwise have little to do with one another, are given the peculiar prefix
post by international observers. Why are they grouped into one movement,
headed by figures as different as Foucault and Derrida (cf. Angermuller,
2007b)? An interview with Michel Foucault, which appeared in 1983 in the
American journal Telos under the title Structuralism and Post-Structuralism,
documents the lack of understanding on the part of the supposed leader of this
intellectual movement. While the American interviewer insisted that Foucault
position himself in relation to poststructuralism, Foucault replied somewhat
surprised and irritated, that behind what was known as structuralism, there
was a certain problem broadly speaking, that of the subject and the recasting
of the subject. [Yet I] do not see what kind of problem is common to those
Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France
referred to the people we call postmodern or poststructuralist (Foucault,

1994c: 447 [448]).1, 2 What a tragedy: a leader of a movement who knows
nothing of his movement!
Despite additional protests from other French theorists, including Derrida,
who denounced the identification of his theoretical project with postmodernism, post-structuralism and the critique of meta-narrative as
gross error (1999: 241f.), the label poststructuralism established itself in the
intellectual debate of the 1980s and 1990s in the Anglo-American world, in
Central, Southern and Eastern Europe, in Central and South America and in
East Asia in short, everywhere but in France. Thus, Slavoj iek emphasizes
the crucial but usually overlooked fact that the very term poststructuralism, although designating a strain of French Theory, is an Anglo-Saxon
and German invention. The term refers to the way the Anglo-Saxon world
perceived and located the theories of Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, etc. in
France itself, nobody uses the term poststructuralism (iek, 1991: 142).
And even today, the reactions of French intellectuals tend to range from
astonishment to irritation when they hear their international colleagues
talk of French poststructuralism. And when Franois Dosse, in a major
portrayal of current tendencies in the French human and social sciences,
sees a post-structuralist intellectual sphere (Dosse, 1995: 19)3 emerging in
France, international readers must rub their eyes in disbelief, for the French
intellectual historian classes coming under the term of poststructuralism,
precisely those liberal political theorists and neo-Kantian moral philosophers
of the 1980s who, by emphatically standing up for human rights, for liberal
democracy and the free, autonomous individual, are trying to put an end once
and for all to the theoretical sectarianism and the political irresponsibility of
a Jean-Paul Sartre, a Michel Foucault, or a Pierre Bourdieu.
Is the talk of French poststructuralism perhaps the product of a huge
international misunderstanding? That the theories of Foucault, Derrida &
Co. circulate in a multitude of contexts is one thing. How these theories are
appropriated in their various contexts is another matter, and we may ask why
have American literary scholars devoted so much energy to importing French
scholarship, given that literary studies in the two countries are so out of step
intellectually? (Duell, 2000: 118). Indeed, the phenomenon of poststructuralism is a textbook example of the role of context in which theoretical ideas
are received. Are these theories not considered to be the products of an intellectual group or movement (poststructuralism) in the international debate,
whereas in France they are counted rather as the products of individual
theorists of a certain period (specifically the 1970s)?
Thus, by looking into the socio-historical conditions in which intellectual
discourses on structuralism and poststructuralism have emerged, this book
responds to the discontent that sometimes arises from the uneven and
asymmetrical circulation of certain texts, from whose contexts of origin just
as much is abstracted in the international debate as from their international
reception in the French context (cf. Angermuller, 2004a). A telling example
is the reaction of many feminist theorists from North America who, after
their return from France, expressed surprise about the lack of prominence of
theorists like Derrida and Foucault. Claire Goldberg Moses points out that
French intellectuals like Julia Kristeva, Hlne Cixous and Luce Irigaray, who
in the French feminist movement in France represent marginal figures at
most, are often perceived in the USA as representatives of French feminism
tout court: let us acknowledge that the French feminism known in the US
academy has been made in America (Moses, 1998: 254, 257). In contrast,
Naomi Schor reminds us of the critical attention that so-called political
correctness and multiculturalism in the USA have received from the French
media. These encounters have sometimes called into question the fascination
with French theorists in the USA, and what was once a loose leftist alliance
of American and French intellectuals has now been broken, just as on the
national level, Franco-American intellectual relations are at a (cyclical?)
all-time low (Schor, 1992: 32). Likewise, a Canadian observer expresses
her astonishment by saying that if some had complained at the outset that
literary criticism over here was looking more French than American, the
converse held equally true as well: deconstruction was in many ways starting
to look more American than French (Comay, 1991: 47).
The huge interest in French Theory in the USA does not go unnoticed by
observers in France either. For Jolle Bahloul the export of French Theory to
the USA is associated with a change in perspective, during which the great
French thinkers were reappropriated according to the intellectual AngloAmerican tradition [] more is spoken of Foucault, Derrida and Lvi-Strauss
in Berkeley and in particular Texan universities than in the anthropological
seminars at the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales [where Derrida
and Barthes taught]. I, for my part, was perplexed by this radical poststructuralist change of the 1980s (1991: 49, 52).4 And Jean-Philippe Mathy diagnoses
the strange fate of French Theory in the USA, for what was originally a
corpus of very demanding, and more often than not arcane, philosophical and
critical texts from a foreign culture has given rise over the course of the last
decade to one of the most hotly debated domestic issues in recent American
history, carrying in its wake debates on multiculturalism, the state of the
nations universities, and the very future of the American moral and social
fabric (Mathy, 2000: 31).
Even if they do not perhaps cause the stir in France that they have
generated elsewhere in light of their poststructuralist reception, theorists like
Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan, Derrida and Barthes can meanwhile be classed, in
the French human sciences (sciences humaines) and in parts of philosophy,
as theoretical standard references. The seminars at the Collge international
de philosophie, which was co-founded by Jacques Derrida, the decades of
Cerisy/Pontigny, the numerous reading groups in Lacanian psychoanalysis,
journals like Multitude testify to the widespread presence of these theorists,
who have become more established in specialized academic research fields
as well as in wider intellectual discourse since the turn of the millennium.
In his monograph French Theory, Franois Cusset makes a first attempt to
render the American debate about (post)structuralism more accessible to a
French audience. For Cusset the translation that took place was significant
and lasting, and cannot be reduced to an ephemeral fashion trend (2003: 285
[271]).5 The names of the French theorists subsequently became intensely
overcoded as they were gradually Americanised and their French accents
faded [], whereas in their country of origin the scope of this phenomenon
was never truly appreciated (2003: 12 [2]).6 Thus, the international debate
on French poststructuralism is having more and more repercussions on
the intellectual agenda in France. This applies in particular to some political
philosophers, who have again opened the intellectual chapter which seemed
to end with the neo-liberal turn of the 1980s, such as Antonio Negri, who
together with Michael Hardt made a name for himself with a political theory
of globalization (Hardt and Negri, 2004, 2000), Jacques Rancire in 1965
one of the co-authors of Reading Capital (Althusser et al., 1965) and today one
of the prolific critics of political and social exclusion (cf. Rancire, 1995) and
Alain Badiou. Today, their seminars have become places where the intellectual
movement of the post-war period is witnessing a renaissance. The theoretical
achievements of this time therefore continue to have a wider effect, which,
in the words of Badiou, toute proportion garde, bears comparison to the
examples of classical Greece and enlightenment Germany (Badiou, 2005: 67).
1.2 Structuralism and poststructuralism in the sociology

of intellectuals
That Foucault, Derrida & Co. have today become standard references in
the theoretical discourse of the arts and humanities is no longer the subject
of controversial debates neither in the USA, where they have established
themselves as figureheads of Cultural Studies, nor in Germany, where the
invectives against their nihilism and young-conservatism have come to bear
the yellowed varnish of the 1980s. The ideas of these theorists have entered
a variety of disciplinary terrains. Yet, how is the specific configuration of the
intellectual field in France around 1970 to be taken into consideration when
one fashion rapidly succeeded another? The current academic literature gives
little information about the specific historical contexts of production in which
the intellectual effervescence of structuralism took place in the 1960s and
1970s. Thus, a peculiar imbalance between the debate on Theory on the one
hand and intellectual history on the other seems to have prevented a thorough
consideration of the historical context of this intellectual phenomenon
until now.
Concerning Theory, the debate has grown into a field at least in the North
American arts with its own sub-disciplinary division of labour. Countless
titles have been produced in the style of Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze and
in/and/for Gay, Biblical, Science, Postcolonial Studies, Identity, Problem
(cf. Lamont and Witten, 1988). Harvard Universitys library catalogue (as of
February 2006) testifies to the astounding success that these theorists have
seen in different languages.
In most cases, the existing secondary literature on these French theorists
is predominantly in English, whereby Baudrillard and Irigaray represent
Table 1. Primary and Secondary Literature on French Theorists

Name
English
French
German
Italian
Spanish
Foucault
Derrida
Lacan
Barthes
Lvi-Strauss
Deleuze
Althusser
Lyotard
Bourdieu
Kristeva
Baudrillard
Irigaray
652
494
444
230
219
201
119
118
118
94
89
76
56%
61%
45%
49%
47%
49%
34%
53%
51%
77%
75%
83%
15%
15%
40%
33%
24%
26%
26%
14%
25%
12%
3%
4%
13%
14%
11%
11%
9%
17%
16%
20%
18%
5%
15%
5%
7%
8%
6%
7%
13%
8%
13%
6%
2%
3%
2%
4%
5%
<1%
2%
2%
6%
2%
8%
2%
6%
3%
2%
0%
almost exclusively an Anglo-American phenomenon. Moreover, in the cases

of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and Kristeva, the French portion of the international secondary literature rarely exceeds 15 per cent. The authors with
the largest share of French secondary literature are Lacan (40 per cent) and
Barthes (33 per cent). The international resonance of French theorists easily
bears comparison with major German theorists. Habermas, for example,
appears in 509 titles (of these 45 per cent are in English, 37 per cent in
German, 6 per cent in Italian, 4 per cent in French and 3 per cent in Spanish),
whereas Luhmann appears in 117 (of these, 69 per cent are in German).
Interestingly enough, a search for the poststru* syntagma yields 234 titles, of
which 82 per cent are English and none is from France!
There is also no shortage of overviews and introductions to the theoretical
ideas of poststructuralism. Among the numerous detailed accounts, a few
outstanding examples are noteworthy: in the USA, Jameson (1972), Lentricchia
(1980), Kurzweil (1996), Culler (1982), Leitch (1983), Berman (1988) and Jay
(1994); in the UK, Eagleton (1983), Norris (1982), Easthope (1988) and Sarup
(1988); in the German-speaking world, Frank (1983), Schiwy (1985), Zima
(1994), Welsch (1987), Mnker/Roesler (2000), Bossinade (2000) and Stheli
(2000a) and in Italy, Ferraris (1984) and Tarizzo (2003).7
Less extensive, however, is the range of research on the social and historical
contexts of these theorists. In the poststructuralist theory debate, there is
virtually no attempt made to place these theorists in their socio-historical
contexts (cf. Turkle 1992; Starr 1995). Also, the widespread anti-historical
and anti-empirical reflex must be noted which has become a hallmark of the
poststructuralist debate (cf. for a textualist historiography of Theory: ffrench,
1995). Yet, concerning the history of ideas and the sociology of intellectuals,
poststructuralism represents a largely blank page in most cases. Historians
often prefer the closed chapters of French intellectual history (Charle, 1990;
Karady, 1986; Ringer, 1992; Sirinelli, 1988). On the other hand they may
emphasize the political dimension (in the narrow sense) of intellectual practice,
which explains a certain preference for engaged intellectuals, from Dreyfus to
Sartre (Bering, 1982; Chebel dAppolonia, 1991; Collini, 2006: 248ff.; Darke,
1997; Dufay and Dufort, 1993; Ory and Sirinelli, 1992; Sirinelli, 1995; Sirinelli,
2005; Winock, 1999), as well as for the relationship of the intellectuals to the
French Communist Party (PCF) and Maoism (Bowd, 1999; Christofferson,
2004; Hazareesingh, 1991; Judt, 1986; Khilnani, 1993; Matonti, 2005; VerdsLeroux, 1983; Wolin, 2010) or for the events of May 1968 and after (Brillant,
2003; Combes, 1984; Long, 2013; Hamon and Rotman, 1987; Reader, 1993;
Ross, 2002).8 Thus, the classical sociology of intellectuals seems at times to
maintain a weakness for the heroic intellectual figure (Leymarie, 2001: 3)9
who takes a stance in the great national debates on existential questions and
ultimate values, which frequently allows the often unpredictable refractions
and resonances in the less transparent realm of the transnational public sphere
to recede into the background.10 Yet, the classical model of the engaged intellectual, which privileges the political dimension of intellectual practice in
a national public sphere, can hardly account for the intellectual generation
formed during the 1960s and 1970s in the controversy over structuralism.
For one, the theorists of this intellectual generation, understand themselves
by no means as merely political intellectuals. They also distinguish themselves
by their stances on theoretical and aesthetic questions (for perspectives that
also include aesthetic problems cf. Mongin, 1998; Ross, 2002; Kauppi, 2010).
Secondly, the debate they engender soon oversteps merely national boundaries and takes on those hardly localizable, teeming discursive dimensions
which we associate today with the term poststructuralism.
Some intellectual biographies (Jacques Lacan: Roudinesco, 1993; Michel
Foucault: Eribon, 1994; Pestaa, 2006; Louis Althusser: Boutang, 2002; Jacques
Derrida: Peeters, 2010; Baring, 2011; Mikics, 2009; Lvi-Strauss: Wilcken,
2010; Pierre Bourdieu: Lescourret, 2008; Roland Barthes: Calvet, 1990; Michel
de Certeau: Dosse, 2002; Jean-Paul Sartre: Cohen-Solal, 1989; Raymond
Aron: Baverez, 1993) offer good access to the intellectual context of the time.
Likewise a number of monographs, dealing with the intellectual clusters
around certain intellectual journals prove to be useful (Hourmant, 1997;
Poel, 1992; Tel Quel: Kauppi, 1990; Forest, 1995; Esprit: Boudic, 2005;
Critique: Patron, 2000; Nouvelle Critique: Matonti, 2005; Les Temps modernes:
Boschetti, 1984; Socialisme ou Barbarie: Gottraux, 1997; Annales: Dosse, 1987;
Raphael, 1994). Yet, as informative as these works prove to be with regard to
the intellectual contexts of single historical personalities or a particular intellectual cluster, they are scarcely able to account for the general intellectual
configuration of the time.
Among the accounts which seek to put the numerous intellectual trends and
theoretical projects of the 1960s and 1970s in their wider intellectual context,
we may cite Franois Dosses History of Structuralism (1992), which gives a
substantial overview of the intellectual tendencies of the time. Unfortunately,
this work lacks sufficient analytical precision at times to justify its claim to be
a reference work (cf. Eribons critique, 1994: 957). Rmy Rieffel, in La Tribu
des Clercs [The Tribe of the Scribes] (1993), by contrast, deals thoroughly
with the places and institutions of intellectual life in France. Yet, he does not
pay due attention to the symbolic dimension of intellectual practice. Finally,
Niilo Kauppis monographic essay French Intellectual Nobility (1996) must
be mentioned, for it is both well-informed and borne upon a substantial
theoretical basis. Kauppi draws on a theorist who regards reflection on the
socio-historical conditions of intellectual practice not only as the core of his
theoretical project, but who has also become a paradigmatic figure of intellectual discourse in France since the mid-1980s: Pierre Bourdieu.
Not everybody would count Bourdieu among the representatives of the
intellectual generation of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, for such a classification,
which is shared by observers as different as Dosse (1992), Ferry (1988b: 22
[xviii]) and Kauppi (1996: 136),11 at least two reasons can be given. First,
Bourdieu is one of those pioneers who participated in the boom of the human
and social sciences in the 1960s and set up one of the important schools in
the French social sciences after the war (alongside Raymond Aron, Michel
Crozier, Raymond Boudon and Alain Touraine). Second, Bourdieus sociology
is also influenced by the reign of linguistic and semiotic theory of the time.
That Bourdieu pays homage to the construction of a cultural theory modelled
after Saussures langue (Bourdieu, 1986: 41)12 is particularly apparent in
his earlier anthropological works (cf. the three studies in Bourdieu, 1972),
which clearly draw on Lvi-Strauss. Even though Bourdieu, by introducing
the habitus, accounts for the practical performance of the performer or the
speaker, as opposed to the abstract code of social and symbolic structures (cf.
Bourdieu, 1972: 174ff.), he does not call into question the Saussurian principle
whereby the social space is seen as a universe where to exist is to be different
(Bourdieu, 1992: 223 [157]; cf. Bourdieu, 1979).13
Nevertheless, the distance between Bourdieu and most of the other representatives of the structuralist generation must be stressed. With his emphatic
plea for empirical social research, Bourdieu stands apart from Althussers
visionary Marxist philosophy, Derridas reflexive style of writing, Deleuzes
experimental metaphors or Lacans apodictic manner. There is certainly an
array of affinities, in particular with Foucault, who supported the appointment
of his ex-classmate from cole Normal Suprieure (ENS) to the Collge de
France and shared Bourdieus interest in questions of power, the body and
language. But more than Foucault, Bourdieu relies on a strategy that assumes
a firm anchoring in academic institutions, as well as on a theoretical project
serving the research needs of the academic field. A further distinctive
feature is the fact that Bourdieus significance in general political, intellectual
discourse reached its peak only in the 1990s during the general strike of 1995
and the establishment of the anti-globalization network, Attac. Therefore, as
perhaps the last intellectual grandmaster of his generation, Bourdieus more
academicscientific ethos stands in contrast to the visionary, prophetic style
that characterizes the intellectual projects of around 1970.
Thus, a sociology of French intellectuals of the post-war period must consider
Bourdieu not only as a sociological object, but also as the initiator of a research
approach which has become widely established in intellectual sociology: the field
theory of symbolic production.14 Bourdieu emphasizes the social constraints that
affect the symbolic producers in their field, such as, for example, in the fields of
avant-garde art (cf. The Rules of Art, 1992), elite education (State Nobility, 1989),
philosophy (Pascalian Meditations, 1997b; The Political Ontology of Martin
Heidegger, 1988) or (natural) sciences (1997a). Further fields are discussed in a
10
number of articles (1966, 1971, 1973, 1976, 1981, 1984b, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1996,
1999; Bourdieu and Boltanski, 1975; Bourdieu and de Saint Martin, 1987).
While Bourdieu does not offer any standard definition of the field, the
following characteristics derived from his writings can be given. As a microcosm
within a macrocosm (the social space), the field constitutes a structured terrain
where the symbolic producers compete for the highest profits (such as symbolic
and institutional recognition). In placing their symbolic stakes and products on
the symbolic markets of the field, the symbolic producers aim to expand their
capital volume, which consists of various more or less convertible resources,
for example, of cultural capital (education) or economic capital (such as a
stable salary). The battle for distinction and recognition is not a dispute among
equals. Equipped with a certain amount of resources and assets, the symbolic
producers enter the field and place their symbolic stakes (i.e. texts, works,
statements) on the market of symbolic goods in order to increase their invested
capital and to dominate their competitors. A field distinguishes itself through
relative autonomy, i.e. through rules which are defined in the field and by
which the legitimacy of the symbolic products and the success of the symbolic
producers can be assessed. Over time, the differences and rules organizing the
field seep into the habitus of the producers. As an internalized, relatively stable,
and more or less unconscious system of dispositions, the habitus guarantees the
homology of the sphere of socio-economic positions and the sphere of cultural
lifestyles, tastes and symbolic forms of expression. The habitus structures the
perceptions and the actions of the producers by synchronizing them with the
constitutive oppositions of the field. As a mediating mechanism between the
structure of the field and the praxis of the producers, the habitus allows the
producers to decipher the social significance of the cultural practices and
symbolic products of other symbolic producers and thus enables them to
produce spontaneous reactions to and appropriate solutions for new situations.
The field is distinguished not only by vertical hierarchies, established by the
producers unequal volumes of capital; there are also horizontal differences,
which result from the specific composition of their capital. While cultural
capital (such as education) dominates among producers in those regions of the
field generally identified by Bourdieu as left, economic capital or institutional
power dominate the right poles of the field. The difference between left and
right can turn into a conflict between a spiritual (cultural) and a temporal
11
(economic and institutional) fraction of the ruling class. This opposition tends
to be accompanied by different normative preferences and strategies of the
producers. While defending the autonomy of the field against encroachments
from outside, the producers of the spiritual fraction follow the proper rules
of the field the rules that organize the production of intellectual, scientific,
and aesthetic power. Spiritual producers, therefore, tend toward strategies that
aim at pure symbolic dominance, e.g. symbolic projects with an avant-gardist
claim, which is typical for most members of the structuralist generation. In
contrast, their counterparts at the temporal pole, who have the institutional
and economic means to decide on the careers of others, tend to be committed
to more conservative cultural values. Lacking proper cultural legitimacy, they
tend toward heteronomous strategies of tapping into power resources external to
the field. Bourdieus own normative preferences become clear when he favours
autonomous rather than heteronomous production strategies and understands
the defence of autonomous conditions as the primary mission of the intellectual.
With the theory of the mediation of structure and practice, Bourdieu
pleads for a sociology of the symbolic producers, which focuses on the
unequal distribution of capital, at the expense of a sociology of the symbolic
products. While rejecting an internal reading of symbolic products which
abstracts from the social contexts of their production, Bourdieu points out the
social constraints and relations of power affecting the symbolic producers, no
matter whether they follow autonomous or heteronomous production strategies. However, according to Bourdieu, an external reading, by tracing the
meaning of symbolic products back to their social contexts of origin, does not
represent a convincing solution either, since this makes texts a mere function
of their contexts. As an alternative, Bourdieu suggests a procedure which, via
a constant to and fro between internal and external readings, reconstructs the
structures of the field and thereby seeks to overcome the division between the
social context and the symbolic text (Bourdieu, 1992: 288 [205]).
Thus, while the symbolic production of intellectuals is subject to social
and institutional forces, their positions are not absolutely pre-determined by
the structure of the field. Rather, the field must be understood as a structure
whose objectivity is limited and which continuously demands institutional as
well as symbolic reorganization. To the extent that the symbolic production
of intellectuals is a prime example of forced innovation, originality and
12
singularity on a quite stable institutional terrain of social relations, Bourdieus

theoretical framework turns out to be helpful. And in light of the specific
conditions of intellectual practice in France, Bourdieus approach may be
downright ineluctable.
At least three points may be cited which make Bourdieus field theory
an especially apposite instrument for analysing the situation of intellectuals
in France. First of all, the opposition centre versus periphery is particularly
pronounced in France. It is in fact so pronounced, that intellectual life in Paris
sometimes becomes synonymous with intellectual life in France, especially if we
think of intellectual fads like existentialism and structuralism. With symbolic
production being highly centralized, this centralization leaves its mark on the
habitus of the producers, who are inclined to look for their most important
role models, competitors and allies in a rather limited geographical area: in
the ten-square-mile area between the Porte de Clignancourt in the north and
the Porte dOrlans in the south, between the Bois de Vincennes in the east and
the Bois de Boulogne in the west. Indeed, few places are inhabited by so many
academics, artists and independent scholars as the agglomeration of Paris
(le-de-France). There are approximately 600,000 students (Ministre ducation
Nationale, 2007), almost 80,000 researchers in the public and private sectors
(that is about 40 per cent of all researchers in France, see Ministre ducation
Nationale, 2005: 326), 60,000 high school teachers, 16,000 university lecturers
and researchers (which does not even include the numerous other institutions of
higher education! See Prfecture Ile-de-France, 2006), at least the same number
of lecturers and researchers who live in the capital but work in the provinces,
as well as a vast and unknown number of artists, journalists and independent
scholars. Is it any wonder that scientific communication occurs more rapidly
here than elsewhere? Is it any wonder that the personal relationships between
intellectuals run the entire affective gamut from close friendship to deeply cultivated antipathy? If the capital resembles at times a highly concentrated, more or
less self-sufficient intellectual universe, is it any wonder that trends from outside
Paris whether from non-French-speaking countries or from elsewhere in
France, or the Francophone world sometimes take decades to gain a foothold?
Second, intellectuals in France may be rather unique in their relatively
high level of willingness to organize themselves nationwide, in institutionally
more or less consolidated groups, with more or less exclusive memberships.
13
In these clans, the producers not only exist on the symbolic front stage, but
also operate on the institutional backstage. Only after becoming a member
of a group is an individual able to gain access to the necessary positions,
resources and information. Only as the public spokesperson of a group does
an individual have the chance to gain symbolic and institutional influence at
a national level.
Third, there is a developed market for symbolic goods (i.e. for books,
magazines and works of art), which can procure high public visibility for
certain producers. Due to protective laws for books and the book trade, due
to a differentiated system of independent bookshops and not least due to a
lack of decent research libraries, sales figures for academic publications often
eclipse those in other countries. Even in the social sciences and humanities,
book production can prove to be a lucrative business, as the readership is not
always restricted to specialized academic circles.
These three features centralization and concentration; the role of
groups and networks; a developed market for symbolic goods illustrate
the unique conditions of intellectual life in France. I do not mention these
points, however, to support the thesis of an exception franaise or the myth
of the French intellectuals. Instead, I want to recall the specific social
forces affecting the symbolic producers, the presence of the other symbolic
producers which cannot be avoided by the individual who wants to be active
as an intellectual. In the French context, it seems, the fields lines of differentiation (above/below, inside/outside) are comparatively effective, stable and
palpable. This is why it is perhaps especially difficult for the single individual
not to develop the impression of being confronted with the field as a whole.
The field is there, every day and in different situations, regardless of the
position the producer occupies. As a North American observer expressed, in
France one is obliged, whatever his position, to speak to the field as a totality
(Lemert, 1981: 651).
How can we account for the field that has given birth to Theory? Sidestepping
the theoretical contents, this book prefers to ask how theoretical texts are
read and associated with their contexts. Thus, what follows is not a history
of Theory, but, in a certain way, its prehistory, which began in France in the
1960s and 1970s under the slogan structuralism and was then received internationally under the label poststructuralism.
14
This book presents a historical tableau of the French intellectual field

after the war by following the rise and decline of the structuralist generation.
After a look at the international reception of poststructuralism (Section 2.1),
Chapter 2 will point out the institutional lines of conflict which make it difficult
to consider poststructuralist theorists as a group with a common programme
in the French context (Section 2.2). Chapter 3 will give an historical account
of the institutional evolution of the intellectual field in France, constituted
between three major poles of symbolic production: arts and sciences, mass
media, aesthetics. After presenting a model of socio-cultural change (Section
3.1), I will sketch the rise and fall of Theory in France (Sections 3.23.4). In
Chapter 4, I will discuss how Theory in France has turned into French Theory
in the North American humanities. If Chapters 1 to 4 rely on Bourdieus field
theory to account for the making of Theory in France and abroad, the final
Chapter 5 will reflect on the post-classical perspectives Theory can help open
up in thinking the social.
Structuralism versus Poststructuralism: The

Birth of an Intellectual Generation
2.1 The transformations of Theory: From structuralism

to poststructuralism
Poststructuralism is commonly known to denote a theoretical discussion in
the humanities and social sciences revolving around topics like the linguistic
turn, the crisis of representation, the decentring of the subject or the critique
of essentialism. What characterizes this interdisciplinary and international
debate, which time and time again refers to particular theorists from France?
Standard treatments of poststructuralism often start with a canon of authors,
led by Jacques Derrida the philosopher of deconstruction and by Michel
Foucault the historical analyst of power and discourse. Next to these theorists
we can cite the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the philosophers of desire Gilles
Deleuze and Jean-Franois Lyotard (the latter is also classed as a theorist of
postmodernism), as well as the cultural analysts Roland Barthes and Jean
Baudrillard. The Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and the anthropologist
Claude Lvi-Strauss are often mentioned in this context too, although in these
cases the prefix post is not as easily used. Then come the theorists who belong
to the second guard of poststructuralism: the psychoanalytical writer Julia
Kristeva, the ethnographer of everyday life Michel de Certeau, the historian
of science Michel Serres, the media theorist Paul Virilio and the semiotician
Umberto Eco, as well as certain other representatives of the Continental
tradition, like Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin, who are
often perceived according to the way in which they were received in France.
16
In the North American humanities, the canonization of poststructuralism

began some ten years after the conference on the structuralist controversy that
took place at the Johns Hopkins University in October 1966 (Macksey and
Donato, 1970). At this conference a range of French theorists (including Jacques
Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes and Grard Genette) spoke for the first
time to a North American audience (cf. the special issue of Yale French Studies
by Ehrmann, 1970). During this event, Americans learned that if structuralism
was among the latest intellectual fads in Paris, the critical interrogations of
Saussureanism (e.g. by Derrida) showed that new trends were already emerging.
Therefore, while structuralism was often reduced to a caricature, poststructuralism rapidly became an umbrella term designating various strands coming from
Continental Europe. With the Yale School of Deconstruction forming around
Paul de Man, a literary theorist close to Jacques Derrida and considering Michel
Foucaults stays at the University of California in Berkeley, the reception of these
scholars soon gained momentum in the North American humanities. As a result
of this transatlantic intellectual exchange, certain theoretical texts from France
made their way into the North American humanities, especially into literary
criticism and a new field was constituted: Theory, a term popularized by literary
critics such as Jonathan Culler (1982), Paul de Man (1986), Fredric Jameson
(1989) among others. While the French university mainstream was largely
filtered out in this transfer, the theorists from France who were received in North
America soon stood for the epitome of French thought. By referring to these
canonical figures of Theory, many of the younger researchers of the time pushed
for the theorization, intellectualization and politicization of the humanities.
The introduction of Continental Theory proved to be an intellectual
challenge triggering a surge of theoretical activity among literary critics. It was
the hour of the translators and commentators who sparked a discussion which
soon went beyond the national and disciplinary confines of the humanities in the
USA. In this debate, those who knew how to mediate between different linguistic
and disciplinary regions became leading intellectual figures. An important
bridgehead was the literary scholar Paul de Man, who along with Jacques Derrida
gave important impulses for a rhetorical reading of literary texts. A number of
colleagues joined these two scholars at Yale University (cf. Bloom, et al., 1979),
where a few of de Mans pupils, such as Barbara Johnson, were recruited, as well
as Fredric Jameson, who initiated a turn toward Marxist cultural theorist. Even
Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation
17
though de Man and the other critics defended literature from over-theorization
and systematization, he and others at Yale, who were later grouped together as
Yale School, facilitated the rise of theoretical and intellectual approaches in
under Continental auspices (cf. Lentricchia, 1980). Some of their desciples
became the pioneers of the emerging Studies (Cultural, Queer, Post-colonial
Studies, etc.) such as Gayatri Spivak, who translated Derridas Grammatologie
and, along with Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, played an important role in
the post-colonialism debate. French departments at Yale, Cornell, Hopkins and
elsewhere played a prominent role in making French Theory known through
journals such as Yale French Studies or Diacritics. In the 1990s, Judith Butler and
Slavoj iek became intellectual celebrities of Theory by campaigning for Lacan
and Hegel. Yet, the input from France appeared not only in these ambitious
theoretical projects, but also in the theoretical vocabulary that came to inform
the emerging Cultural Studies. As John Guillory proposes (1999), the success of
Cultural Studies marked a move from the High Theory of the Yale School to
Low Theory or Cultural Studies. While around 1980, Theory on the East Coast
was rather dominated by the reflexive textualism of the Yale School, political
historical questions took centre stage on the West Coast, where Foucault left his
mark during his stay at the University of California, Berkeley.
Since the middle of the 1990s the debate about poststructuralism or Theory
has increasingly found its way to Europe, where it has heralded a third phase
of the poststructuralism discussion. Via the USA detour, the French theories
of the 1960s and 1970s are now discussed in political theory and philosophy,
too, as can be seen in the later works of iek and Derrida. In Great Britain, the
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, under the leadership
of Stuart Hall (Hall et al., 1980), was active in the 1970s and 1980s, whereas the
Essex School formed around Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in the 1990s
(Laclau, 1996, 1990; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). These scholars are especially
interested in the theoretical reformulation of the question of ideology and
the subject as it had been initially posed by Althusser, Lacan and Derrida. In
the course of the 1990s in France, too, a debate in political philosophy established itself, one which was frequently influenced by ex-Althusserians such
as Etienne Balibar (1992) and Jacques Rancire (1995), as well as by Alain
Badiou (1998, 2003). In the Mediterranean arena, it is the theorists of the
Empire and the Multitude, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (2004, 2000, cf.
18
also the periodical Multitude, established by Yann Moulier Boutang), as well as

Giorgio Agamben (1995), who critically discuss built-in zones of exclusion in
Western democracies by raising the questions of bio-politics and sovereignty
in the post-national period. Subsequent to these impulses, a lively discussion
has also developed in the German-speaking sphere with governmental studies
(Lemke, 1997; Brckling, Krasmann and Lemke, 2000) and deconstructivist
feminism (Hark, 1996). In the social sciences, the notion of a closed containerlike society is subjected to critical investigation (Bonacker, 2003; Angermuller,
2007a) against the backdrop of discourse theory (Angermuller, 2004b;
Marchart, 2005; Nonhoff, 2006) and Cultural Studies (Hepp and Winter, 1999;
Reuter and Wieser, 2006). In a few cases, Luhmanns systems theory (Stheli,
2000a; Stheli, 2000b) and post-Habermasian Critical Theory (Frankfurter
Arbeitskreis fr Politische Philosophie und Theorie, 2004; Bonacker, 2000) are
cited as theoretical allies. Perhaps it is too early to speak of a third phase in the
reception of poststructuralism. Yet, today, like Marxism and psychoanalysis
in the 1960s, the French theories of the 1960s and 1970s have given birth to a
wealth of theoretical projects which have also influenced political activists and
cultural producers outside of the universities.
Table 2 summarizes the various moments of the discussion surrounding
structuralism and poststructuralism. The heuristic function of this
mapping needs to be emphasized since the umbrella term poststructuralism
comprises rather varied theoretical questions and problems. Particularly in
the Anglo-American debate, poststructuralism is sometimes understood in
close connection with postmodernism and seen as an antipodal project to
modernity. As a code word for a European past, modernity refers both
to modernism (the aesthetic vanguard movements in the first third of the
twentieth century), and to modernization (the functional differentiation of
modern societies accelerating since the political enlightenment of the eighteenth century, cf. Section 3.1). Against the order, unity and purity of the
modern, North American poststructuralists sometimes invoke the contingency, the pluralism and the heterogeneity of the postmodern, which is an
important theoretical object of poststructuralism. Standard interpretations
of poststructuralism would further subscribe to the critique of the speaking
subject as well as to the problematic hermeneutical attempts at understanding.
Poststructuralists, so the story goes, conceive of language not as an expression of
19
Table 2. Three Moments of Theory

Discussion
highlights
Around 1970
in France
Around 1980 in
the USA
Since the mid-nineties

in Europe
Common labels
structuralisme,
Marxisme,
psychanalyse
(High) Theory,
(Cultural) Studies,
especially Yale:
poststructuralism
Key
representatives
Lacan,
Althusser,
Foucault,
Lvi-Strauss,
Deleuze,
Derrida,
Lyotard,
Barthes,
Certeau,
Kristeva,
Baudrillard
In Germany:
Poststrukturalismus,
Dekonstruktivismus,
(radikaler)
Konstruktivismus
(Imaginary)
opponent
Humanism
Leading
discipline
Linguistics
Disciplines
concerned
sciences
humaines (with
linguistics,
against
philosophy)
Paradigm
Paul de Man,
Judith Butler,
Gayatri Spivak,
Fredric Jameson,
Edward Said, Homi
Bhabha
(European)
Modernity,
essentialism, binary
opposition
Literary criticism
(mostly English)
Humanities
(without social
sciences, linguistics,
philosophy)
Slavoj iek, Ernesto

Laclau, Chantal
Mouffe, Giorgio
Agamben, Antonio
Negri, Jacques
Rancire, Alain
Badiou, perhaps Niklas
Luhmann
Old European theory,
autonomous subject,
container-society
Political philosophy
and theory, especially
in Germany: radical
and cognitive
constructivism
In Germany:
Sozial- und
Geisteswissenschaften
Poststructuralism
intended meaning, but rather as a play of material differences which can never
be completely controlled. Finally and this probably applies to the European
discussion above all poststructuralism decentres the notion of structure, be it
through the temporalization of structure or through the discovery of marginal
or excluded elements seen as constitutive for the structure.
From the viewpoint of the history of ideas, poststructuralism often appears,
especially in the North American debate, to designate an after (post-) without
20
a before (structuralism). Even though Northrop Fryes theory of archetypes

(1957) or the New Criticism may serve as imaginary opponents, a fully-fledged
structuralist movement to be overcome by poststructuralism has never existed
in the North American humanities. It is only thanks to the detour via North
America that the French theorists, many of whom are known as structuralists
in France, have become poststructuralists in the rest of the world.1 However,
a closer look at the theorists under consideration would probably reveal the
flimsiness of treating professed representatives of (French) structuralism as
poststructuralisms imaginary others, such as Lvi-Strauss or Althusser, who fully
subscribe to the poststructuralist critique of foundations, centres and origins. A
definition of poststructuralism therefore proves difficult, not least because the
debate on poststructuralism often revolves less around a stock of common
assumptions than certain contentious issues such as the crisis of representation
or the difference versus identity problem. The question, then, concerns not so
much the common features of the movement assembled under the heading
of poststructuralism, but rather how it is that the various producers, products
and positions are gathered under one common term. Is the phenomenon of
poststructuralism not an example of a movement whose unity is an imaginary
effect of its reception? Indeed, one may ask how the readers of theoretical texts
attribute them to producer groups or movements. Therefore, instead of defining
poststructuralism, we might do better to ask about the paradigmatic effects
produced in the contexts in which theoretical texts circulate.
2.2 Why there is no poststructuralism in France:

Foucault, Derrida & Co. in the French intellectual field
In France, the label poststructuralism as used in international intellectual
discourse is unknown. Very well known, however, are theorists like Foucault,
Derrida & Co., who were contemporaneous with the structuralist effervescence
of the 1960s. Nevertheless, structuralism and poststructuralism are not interchangeable terms for one and the same theoretical canon. The definition of this
intellectual phenomenon is complicated by the fact that the two labels usually
imply different views on the discussion under consideration. Established since
the late 1960s in the arts and social sciences, poststructuralism normally
21
suggests an intellectual movement headed by Foucault and Derrida, whereas

structuralism refers to a short theoretical discussion just before 1968, to which
these intellectuals refer in a positive or a negative manner. In the following, I
will take my point of departure from the frame dominant in the French field,
the structuralist viewpoint according to which these theorists occupy different
positions in intellectual space. It is against the background of Bourdieus field
theory of symbolic production that the following sections shall reveal how the
post-Sartrean intellectuals are dispersed in the intellectual field along symbolic
and institutional lines of distinction and conflict.
2.2.1 Theoretical lines of conflict: Structuralists and ex-, non- and

anti-structuralists
The 1960s and 1970s were a time of rapidly changing trends and fashions, which
constantly forced the symbolic producers to make new distinctions, alliances
and about-turns. High visibility was given to those symbolic producers who,
with their theoretical projects, served the increased demand for intellectual
orientation. After the Sartrean pontificate of the 1940s and 1950s (Boschetti,
1984), the theoretical conjuncture of the 1960s announced itself in the wake of
Saussures linguistic model. Who and what are the theorists and ideas grouped
together under the label structuralism? In his How do we recognise structuralism? from 1967, Gilles Deleuze remarks:
In the current climate, it is customary to assign names, to provide a sample
rightly or wrongly: a linguist like R. Jakobson; a sociologist like C. Lvi-Strauss;
a psychoanalyst like J. Lacan; a philosopher who reinvigorates epistemology like
M. Foucault; a Marxist philosopher who once again takes up the problem of
the interpretation of Marxism like L. Althusser; a literary critic like R. Barthes;
writers such as those of the group Tel Quel [] Some of them do not spurn the
word structuralism and use the words structure and structural. Others prefer
the Saussurian term system. (Deleuze, 2002: 238 [170])2
The philosopher then names seven criteria which enable one to recognize
structuralism, namely: the focus on the symbolic dimension, the position
within the system, the distinction between the differential and the singular,
the problem of the differing (diffrenciant) and differentiation (diffrenciation), the organization of series and, finally, the empty place (case vide).
22
While linguists and semioticians (such as mile Benveniste, A. J. Greimas or

Roman Jakobson) were often received only through their intellectual intermediaries, producers from the social and human sciences used linguistically
informed theories to counter philosophy and the traditional humanities with
a rigorous science of social and cultural life. Its proximity to other intellectual
currents of the time turned out to be decisive for the hegemony of structuralist
sign-theory, particularly its proximity to psychoanalysis, which Lacan established in the wake of Freud, as well as to Marxism, which gained academic
respectability thanks to Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser among others.
All these currents were transversal to traditional disciplines and reached out
into non-academic regions of the intellectual field, causing Boudon to speak
of a Freudian-Marxist-structuralist (FMS) movement (1980).3
The majority of works which were to count as the main programmatic
statements of structuralism were published in 1966. After Roland Barthes
Mythologies [Mythologies] (1957), Claude Lvi-Strauss Anthropologie
Structurale [Structural Anthropology] (1958), Roman Jakobsons Essais de
Linguistique Gnrale [Main Trends in the Science of Language] (1963) and
the Althusser circles Lire Le Capital [Reading Capital] (Althusser, Balibar,
Establet, Macherey and Rancire, 1965), there now appeared Jacques
Lacans crits (1966) and Michel Foucaults Les Mots et les choses [The
Order of Things] (1966), which each sold more than 100,000 copies; the first
volume of mile Benvenistes Problmes de linguistique gnrale [Problems in
General Linguistics] (1966), A. J. Greimas Smantique structurale [Structural
Semantics] (1966), Pierre Machereys Pour une thorie de la production
littraire [A Theory of Literary Production] (1966) and, at short intervals,
Jacques Derridas Grammatologie [Grammatology] (1967a), Quest-ce que le
structuralisme? [What Is Structuralism?] (Ducrot et al., 1968), Gilles Deleuzes
critical commentary on structuralism, Diffrence et rptition [Difference and
repetition] (1968), Julia Kristevas [Desire in Language: A Semiotic
Approach to Literature and Art] (1969), Tel Quels volume of selected articles,
Thorie dEnsemble (1968), Jean Baudrillards Pour une critique de lconomie
politique du signe [For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign] (1972),
Pierre Bourdieus Esquisse dune thorie de la pratique [Outline of a Theory of
Practice] (1972) and Jean-Joseph Gouxs Freud, Marx: conomie et symbolique
[Symbolic Economies: After Marx and Freud] (1973).
23
As the imaginary other of these theories, the contemporary reader of

these texts possibly recognized philosophies of the subject and consciousness,
i.e. humanism, which includes, on the one hand, conservative, institutional
philosophy and old-school humanist scholarship (with Paul Ricur as perhaps
its most eminent spearhead, see Ricur, 1961; but also less prominent figures
like Dufrenne, 1968; Gusdorf, 1988), or, on the other hand, former avant-garde
philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre (1960) and Merleau-Ponty, who performed
an intermediary function between existentialism and structuralism in the early
careers of Foucault and Bourdieu. Humanist intellectuals extensively borrowed
from German idealism of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries,
whose texts had, for the most part, not been translated into French until after
the war. So, too, did many theorists of the structuralist vein for whom certain
German philosophers played an important role: alongside Nietzsche, the three
H in particular: Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. Yet, despite the presence of
certain philosophers (such as Derrida, Deleuze and Althusser), the debate
about structuralism betrayed the defensive position of philosophy as a discipline (Pinto, 2007). Thus, as opposed to the purely conceptual work of humanist
philosophy, structuralists tended to advocate empirically oriented research. Is
the bureaucratization and massive technological growth after the war mirrored,
as Crozier suggests (1963), in the attacks made by the structuralists on the
philosophical speculations of a Sartre or a Ricur? Or did the conjuncture
of structuralism mark rather the transition from humanistic educators to
research-orientated team workers, as Bourdieu suggests (1989: 482ff. [336ff.])?
Yet, the differences must not be overlooked between those who kept a
long-term allegiance to the structuralist theory of difference (Lvi-Strauss,
Derrida, Bourdieu, Lacan) and those who only occasionally stood up for structuralism (Foucault, Barthes, Kristeva and Baudrillard). Moreover, the different
approaches to the symbolic must not be glossed over. Classical (Saussurian)
theories of difference (Lvi-Strauss, Derrida) coexisted with semantic theory
inspired by logics (Greimas), perhaps also by Peirces semiotics (Lacan) or
early Austinian pragmatics (Foucault, 1969). Finally, the philosophers must
be mentioned who, like Deleuze, Lyotard and Certeau, shared the structuralist
criticism of humanism even though they never subscribed to the structuralist
model. In hindsight, the intellectual observer will date the high point of the
scientistic phase of structuralism to the short period around 1966, which
24
ended with the events of May/June 1968 (Morin, 1986: 75). Yet, structuralisms intellectual fallout for example, the philosophies of desire (Lacan,
Lyotard and Deleuze) continued to be felt until the early 1980s, when the
public sphere witnessed a transition to new rules of the intellectual game,
most obviously signalled by the nouveaux philosophes and the offensive of
neoliberal political theory (cf. Section 3.4).
Thus, even a superficial look at the discourse of the time shows that
structuralism is not a movement that formed around a uniform theoretical
programme. Rather, it was an event defined by a generation of theorists of
various orientations. Even though the label structuralism was only rarely
accepted (perhaps by Althusser) and mostly kept at arms length at best,4 the
rejection by major protagonists does not adversely affect its symbolic efficacy
(cf. Auzias, 1967; Benoist, 1980; Crmant, 1969; Furet, 1967; Wahl, 1973).5, 6
Accordingly, the following lines of conflict, opposition and controversy, which
are typical for the intellectual discourse in the France of the 1960s and 1970s,
cannot be read off from the texts alone. It is the discursive connection of the
texts with certain contexts of production that establishes their specific efficacy
in intellectual discourse.
2.2.2 The arena of political conflict: The Communist Party and 1968
Triggered by the reception of Lvi-Strauss structural anthropology in the
early 1960s, the label structuralism was soon cited in order to designate a
theoretical counter-project to Sartres existentialism. The dispute between
Sartre and Lvi-Strauss was widely perceived as a conflict between diachronicity and synchronicity, dialect and difference, subjective practice and
objective structure, political engagement and reflexive description. Yet, the
events of 1968 increasingly forced the representatives of the structuralist
generation to take a stance in political questions, too. The public political
debate of the time was turbulent. Foucault, for example, after a brief interlude
with the Communist Party in the early 1950s and a liberal phase in the 1960s,
turned to Maoism in 1969 and became active in the prison movement. It
is Foucault who now opposed the model of the specific intellectual to the
Sartre-style model of the total intellectual. Even more dramatic turnarounds
were experienced by the journal Tel Quel, led by Philippe Sollers, which, just
25
before the student uprisings, moved from the apolitical aestheticism of the
Nouveau Roman to the French Communist Party (PCF). From 1971 on, Sollers
drew closer to Maoism in order to discover, in a special issue about the USA
(1977), the advantages of liberal individualism. Not everyone reacted to 1968
with a markedly leftist orientation. Barthes, for example, who had defended
Brecht as early as the 1950s, kept, like Lvi-Strauss, Bourdieu and Derrida,
a certain distance from the events of 1968. In contrast, Althusser, Deleuze,
Certeau, Lyotard and Foucault, after his appointment to the Collge de France
(1969), battled enthusiastically on the side of the students. Althusser and
Deleuze can be classed as abidingly belonging to the left pole of the political
spectrum. Lvi-Strauss, Barthes, Derrida and the Jesuit priest Certeau must be
considered moderately leftist. Lacan, who had sympathized with Catholicism
and in the 1930s even with the extreme right, maintained a critical distance
from the Left (and from politics in general) throughout his life.
The student issue divided intellectuals of the late 1960s just as the
Communist Party had done some years before (cf. Verds-Leroux, 1983). Yet,
as the cases of Althusser and Tel Quel testify, the Partys influence on the intellectual field extended well beyond 1968 and only receded with the collapse of
the Union of the Left (1977). Certainly, structuralisms ethos was oppositional
and anti-institutional. But around 1970 being against the system was not a
particularly striking attitude. It is only in retrospect, after the neoliberal turn
of the 1980s, that the predominantly leftist orientation of these producers can
be perceived as a distinctive feature.
Like the multiplicity of theoretical standpoints formulated in their texts, so
the great diversity among their ostentatiously publicized political convictions
underscores how widely dispersed these producers were in intellectual space.
Certainly they can only be classed as a unified movement to the extent that
their symbiotic products are not subjected to overly close scrutiny. Readers,
of course, need not always rely on an exact reading of their texts in order
to grasp where their producers stand in relation to one another. Readers
normally have a range of non-textual information at their disposal, which
is drawn in one way or another into the interpretative process. Thus, they
usually have some knowledge about the positions the producers occupy in
social networks (see Section 2.2.3) and in the disciplinary division of labour
between the sciences humaines and (academic) philosophy (see Section 2.2.4).
26
They know about their stances vis--vis the pathways of formal education (see
Section 2.2.5) and their institutional positions in academia (see Section 2.2.6).
2.2.3 Schools, clans, networks

Even though it is seldom thematized in theoretical texts, the persona of the
intellectual plays an important role in intellectual discourse. Producers relate
to other producers in networks, schools or other associations (Trebitsch,
1992). These networks, which may extend beyond disciplinary boundaries
with mainstays outside Paris, are often characterized by a relatively exclusive
membership and a hierarchy between the clan leader and followers. At the
universities, relatively durable networks can form and at times turn into
theoretically integrated schools bureaucratic rules, institutional hierarchies
and pedagogical relationships between professors and students can ensure
stable institutional conditions for the reproduction of symbolic producers
within the network. The more diffuse intellectual space in which many
producers of the structuralist vein circulate, however, tends to offer less
favourable conditions for the creation of recognizable schools. As will be
demonstrated in Section 2.2.6, these producers tended to remain at some
distance from the institutional centre, from the traditional Parisian universities
which control the awarding of diplomas and the reproduction of academic
producers. In the specific intellectual conjuncture around 1970, however, the
institutional weakness of these producers turned out to be a considerable
strength, as new intellectual trends and fashions followed each other almost
annually. Unburdened by institutional dependencies and loyalties, they could
now develop an uncompromised identity in intellectual discourse.
Among the academic intellectuals of the structuralist generation, the
figure of the loner (solitaire) dominated, who contrasts with the mandarins
(patrons) of the universities and their subordinate following (Clark, 1971;
Cohen, 1978: 702). Yet, some representatives of the structuralist generation
also succeeded in establishing schools. Lacans cole Freudienne, founded in
1964 after his exclusion from the International Psychoanalytical Association
(IPA), became the focus for a great number of theoretical developments. In
Lacans cole Freudienne, the openness of an anti-institutional movement
was combined with the dogmatism of a doctrine professed in mass-like
27
seminars (Roudinesco, 1993). Another school was led by Louis Althusser

who, as caman (coach and later, matre de conferences or lecturer), was
in charge of elite students at the cole Normale Suprieure (ENS). In the
exclusive, sheltered environment of the ENS, Althusser gathered together
young philosophers such as Pierre Macherey, Roger Establet, Etienne Balibar,
Rgis Debray, Jacques Rancire, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner
and Robert Linhart (Rieffel, 1993: 432), some of whom (for example, Michel
Pcheux) went on to establish their own schools at the universities.
In contrast to Lacan and Althusser, Foucault and Lvi-Strauss, as professors
at the Collge de France, remained more solitary figures with considerable
media presence and good contacts in the institutional sectors of the French
academic system, yet did not build up their own coteries of students. An
important reason is that the Collge de France does not award diplomas or
doctorates and the seminar topic on offer has to be changed every year. By
contrast, an institutionally consolidated school the cole de Paris formed
around A. J. Greimas. However, because of its technical character, Greimas
semiotics enjoyed little attention in the wider intellectual sphere. At the cole
des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Roland Barthes gathered
a loose group of literary scholars, media scholars and semioticians who
belonged to Barthes narrower (for example, Todorov, Genette, Greimas,
Metz, Burgelin, Brmond) and wider circles (Sollers, Kristeva, Wahl, Faye,
cf. Rieffel, 1993: 430ff.). The group which united around Philippe Sollers
journal Tel Quel, by contrast, adopted the character of a tightly run combat
unit with papism, excommunication, tribunals (Deleuze, 1977: [4]).7 Their
numerous changes of position caused a stir again and again. In view of their
countless theoretical about-turns, it was difficult for Barthes and Sollers to
consolidate their schools. A network-like school emerged around Derridas
seminar at the EHESS (including Jean-Joseph Goux, Sarah Kofman, Hlne
Cixous and Jean-Luc Nancy), where a large international audience showed up
in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the structuralist controversy, two groups joined forces: on the one hand,
academically established albeit rather solitary figures, such as Foucault and
Lvi-Strauss, and on the other institutionally marginal figures like Lacan and
Althusser, who commanded a large intellectual following. It was these contradictory positions which made it difficult for a typical observer of the time to
28
perceive the members of the structuralist generation as belonging to an intellectual movement or a collective of thought. Perhaps such an observer might
also have heard, from an arts supplement or from hearsay, of the various
personal relationships that these theorists maintained among themselves. It
is known, e.g. that Jacques-Alain Miller, who published Lacans seminars, was
married to Lacans daughter Judith, whose mother, Sylvia, in turn had been
Georges Batailles wife. Julia Kristeva got married to Philippe Sollers at the end
of 1965, right after her arrival from Bulgaria. Sylviane Agacinski, who was to
be the wife of the socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from 1994 onwards,
in 1984 had a child by Jacques Derrida. For a while in the 1960s, Lacan had his
seminar take place at the ENS with Althussers support. Foucault maintained
a close, friendly bond with Barthes and also got on well with Althusser, as
opposed to Derrida, whom he tutored for a short time in the early 1950s at
the ENS, but broke away from after a quarrel at the start of the 1970s. Finally,
Foucault consumed drugs and turned his Parisian flat into a meeting point
for homosexual encounters (Lindon, 2011).This background knowledge also
plays a role in the discourse in which textual and non-textual elements
combine.
2.2.4 Disciplinary cleavages between the human sciences

and philosophy
After the end of the Algerian war in the early 1960s, the French government
engaged in an unprecedented expansion of higher education. The human and
social sciences (sciences humaines et sociales), which commonly encompass
disciplines such as anthropology and maybe history, the social sciences
(sociology, ethnology, geography, political sciences and economics) as well as
the so-called behavioural sciences (psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, cf.
Pcheux, 1969), benefited particularly from the creation of the numerous new
universities, institutions and careers. While this boom in higher education
intensified the tension with the canonical disciplines of the humanities,
in particular with philosophy and (French) letters, the human and social
sciences attracted many intellectually ambitious researchers and constituted
thus an important audience for the theorists of the structuralist generation.
More often than the human sciences, the humanities were linked with the
29
high schools (lyces) with their more pedagogic orientation (Fabiani, 1988: 9).
Since Napoleon I, philosophy had had at its disposal a central institutional site
for the reproduction of its producers, the cole Normale Suprieure (ENS, Rue
dUlm). While the ENSs initial purpose was to educate high school teachers in
philosophy, in the course of the nineteenth century it became a cadre training
centre for new university recruits across the whole humanities spectrum.
In comparison to other Western academic systems, the French human
sciences were rather less developed until the post-war period, with the
exception perhaps of history, which developed independently early on (for
the success of the Annales-school, see Raphael, 1994: 79ff.). In many facults
of the nineteenth century the armchair theorist dominated, less inclined
toward research and more anchored in the secondary system (cf. Karady,
1986: 271). It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that universities
also began to distinguish themselves as places of independent research. A
well-known example is the ex-normalien, Emile Durkheim, who incarnated
the Nouvelle Sorbonne of the turn of the century. After the death of its leader,
the Durkheim School disintegrated and sociology as a discipline had to start
all over again after the Second World War (Pollak, 1978; Karady, 1976). It was
only the massive expansion of higher education in the 1960s that offered the
social sciences and the arts disciplines the chance to permanently stand up to
the established humanities as independent sciences. Furthermore, trans-disciplinary trends such as Marxism and psychoanalysis, brought into the wider
intellectual debate by Sartre, Althusser and Lacan, could now become established in academic contexts. The contrast between the modern disciplines
of the human sciences and the canonical disciplines is not only a question
of disciplinary traditions and mind-sets, but also of the routes of academic
qualification. Thus, in the human sciences, state examinations such as the
concours, necessary for entry into the ENS, or the agrgation, which qualifies
one for employment at secondary schools and the universities (facults), are
the exception. While academic careers in the human sciences do not generally
depend on teaching in secondary schools or on state examinations, research
achievements, certified by a doctorate, are especially valued.
In the 1960s, the increasing role of academic research, as opposed to
teaching in secondary education, called for the more conceptually oriented
ideal of the humanist pedagogue to be brought into question. Thus, it was
30
not surprising that, as a result of the expansion of higher education, which

largely passed philosophy by, the relations between the human sciences and
philosophy became more tense. Yet, philosophy, which suffered an obvious
loss of prestige in the course of the 1960s, still played a kind of subterranean
role in the human sciences, because many of the theoretical pioneers of these
new disciplines were normaliens who had turned their backs on philosophy.
Ex-philosophers such as Foucault, Bourdieu, Lvi-Strauss, Oswald Ducrot
and Michel Pcheux brought a philosophical culture and conceptual creativity
with them from ENS which helped them define the theoretical lines for new
fields of research during a time of institutional upheaval. The normaliens who,
like Althusser and Derrida, stuck up for their old disciplines, were confronted
with the musty atmosphere of a discipline in which reproductive career
paths (like the agrgation) and more conservative notions of philosophical
culture prevailed (Bourdieu, 1983). It is in the face of this institutional gulf
that Foucault and Derrida fell out over the question of madness in Descartes
philosophy at the start of the 1970s. In this bitter controversy, Foucault reacted
to Derridas reproach that he missed the point of Descartes (see the chapter
Cogito and the History of Madness in Derrida, 1967b) with an attack on
Derridas schoolmasterly criticism (explication de texte) (see the appendix in
the second edition of 1972 based on Foucault, from 1961). This tense conflict
between new and canonical disciplines increased the distance between philosophers (Derrida, Althusser, Deleuze and Lyotard), ex-philosophers (Foucault,
Bourdieu and Lvi-Strauss) and non-philosophers (Baudrillard, Barthes,
Kristeva, Greimas and Benveniste).
2.2.5 Alternative education routes: Elite academics versus

colourful rsums
The discursive competence necessary for becoming symbolically visible in
the field can only be gained under special circumstances. The academics
who entered into the academic field through, in Bourdieus terminology,
the little door, i.e. via standard university careers (1989), rarely fulfilled the
increased demands of theoretical innovation around 1970 (the exception
here proving the rule, for example Lyotard and Baudrillard). Intellectuals
from both the very top and the margins now dominated academic
31
producers who either entered the intellectual field through the front
door of ENS or who started out as free creative artists and independent
scholars. Therefore, the career paths of these producers can be differentiated according to two types. Type 1 is furnished with undisputed
academic legitimacy. Representatives of this type have mastered the rules
of academic discourse and the institutional apparatus so well that they
can take the liberty of limited and controlled rule-breaking, which allows
them to change the rules of symbolic production to a certain extent. Type
2 comprises men of letters, autodidacts, producers lacking in certified
academic capital who, in a situation of ever-changing ideas and fashions,
score points with their particular way of life, their individual creativity and
their theoretical mobility. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Althusser, Bourdieu
and Genette, who led normalien-careers, can be classed as belonging to
type 1, along with Lvi-Strauss, Benveniste and Greimas. However, under
type 2, we find Lacan, Barthes and Sollers, who were not furnished with
academic titles in their fields of research. Kristeva, Todorov and Greimas
deviated from standard French academic. It is against the backdrop of the
increased capacity of research institutions to absorb these producers that
they could occupy academic positions in France.
Among the representatives of type 1, some of the philosophers and ex-philosophers of the cole Normale Suprieure (Rue dUlm) played a particular role.
Their broad philosophical culture and conceptual surefootedness, their efficacy
and not least their improvisational skills helped them establish themselves in
an intellectual discourse which rewarded quickly composed and innovative
theoretical projects with high publicity. Led by the branch of Rue dUlm in
Paris, where philosophy, literary studies and natural sciences dominated, the
education system of the ENS recruits its pupils (lves) via a competitive
contest (concours). Admission to ENS is usually associated with a scholarship
and accommodation, but not with a regular B.A. or M.A. programme, because
since the start of the twentieth century the normaliens have had to get their
diplomas at the universities. After four years of shared accommodation, normaliens often have knitted close bonds with each other, which sometimes last a
lifetime. It is during the two work-intensive years of preparation classes (khgne
and hypokhgne), however, that the crucial marks are made on the intellectual habitus of the producers (Bourdieu, 1981). According to Karady, these
32
preparation classes play an ambivalent role (1986: 322):8 the submission to a

quasi-military drill aims for the reproduction of a canon of sacred texts (and
less for the production of long-term investment in empirical research). Thus,
the preparation classes support the formation of symbolic producers oriented
toward institutional reproduction who are well acquainted with the history of
their discipline, who master philological ways of working and whose strength
lies in the reproduction of others ideas. At the same time, these classes are
conducive to the rapid concoction of ideas with a certain dose of eclecticism,
which would later be embodied precisely in the humanities and social sciences,
in which certain theoretical works caused a sensation (Rieffel, 1994: 219f.).9,10
From the end of the nineteenth century, the dominance of normalienalumni in the academic field declined.11 Around 1890 the normaliens
occupied 76 per cent of places at the Sorbonne and 63 per cent of those at
the facults in the provinces, but by 1930 their share had fallen to 58 per
cent at the Sorbonne and 41 per cent in the provinces (Karady, 1986: 362).
The beginnings of the expansion of education enabled the universities to
train their own generations of producers, and set the seal on the decline of
the ENS. This loss of status did not yet manifest itself, as there was still no
shortage of places at the universities, where, during the 1960s, the normaliens
still managed to preserve a veritable hegemony over the most important
places in the disciplines (Karady, 1986: 362).12 Yet, even though the number
of places at the universities clearly outnumbered those at the Grandes coles,
which intensified the symbolic exclusivity of the academic elite, the relative
proportion of normaliens in the highest academic positions declined further.
Furthermore, the ENS had to battle with newly founded rival institutions like
the cole Nationale dAdministration (ENA). The emerging loss of prestige
drove some normaliens again and again to flee forward, particularly through
a change in discipline (Karady, 1986: 322).13 This was demonstrated by type 1
normaliens, whose particular discursive competence sometimes allowed them
to tap into non-academic regions of the intellectual field without jeopardizing
their academic legitimacy. Thus, as Kauppi emphasizes, it was precisely the
normaliens who were predestined to combine the reconciliation of intellectual radicalism with academic respectability (1996: 138).
After the Second World War, the careers of type 2 producers testified to the
centre of gravity moving from the aesthetic to the academic pole, which now
33
absorbed many of the once-freelance men of letters. After their conversion

in the academic field, the type 2 producers tended to keep changing their
theoretical positions more frequently, and often the transfer between academic
and non-academic contexts came to them more naturally. By way of example,
one could mention Lacan, whose style of expression regularly was in stark
contrast with academic norms. Lacan had kept his independence from established academic traditions, when their legitimacy came under question, in
light of the radical changes in higher education. This independence enabled
Lacan to do conceptual work without institutional fetters (depending on the
observers viewpoint, it could also be said that, due to his incompatibility with
academic institutions, Lacans conceptual works are personal speculations of a
highly imaginative autodidact). In contrast, Barthes and Sollers can be noted
as examples of producers whose strengths lie less in the development of their
own theoretical projects than in the distribution and popularization of other
producers theoretical ideas. Initially acting as essayists and literary critics, in
the course of the 1960s they became the epitome of the fashionable theorists
of the Tout-Paris, time and time again tracking down new trends and making
them available to a wider intellectual audience.
The two producer types are united by their anti-professorial ethos. With a
style of expression that sometimes demonstrated literary qualities (Foucault),
came along with feuilleton freshness (Barthes) or gave way to a colloquial joke
(Lacan), they marked their distance from the grey academic mass. Surrounded
by an aura of unique creativity, they maintained decidedly heterodox profiles,
in a situation in which broader resonance was difficult to achieve without a
rhetoric of opposition and marginality.
2.2.6 Peripheral institutions against the academic centre

In 1530, the Renaissance King Francis I launched the Collge de France, which
was conceived as a rival institution to the traditional Sorbonne (Charle, 1986).
At the end of the eighteenth century, Napoleon founded the ENS, a counterweight to the traditional facults and the clerical educational institutions, in
order to educate the new republican high school (lyce) teachers. Under Duruy
in 1868, the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes emerged (whose sixth section
became cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales in 1975), which was to
34
help make up for the perceived education and research deficit of the French
facult system compared to the neighbour to the east of the Rhine (Revel,
1996; Karady, 1985). And from 1939 the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (CNRS) was formed in order to complement the traditionally
more teaching-orientated facults with an accredited research institution (cf.
Druesne, 1975). These foundations, as Koppetsch notes, were not born of any
long-term strategy: Whenever the demand for particular experts arose, it was
met by the founding of another specialist school (2000: 94; cf. Weisz, 1983:
1829; Charle, 1994; Moody, 1978; Musselin, 2001; Schriewer, 1972: 2095).
For centuries these peripheral institutions, which are by no means marginal
and peripheral in the sense that they are not full universities with large student
bodies, were in latent or open conflict with the academic centre (Rieffel, 1993:
425ff.), the facults headed by the Universit de Paris (Sorbonne), which took
on a key position in the educational system as a whole and on which the careers
of professors and students alike depended (Baverez, 1993: 295).14 Until the
nineteenth century, the main function of the facults in the humanities (not,
however, in the liberal professions of law and medicine) was to take exams and
confer degrees; usually there was no comprehensive programme of academic
teaching. Thus, no separation at all, nor break, existed between the careers in the
high school and in the academic faculties (Karady, 1986: 271).15 Musselin (2001:
23ff. [43ff.]) describes the academic world between 1897 and 1968 as a Faculty
Republic, which means that 1) academic careers are organized by the disciplines
(i.e. letters, sciences, law, medicine with their specific modes of recruitment such
as agrgation, concours, etc.); 2) the major administrative actors are the deans
of the facults; 3) in its relation with the universities, the French state prefers
to deal with the faculties. Fully-fledged universities which did not represent a
mere extension of the state (Koppetsch, 2000: 99) have therefore only existed in
France since 1968, when the facults of the provinces were finally merged into
universities and granted relative autonomy. By contrast, the Parisian Sorbonne
was divided up into a good dozen autonomous universities. Thus, 1968 marked
a profound caesura within French higher education, during the course of which
the universities took on their modern institutional form. The conjuncture of
structuralism can be considered as a symbolic expression of this turning point.
As a result of the rapid growth of the universities, the academic centre
the universities, which controlled the reproduction of academic producers
35
through the awarding of diplomas and places fell into crisis around 1970,
particularly with regard to their leadership status in the wider intellectual
discussion. Peripheral institutions, which had always stood apart from
normal universities, like the Collge de France, the ENS and the sixth section
(established in 1947) of the cole des Hautes tudes, renamed in 1975 as
cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, EHESS (cf. Mazon, 1988; Revel,
1996), as well as reformed universities like those of Vincennes and Nanterre,
profited from this institutional vacuum and became high-profile sites for the
production of ambitious theoretical projects.16,17
The opposition between academic centre and peripheral institutions,
which subliminally structures the academic field in France even today,
implies less a difference in the volume of academic capital than a different
composition thereof. In Bourdieus words, the holders of temporal power
(or, more accurately, control over the instruments of reproduction), who are
often disregarded intellectually, are opposed to the holders of a recognized
symbolic capital, who often have no power over institutions (1989: 383
[270]).18 The producers of the academic centre tend to command a higher
temporal capital, in that they exert influence on the careers of other producers
in the academic field through the allocation of places, the recruiting of a new
generation from matrise (diploma, Masters) to thse (doctorate) to thse
dEtat (habilitation), the direction of research groups, the planning of study
programmes and membership in aggregation and doctorate committees.
For producers of peripheral institutions, by contrast, it is easier to build up
symbolic capital. Thus, by no means can the peripheral institutions be judged
to be inferior places of scholarly life. They are grands tablissements which as
a rule extend further into the general intellectual discussion than the universities, which often lack a higher rating on the research front.
It should come as no surprise that almost all of the theorists under consideration position themselves on the institutional periphery of the field. Can
we therefore speak of common ground between these theorists after all and
apply a label like poststructuralism to them? In France, the theorists of the
structuralist period certainly cultivated an iconoclastic ethos. Often they
were considered as being on the intellectual Left (gauche intellectuelle, Furet,
1967: 5). Yet, more than in the USA, where the debate on poststructuralism
began at well-established universities like Yale, Berkeley or Columbia, in
36
France the oppositional stance of these theorists was decisively informed

by a tacit conflict with the academic institutions, which were not always the
most suitable places for theoretical innovation and cutting-edge research.19
Their assumption of positions on the institutional periphery is thus one of
the features these theorists share with one another, even though it is hard to
determine whether it was social constraints or free decisions that motivated
them to manifest their distance from the academic centre. The exclusion
mechanisms of the academic institutions (whose prestige hit a low point
around 1970) certainly went hand in hand with the producers more or less
consciously chosen strategies for distinction. Thus to a considerable extent
the structuralist wave was owing to the rivalry between these institutions and
the university (Pavel, 1993: 12).20
Foucault was the theorist of his generation closest to the academic centre.
In Foucaults case, relative proximity to the Sorbonne and ministerial positions
was accompanied by a promising academic career typical of other contemporary normaliens. At an early age, he qualified with a thse dEtat (1961).
After a series of stays abroad (in Sweden, Germany, Poland and Morocco), he
soon became a professor at a university in the provinces (Clermont-Ferrand).
At the end of the 1960s, he founded the philosophy department at the experimental University of Paris 8 (Vincennes). And finally, he became a professor
at the prestigious Collge de France, which granted him a high profile in the
theoretical debate but not many students. Like Foucault, Kristeva and Greimas
also earned a habilitation (HDR, Habilitation Diriger des Recherches).
Foucaults fellow student from the ENS Bourdieu, research director at the
EHESS, then professor at the Collge de France by contrast, never got these
highest academic credentials. Should this be considered some kind of protest
against the universities reproductive conservatism? As coach (caman),
then academic lecturer (matre de confrences) at the ENS, Althusser, too,
lacked full academic qualification for a long time. Therefore, he recruited his
disciples by building up personal bonds and friendship. When Barthes, late
in life, became a professor at the Collge de France without the customary
academic titles, this was viewed as being a regrettable accident by some
respectable academics (Picard, 1965; Pinto, 1991: 70). Indeed, Barthes was
one of the last men of letters who, during the explosion of academic positions
of the 1960s, succeeded in occupying positions in higher education with no
37
more than an undergraduate diploma (licence). Other protagonists of the

structuralist controversy, like Lacan and Sollers, held on to their independent
status. Lacan was a trained doctor and practised as a psychoanalyst. Sollers, on
the other hand, holding only a lower business degree, is a wealthy writer and
editor.
These examples testify to the increased permeability that peripheral
institutions demonstrated at the time when faced with under-certified
producers and motley careers. Instead of aiming for the reproduction of a
classical canon, demanded by the agrgation for instance, institutions like the
EHESS or the Collge de France put more emphasis on innovative theoretical
orientations and cutting-edge research and sometimes sought proximity21
to more heterodox producers. The relative openness of these institutions
also manifested itself in an above-average rate of international cooperation
and exchange. A significant number of immigrants (Kristeva, Todorov and
Greimas), as well as French scholars after longer stays abroad (Certeau and
Foucault), were admitted into peripheral institutions. And the peripheral
institutions served not least as a springboard to those who launched an international career in the 1970s. What would have become of Foucaults North
American reception without his prolonged stays in California? Would the
poststructuralist debate ever have established itself internationally if Derrida
had not been invited as a guest professor at the University of California, Irvine
or at Columbia University?
From the observations in this section, what stands out is the symbolic
and/or institutional distance between these symbolic producers. Certainly,
they all shared in the humanist critique, but there was neither a theoretical
programme nor a common disciplinary basis. Politically, the extreme Left
and left-of-centre dominated, but this also applied to other intellectual
clusters of the time. Thus, the numerous shades and variations were sufficient
to highlight the differences as being greater than the similarities. Against
this background, it would be problematic to insinuate a unified movement
or theoretical paradigm, especially if we take into consideration the social
relations in which they were embedded: certainly, there are numerous connections between the schools of Lacan and Althusser, but what would link, say,
a Foucault with a Derrida and a Baudrillard? An impression of unity can
perhaps arise from their institutional positioning at the periphery of the
38
academic field, even if professors (like Foucault) and independent scholars

(like Lacan) would then fall into one and the same category. Is it not an irony
of their international success that these theorists are regarded as a (more or
less) unified movement in the poststructuralism debate outside France, which
generally leaves out the institutional contexts of these theorists, whereas from
a French point of view it is precisely their institutional places which may
suggest some commonality?
Yet, this group of theorists distinguishes itself with one common feature.
They all stand for the intellectual effervescence of the 1960s and 1970s, which
is why I will designate them as members of the intellectual generation that
emerged from the structuralist controversy. According to Sirinelli (1986), an
intellectual generation is understood as a group of intellectuals who position
themselves in various ways within the intellectual debate through their stance
on particular historical events. This concept of generation is not to be taken in
a biological or demographic sense. Intellectuals of the same age (for example,
Sartre and Lacan) can belong to different generations. Thus, members of an
intellectual generation are those who are symbolically, via the production of
texts, invested in a public arena and refer to particular historical events. In
the case of the existentialist generation, for example, this would encompass
perhaps the reception of particular philosophers like Husserl and Heidegger,
the experience of Fascism, the Communist Party and the Cold War, while the
structuralist generation is marked rather by 1968, by the emergence of mass
culture, the post-material value shift as well as the ubiquitous references to
Saussure and Freud, Marx and Nietzsche.
Unlike the notion of paradigm, the concept of generation has the advantage
of being able to take the heterogeneity of the adopted positions into account.
Indeed, only a few representatives of this generation can be classed unequivocally as structuralists, but for all of them, the theoretical effervescence of
the time was an event to which they referred in one way or another. It is
the structuralist controversy that constituted them as an intellectual group
amidst a shifting array of labels: sciences humaines theorists, Freudian
Marxiststructuralist movement (Boudon, 1980) or anti-humanists (Ferry
and Renaut, 1988b), intellectual Left (Furet, 1967: 5) or Samurai (Kristeva,
1990). This is why staunch critics of structuralism, for example, Paul Ricur
(1961) or Raymond Boudon (1968), must likewise be considered as members
39
of this generation, at least in so far as they contribute to its discursive

formation.
The intellectual generation of structuralism was not formed in closed
academic circles, not even in the linguistic debate which provided the
theoretical models for the intellectual debate about structuralism (Ducrot,
1968). The intellectuals of the structuralist generation have a clear preference
for interdisciplinary traditions which, like Marxism and psychoanalysis,
appeal to semi- or even non-academic readers. Thus, under the empty signifier
of Saussurian linguistics, an atmosphere of entente cordiale (Angenot, 1984:
158) developed among semioticians, psychoanalysts and Marxists, who
thought of themselves as intellectuals claiming a global and systematic orientation (Furet, 1967: 12).22 Thus, Foucault & Co. were commonly seen either as
moderns (modernes) (Aron, 1984; Ferry and Renaut, 1988a) in the tradition
of the Enlightenment movement of the eighteenth century, or as modernists
in the sense of the aesthetic avant-garde movements of the early twentieth
century. Sometimes they were treated as heirs of the surrealist movement
(Boudon, 1980: 9) or an analogy to the agitation of the symbolists (Crmant,
1969: 52),23 but in France they were never considered as postmodern (in the
Anglo-American sense, cf. also Compagnon, 2005). Like their intellectual
forerunners from Enlightenment to Modernism, the structuralist generation
occupied the classical place of the critical intellectual, i.e. an anti-place on the
social terrain, from which criticism of the dominant order can be articulated.
Rise and Decline of the Structuralist Generation
3.1 From modernity to postmodernity: The intellectual field

since the Enlightenment
The terms modern and postmodern are somewhat tricky labels that refer
to various debates in the social sciences and cultural studies. While the term
postmodern is a concept more familiar to readers of Anglo-American works
than in France, the debate on the modern/postmodern is afflicted by a terminological confusion arising from competing representations of historical time
in the humanities and the social sciences.
A first periodization emerges from the debate in the social sciences. Here,
the modern commonly refers to the functional differentiation of society a
process that classical sociology would designate with catchwords like rationalization, division of labour, or modernization. Against the linear model
of classical modernization theory, we can venture the hypothesis that the
process of social differentiation has been slowing down since the middle of
the twentieth century. Since the collapse of the Communist alternative to
capitalism, we can even see many signs in many areas of the opposite tendency
toward de-differentiation and delimitation of the social (Lash, 1990). With
the advent of the postmodern period, the social boundaries that were constitutive for the modern are disintegrating. While the Durkheimian notion of a
container society modelled after the nation-state has fallen into crisis (Latour,
1984), the spatial borders between interior and exterior are collapsing and a
flurry of post-societal notions of society have been introduced (Urry, 2000),
such as world society (Luhmann, 1998) or globalization (Robertson, 1992).
42
At the same time, the functional borders between differentiated realms of

society are becoming fuzzy, particularly between economics and culture
(Jameson, 1991; Baudrillard, 1972; Harvey, 1989).
The intellectual field in France was born in the eighteenth century in a
context of social differentiation. By asserting its autonomy against hetero
nomous powers such as the nobility and the Church, a bourgeois public sphere
developed which gave birth to the Enlightenment (Habermas, 1990). In the
nineteenth century, the field was divided between two opposing poles. At one
pole gathered those who produced for the restricted market of a specialized
public of academic peers (arts and sciences), whereas at the second one (mass
media and culture), journalists and men of letters addressed a wide public in
newspapers and novels. During the last third of the nineteenth century, the
bipolar structure changed into a tripolar structure with three subcategories of
intellectual capital: academic, literary and journalistic (Kauppi, 1996: 14). It
is not surprising that, especially in France, a distinct cleavage could separate
high from mass culture, as nowhere else did the freelance artists, men of letters
and non-academic scribes concentrate more than in Paris. In this situation,
a number of producers specialized for a market of symbolic products whose
consumers were symbolic producers themselves. Unlike Germany, where
the Humboldtian universities created a permanent class of well-educated
academics in the first half of the nineteenth century, the traditional facults
in France generally did not provide for the positions of a growing number of
cultural producers, nor did they confer the necessary symbolic prestige for the
producers to take a stand in public discourse.
In the early 1960s, after the end of the Algerian war, the situation began
to change. The universities suddenly became a dominant institution, and
the academics prevailed over the writers (Ory and Sirinelli, 1992: 205). This
is why the structural tension (was exacerbated) between a declining literary
culture embodied by the man or woman of letters representing a relatively
low-codified field of social activity, literature and a more highly codified
one, science and the ascending scientific culture (Kauppi, 1996: 27). In 1968,
the faculties were merged into fully fledged universities absorbing many of
the formerly large group of independent men of letters and private scholars.
Thus, the secular differentiation of the intellectual field into three relatively
autonomous subfields (science, media and art) culminated about the year
43
1970, before the first symptoms of a de-differentiation of the field became

manifest during the 1970s. With the return to a bipolar structure of normal
science versus audio-visual mass media, the 1980s marked the end of the
short golden century of French intellectuals.
A second, alternative periodization draws from cultural and aesthetic
debates in literary criticism, cultural studies, architecture and art theory (Foster,
1983; Hutcheon, 1989). Here, the terms postmodernism and modernism are
employed to designate a cultural logic (Jameson, 1991), a political economy
of the sign (Baudrillard, 1972) or a regime of representation (Lash, 1990).
While I will use modernity and postmodernity in order to refer to
theories of functional differentiation in the social sciences, modernism
and postmodernism will refer to regimes of representation and cultural
production. Thus, the exclusive art of modernism emerged in the wake of the
LArt pour lart movement (symbolism, parnassiens), which had turned against
the realistic prose of novelists like Balzac or Flaubert (Bourdieu, 1992). This
modernist art for artists no longer aims to represent the political or social
problems of society (Brger, 1987). Against this background, Emile Zolas
political commitment during the Dreyfus affair may be explained precisely by
the increased autonomy of aesthetic producers on the autonomous pole of the
literary field, forcing authors like Zola (who write for a wide public) to defend
their aesthetic value by emphasizing their oppositional stance in the political
debate (Charle, 1990).
Modernism reached its climax when emerging tendencies such as the
historical avant-garde (cubism, Dadaism and constructivism) and the art
of the 1930s (surrealism) argued for an aesthetic place outside the social,
as it were. Similarly, the theories of late modernism, existentialism and
Table 3. Social Change as the Differentiation and Dedifferentiation of the Social Space
Label
Period
Structure of the intellectual field
First modernity
Eighteenth century
Second modernity
Postmodernity
Nineteenth century
1870s1970s
Since 1980s
Bipolar: court, church versus intellectual

salons, philosophes
State versus print media
Tripolar: science, arts, mass media
Bipolar: science versus audio-visual mass
media
44
structuralism, witnessed a drive for autonomy at the scientificacademic pole.

Just like the art for arts sake at the end of the nineteenth century, a field of
research for researchers in the social and human sciences was constituted
in the 1960s, which allowed certain modernist ideas to pass over into the
conceptual academic field. Reflexive epistemologies, such as those of the
structuralist controversy, were the result. Theoretical formulation became the
production of texts about texts, hollowing out the humanist subject in the
process. With the advent of postmodernism another chapter opened. We must
be brief here, but suffice it to say that now intellectual knowledge underwent
a forced globalization and theoretical traditions, once separated, developed
into hybrid epistemic cultures. Thus, an international style, reflected in the
phenomenon of poststructuralism and theory, had gained ground.
Whereas the semantics of modernity and postmodernity (Table 3)
thematize the changing institutional sites of the intellectual public sphere in
a more or less differentiated social space, modernism and postmodernism
(Table 4), by contrast, covers the various symbolic tendencies and conjunctures which dominate the intellectual public at a given moment. With these
doubled attempts at periodization, the twin historicities of an institutional and
a symbolic ordering of the field can be sketched in. The historical placing of
structuralism before postmodernism is admittedly an ex post-representation.
Contemporary readers of the 1960s and 1970s cannot yet know such modern/
postmodern semantics, with the help of which a heuristic frame will be
fleshed out with historical detail in the following sections.
Table 4. The Culture Change from the Modern to the Postmodern

Epoch
Period
Symbolic conjuncture
Realism
Early modernism
c. 18301870
c. 18701900
High modernism
c. 19001925
c. 19251945
c. 19451960
c. 19601975
c. 19751990
Since c. 1990
social novels (Balzac)

Lart pour lart
intellectual commitment (Zola)
Historic avant-garde (Picasso)
Surrealism (Breton)
Existentialism (Sartre)
Structuralism (Foucault)
Exportation of Theory: France USA
Reimportation of Theory: USA Europe
Late modernism
Postmodernism
45
3.2 The boom of the human sciences in the 1960s and 1970s
The Dreyfus affair ushered in the short golden century of intellectuals in
France. Thus, after 1898, a new social category was formed: the intellectuals, who raise their critical voice in the political space in the name of their
specific cultural competence (Bering, 1982; Charle, 1990). As mouthpiece
for the people, intellectuals plead for the equal and universal rights of all
citizens in the polity. The figure of the intellectual is closely connected to the
specific circumstances of the public sphere and the educational system in
France, where intellectuals play a key role in the political culture of French
republicanism. In other countries, different categories have dominated, for
instance Bildungsbrger in Germany (Ringer, 1969), liberal professions or
men of letters in Great Britain (Eagleton, 1994; Collini, 2006), or intelligentsia (Konrd and Szelnyi, 1981) in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
(cf. Charle, 1995).
From the point of view of Bourdieus genetic structuralism, the strong
public resonance that mile Zola met with when he pleaded to release Dreyfus
can be seen as a reflection of an intellectual field in full-blown restructuration
a field which was differentiating into three main poles: science, high culture
(e.g. avant-garde art) and mass culture (e.g. journalism). Until the fields
de-differentiation in the 1980s, certain symbolic producers cross, combine
and short-circuit these relatively well-differentiated sub-fields again and
again, often in sensational and provocative ways. As separate regions of the
intellectual field are short-circuited, a symbolic conjuncture is triggered in
which certain symbolic producers can attract considerable attention from a
wider intellectual public.
In the early twentieth century, the tripolar structure of the intellectual
field in France paved the way for numerous symbolic conjunctures which
witnessed the increasing importance of academic knowledge. As psychoanalytical findings migrated into aesthetic practice (cf. surrealism) and as
psychoanalysis found itself influenced by aesthetic movements (see the case of
Lacan), the pure aesthetics of high modernism gave way to theoretically more
ambitious projects. At the end of the 1930s, the cluster developing around the
Collge de sociologie (Hollier, 1995) testified to the increasing contact between
46
aesthetic and theoretic avant-garde movements. Thus, the Collge de Sociologie

represented a meeting place where authors such as Georges Bataille and Pierre
Klossowski encountered scholars such as the ethnologist Michel Leiris, the
philosopher Alexandre Kojve and the cultural scientist Roger Caillois, all of
whom provide evidence for the strong impact that high modernist aesthetics
would have on the late modernist conjunctures of Theory from the 1950s on.
The theoretical conjuncture of existentialism marked the apex of intellectuals who were close to academic philosophers (like Maurice Merleau-Ponty),
although they were like Jean-Paul Sartre not yet settled in universities.
Accordingly, Sartre began his career at a secondary school before becoming
an independent writer. He is an example of the close links forged by the
existential generation with the secondary education system, as well as with
the free market of private scholars and cultural creators (cf. Pavel, 1993: 12).
Sartres intellectual project united two types of products: aesthetic products
accessible to a wide, but rather diffuse public (like his novels and plays) and
philosophical products directed to more academic scholars. Indeed, Sartres
academic recognition drew from his normalien background and from his
expertise in a number of as yet untranslated German philosophers: Husserl,
Hegel and Heidegger in particular (cf. Boschetti, 1984). Thus, Sartre initiated
the era of the prophets of Theory, whose impact on the public sphere
resulted from the symbolic short-circuiting of formerly separated regions
in the intellectual field; this new intellectual model combined existential
philosophy, avant-garde literature and literary studies (Pinto, 1995: 120).
However, bridging relatively autonomous circuits of symbolic production
requires a high discursive competence that only few producers in the field
have. Jean-Paul Sartre was particularly skilful in the art of catching public
attention by permanently breaking with the existing symbolic configurations
in the field. After identifying with the non-Stalinist leftist project RDR, Sartre
aligned himself with the Communist Party before turning to Maoism in the
1970s.
With the transition to Foucaults intellectual dominance (which went
hand in hand with the transition to the structuralist hegemony), the centre
of gravity of intellectual praxis moved further into the academic field, on
whose periphery most of the representatives of the structuralist generation
were located. For the structuralist conjuncture to take place, the expansion
47
of higher education turned out to be a decisive factor. In the course of this

expansion, numerous positions in the academic field opened up and formerly
freelance writers and scholars were absorbed by academic institutions (see
Bourdieu, 1989: 483 [338]). While the expansion of higher education was a
development taking place in all Western countries of the time, nowhere else
were the symbolic and structural consequences for the field as far-reaching
as in France. The protracted Algerian war delayed the decisive expansionary
phase, but only in order for the field to grow spectacularly after 1962.
Not all disciplines and institutions profited equally from this catching-up
process. After the establishment of a first licence (B.A.) for sociology and
economics in 1958, the social sciences experienced unprecedented growth
rates. The increase was considerably smaller in the classical disciplines
(arts and letters, philosophy, theology) and in law and medical science.
Additionally, growth was higher for the universities than for the elite schools
(ENS, ENA, Polytechnique, etc.). The dislocations resulting from this unequal
expansion were intensified by reforms which led to the modern institutional
form of the French University at the end of the 1960s. While the theoretical
conjuncture of philosophical idealism accompanied the reform of the German
University modelled after Humboldts educational ideas in the early nineteenth
century, the institutional formation of French universities coincided with the
theoretical conjuncture of structuralism.
A range of data illustrates not only the absolute growth of the academic
field and therefore a revaluation of the academic pole compared to the cultural
pole of the intellectual field, but also increasing inner tensions. Intellectually,
these tensions gave birth to various theoretical trends and fashions, while
politically they led to the explosion of May 1968. With the increasing numbers
of positions and prospects, long-established disciplinary traditions and institutional hierarchies of the Faculty Republic (Musselin) became fragile. Since
the academic producers need for broad intellectual orientation was rising,
visionary theoretical projects from the institutional margins of the field could
meet with high resonance. In this context, Boudon points to a push effect for
some intellectual producers, who, having committed themselves to a strictly
academic and scholarly production, began to reorient themselves toward the
diffuse and fast-moving market of the intellectual Tout-Paris buzzing beyond
strictly academic journals (Boudon, 1980: 472).1
48
Expressed in numbers, the education expenditures in France between 1958

and 1967 rose from 1.84 per cent to 3.4 per cent of the gross domestic product,
which corresponds to an increase from 9.62 per cent to 16.32 per cent in
the national budget (Cohen, 1978: 23). If we survey the total expenditures,
the explosive character of this development becomes even more apparent.
According to Fourasti (1979: 115), the inflation-adjusted expenditures rose
from 8.26 to 80.33 billion Francs between 1947 and 1971 (on the basis of
the French franc of 1938). These numbers outshine the already considerable
growth rates of the past (1872: 0.64; 1912: 2.73; 1938: 6.62 billion Francs).
The system of higher education benefited from this development from the
end of the 1950s onwards. At that time, the number of students began to rise
exponentially, from approximately 150,000 (1956) to about 361,000 (1966)
and then 674,000 (1973) (Prost, 1981: 265). Growth was especially high in the
domain of the human sciences and letters, where student enrolment increased
from about 40,000 (1956) to more than 150,000 students (1966). The natural
sciences saw a significant rise as well (from 40,000 to 130,000). In contrast, law
enjoyed only a two-fold increase and medicine only a slight increase (Cohen,
1978: 22). With the creation of many new positions, the absolute weight of
the universities increased in comparison to peripheral institutions such as
the ENS or the Collge de France. Among the peripheral institutions, the sixth
section of the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes (EPHE) profited most from this
development. This institution played a central role in the rise of the sciences
humaines. Renamed as cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)
in 1975, it asserted its autonomy vis--vis other sections of the EPHE with
stronger ties to the Sorbonne and the ENS. Now the CNRS could also establish
itself as an important complement to the more teaching-oriented universities.
Moreover, a mention must be made of new universities like Vincennes (Paris 8,
since 1980 located in Saint Denis) and Nanterre (Paris 10). Their experimental
character at Vincennes/Saint Denis, no high school diploma is required for
admission to the university hints at a certain proximity to peripheral institutions like EHESS.
The establishment of the human and social sciences in the 1960s had
far-reaching consequences for the political economy of intellectual discourse,
i.e. for the system of journals and publishing houses. In the 1920s and 1930s,
Andr Gides Nouvelle Revue Franaise was the most important mouthpiece
49
for the aesthetic tendencies of the time. In the 1940s, it was succeeded by
Jean-Paul Sartres Les Temps modernes. In the 1960s, a system of new journals
was set in place which reflected the variety of intellectual tendencies and
schools of the time. Three journals played an especially important role for
the formation of the structuralist generation: Critique (published by Minuit),
founded in 1946 by Georges Bataille and Pierre Prvost with the help of
Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, Alexandre Kojve and Alexandre Koyr
(Patron, 2000); Esprit, founded in 1932 by centre-Left Catholics around
Emmanuel Mounier (Winock, 1975); and Tel Quel, which was launched by
Philippe Sollers at Seuil in 1959 (Forest, 1995; Kauppi, 1990). Moreover,
Arguments (founded in 1956 by inter alia Edgar Morin, Kostas Axelos, Jean
Duvignaud and Roland Barthes) and Communications (founded in 1961 by
Roland Barthes, Georges Friedmann and Edgar Morin at Le Seuil) can be
considered as belonging to the wider intellectual environment of the structuralist generation. The numerous journals of the Communist Party, such
as La Pense, La Nouvelle Critique, Les Cahiers pour Lanalyse and Les Lettres
Franaises, played an important role for the Althusser circle. La Psychanalyse,
LInconscient, Scilicet and Topique were associated with the Lacan circle. The
Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales (ARSS, founded 1975) constitutes the
organizational core of the Bourdieu school. LHomme was run by Lvi-Strauss,
Pierre Gourou and Emile Benvniste.
The emergence of numerous new intellectual organs and academic journals
was accompanied by a change in academic publishing. Next to Gallimard
the respectable publishing house of the humanities establishment and of
preceding avant-garde movements (Andr Gide and Jean-Paul Sartre) two
more publishing houses came to play a leading role (cf. Kauppi, 1992): Le Seuil
and Minuit, which had both been founded in the 1940s (see Lottman, 1982:
180ff.). As the publishing house of choice for the new human sciences, Le Seuil
introduced the pocket format in academic publishing. For this reason, dense
academic books could now attain a significant circulation (Lacans Ecrits,
1966, for example, sold over 100,000 times, or Barthes Mythologies, 1957). By
copying this strategy for its science humaines collections, Gallimard boosted
its sales as well (Foucaults Les Mots et les choses, 1966, sold more than 100,000
times). The small publishing house Minuit, by contrast, applies a different
strategy. Rather than aiming at rapid bestseller successes, it places greater
50
importance on the long-term resonance of works addressing a more exclusive

peer readership with high cultural capital. Thus, not only did Minuit become
the publishing house for the Nouveau Roman (to which belong authors such
as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon, Michel Butor,
Robert Pinget and Claude Ollier, therefore see Ricardou, 1990; Britton, 1992),
it also brought out highly complex and demanding theoretical works, whose
long-term relevance did not always show from the start. Such works are,
for example, Derridas Grammatology (1967), Bourdieus Distinction (1979),
Deleuze and Guattaris Thousand Plateaus (1980) or Jean-Franois Lyotards
The Differend (1983).
The ENS belongs to those institutions which did not profit from the educational expansion. While in 1890 the normaliens occupied 76 per cent of the
chairs at the Sorbonne and 63 per cent at the facults of the provinces, their
share fell to 58 per cent at the Sorbonne and 41 per cent in the provinces
in 1930 (Karady, 1986: 362). The ENS reached its last pinnacle immediately
after the Second World War. At that time, the future voices of the structuralist generation such as Derrida and Bourdieu, Foucault and Deleuze were
admitted to the ENS (Rue dUlm). Althusser, as caman at the ENS, gathered
a group of young Marxist philosophers (which consisted inter alia of tienne
Balibar, Jacques Rancire, Pierre Macherey). Simultaneously, former students
of the ENS such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty enjoyed considerable attention
as intellectual leaders. In the 1960s, the intellectual dominance of the ENS
began to fade. First, the universities started to recruit more of their own
graduates. This was especially true for the new, fast-growing sectors of the
sciences humaines, in which the philosophical and literary culture of the
normalien-scholars was less in demand than specialized expertise in theoretically and methodologically informed empirical research. Second, the ENS
entered into competition with the ENA, founded in 1945. While the ENA
forms elite technocrats for the higher political, economic and administrative
echelons, the ENS, with its more philosophical and intellectual profile, could
not promise the same economic prospects (Bourdieu, 1987). The last major
political leader to graduate from the ENS was the later French President,
Georges Pompidou. Third, from the 1970s, new career opportunities opened
up in the mass-media industry, obviating the laborious climb from the preparatory classes of khgne and hypokhgne up to the thse dEtat, while promising
51
a much broader audience. In the structuralist debate, however, certain

philosophers (or ex-philosophers) of the ENS still played a leading role, which
may be explained by the new structures of opportunity of the time. In the
specific situation of the field, some normaliens became driving agents for the
theoretical foundation of emerging research fields: The incredible success of
the human and social sciences in France from the late 1950s to the early 1970s
has to do with the fact that the dual-culture philosophers could appeal to a
large audience, become cultural heroes, and monopolise the highest positions;
whereas those trained in specific areas remained dry academics, slow and
conservative in their movements and thoughts (Kauppi, 1996: 88).
While the structural weight of the universities in the intellectual field
increased as a result of the expansion of higher education, at least in the longer
run, a crisis of academic hierarchies and loyalties was notable for the short
run. The social and political background of the events of 68, which were to
define a political generation far beyond the confines of the intellectual field,
are explored at length in a wealth of studies and reports (for e.g. Prost, 1981:
295ff.; Mouriaux et al., 1992). Nevertheless, at this point, some of the reasons
for the explosive atmosphere which spread among the students in the course
of the educational expansion shall be quickly outlined. First, indications of an
inflation of educational diplomas began to make themselves felt. This not only
led to widespread disappointment, but also to a devaluation of academic titles
and eventually, to high drop-out rates at the universities (up to sometimes
more than 75 per cent) (Bourdieu, 1978). Second, the disparity grew between
elite schools (Grandes coles), which control admission through national
entry examinations (concours) and the universities, which require only a high
school diploma (baccalaurat). Thus, while the number of students in letters
more than quadrupled between 1960 and 1978, most elite schools (where
as early as the late 1950s, not even 10 per cent of students were enrolled)
experienced a doubling of enrolment at best (or an increase from 30,000
to 46,000 between 1958/59 and 1966/67, see Cohen, 1978: 16). Third, the
growth of the university system initially took place without adjustment of the
existing administrative structures. Until the foundation of full universities in
1968, the faculties had been largely independent institutions. In general, they
were headed by just a dean (doyen), aided by two assistants (assesseurs) and
a rather ill-equipped secretariat. The deans, taking orders from and directly
52
answerable to the Minister, were unable to defuse the growing dissatisfaction

among students and university staff (Prost, 1997: 143, 149). Fourth, the
universities were shaken by an ill-conceived academic reform. Thus, in 1966,
the minister of education, Christian Fouchet, ordered a complete overhaul of
the academic programmes. Higher education was divided into three narrowly
defined cycles (cycles) and a specialized study toward certain branches was
decreed, which the universities were unable to implement.2,3 Finally, one has
to point out the high spatial concentration of French students. In 1914, 43 per
cent of them had studied in Paris, compared to about one-third in the 1950s
and still as many as 29 per cent in 1968/69. Most of the Parisian students lived
in crowded conditions together in the small Quartier Latin (Cohen, 1978: 31;
Charle, 2002: 1370f.).
As a result of these circumstances, the tensions exploded in May and June
1968: the occupation of the Sorbonne, a nationwide general strike, the collapse
of public order and the flight of the president. Another reform was rapidly
designed and implemented by Edgar Faure, which gave the French universities
todays shape and design: the faculties were merged to become full and more
or less autonomous universities modelled after the German example. The chair
system disappeared. Professors lost their personal assistants. New recruits had
to pass through selection committees, which decentralized the distribution of
power within the universities (see Bessert-Nettelbeck, 1981; Musselin, 2001:
59ff.[35ff.]). A president with real and effective authority led a reinforced
university administration. The Sorbonne, which had grown into a bureaucratic
monster, was divided into four separate universities (Paris 1, Paris 3, Paris 4 and
Paris 7). Another nine universities with different profiles were founded all over
Paris and its suburbs. While the universities of Nanterre (Paris 10) or Vincennes
(Paris 8), where the human and social sciences were strongly established,
soon gained a reputation as left-wing universities, the old Sorbonne (Paris 4),
dominated by the classical disciplines (such as letters, philosophy or law), was
reputed to be a more right-wing institution. Therefore, for Prost the turmoil of
1968 paradoxically meant the birth of the real French university (Prost, 1997:
154).4,5
The year 1968 not only marked the climax of an expansion crisis (Prost,
1997: 122) which afflicted the universities during the breath-taking growth of
the 1960s. It also represented a turning point in the intellectual debate. Now,
53
the theoretical projects tended to become less static and more activist-minded,
which is testified by the philosophy of desire (dsir see Lacan, Lyotard and
Deleuze) as well as by Sartres philosophy, which now became perhaps more
prominent again than the scientistic structuralism of the time around 1966
(Nora and Gauchet, 1988; Morin, 1986). For intellectual discourse, however,
1968 was only one turning point in a time when new trends succeeded one
another almost every year (see Passeron, 1986). Thus, the hot phase of intellectual productivity is delimited by the years 1965/66 (Foucaults Les Mots
et les choses, Althussers Pour Marx and Lire le Capital) and 1975/76 (by the
publication of Solzhenitsyns The Gulag Archipelago and the emergence of the
nouveaux philosophes).
The institutional crisis of the universities went hand in hand with a fresh
start for the intellectuals on the periphery of the academic field. Here was the
social base of the novel theoretical tendencies: the new educated middle-class,
the junior generation of academics, but also many of the freshly promoted
heads of new institutions or research teams. It was the widely occurring
change of positions which generated a widespread demand for intellectual
orientation and which turned the seminars of Lacan, Barthes and Foucault
into meeting points for the intellectual Tout-Paris. The following numbers
illustrate the extent of such position-changes and the accompanying dislocations. Until the Second World War, professors constituted the great majority
at universities (Cohen, 1978: 71). After 1945, the subaltern categories of
assistants (assistants) and matres-assistants (chief assistants) were created.
In the 1960s, these two groups grew dramatically, especially in the domains
of the arts and letters and sciences humaines. In 1950, the relation between
professors versus assistants/matres assistants added up to the total number of
379 compared to 132 (meaning that 74.2 per cent of the university teaching
staff were professors). In 1960, the numeric relation was still at 603 compared
to 371 (or 61.9 per cent). By 1971, it turned around completely, when 1,840
professors compared with 4,882 assistants/matres assistants (27.4 per cent)
(Prost, 1997: 141). Not only did this development increase the pressure for
innovation on all groups, but the personal relations between professors and
assistants in the institutions also underwent a serious endurance test, whose
mandarin model following the example of the liberal professions (Baverez,
1993: 295)6 could no longer integrate the large number of junior teachers.
54
Raymond Aron is a telling case in point. He recapitulates his experiences at

the Sorbonne in the following way:
I had a single assistant in 1955; ten years later, there were ten looking after the
students. The increase in both teachers and students could be seen from year
to year. The Descartes amphitheatre was full when I gave my lectures; I was
addressing hundreds of listeners whom I did not know. I decided to leave the
Sorbonne at the end of 1967 and become a non-cumulative director of studies
at the sixth section of the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes [the future EHESS,
J.A.], because I had the feeling that the building was cracking at the seams, that
we were paralyzed, sterilised and robbed of our strength by a system at the end
of its tether. (Aron, 1983: 342 [234])7
However, even at the height of their public visibility, the representatives of the
new theoretical tendencies remained a small minority at the universities. Thus,
Maingueneau points out that during a workshop in Cerisy in 1966, which is
generally seen as a milestone on the way to the establishment of the Nouvelle
Critique and the structuralist strands in literary criticism, only two (Grard
Genette and Jean Ricardou) of the twenty-eight contributions advocated the
formalistic (structuralist) approach (Maingueneau, 2003: 17f). The presence
of these theorists in the intellectual and academic discourse of the time did
not lead to their becoming securely anchored in the universities. Even though
the total collapse of more conservative philological methods (Angenot, 1984:
162) eroded the academic reputation of the older humanist scholars, who
now often withdrew from broader intellectual discourse, the local climate at
the universities remained dominated by the older generation, which was to
train the majority of the students for a long time afterwards. It is no surprise,
then, that the theoretical stars of the time established themselves mostly on
the institutional periphery of the academic field. Even though the institutional
periphery allowed a relatively large space of freedom for innovative research,
it offered few opportunities for their ideas to enter academic curricula at
the universities, to educate new academic generations or to influence the
reproduction of the academic institutions. Thus, the strong presence of these
theoretical visionaries in the intellectual discourse of the time did not necessarily transform the institutionalized relations of power within the field. Their
symbolic presence tells us little about the concrete numbers of producers
who located themselves in this or that camp. With their different theoretical
55
projects, the theorists of the structuralist generation satisfied the increasing

demand for general intellectual orientation, for up-to-date research objects
and for cutting-edge research methods. It is this demand that explains the
great publicity these producers enjoyed throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
3.3 The formation of the structuralist generation

It has already been noted that the theorists who are internationally known
as poststructuralists represent in the French field a much too heterogeneous
group to be considered representatives of a theoretical paradigm or an intellectual movement. Yet, even though it is difficult to group them as members
of a movement or a paradigm, they attracted, as individuals, considerable
attention around 1970. For this reason, in order to designate these producers,
I prefer the term intellectual generation. As a rule, an intellectual generation
comprises symbolic producers who a) refer to specific historical events of
intellectual discourse, b) enter broader intellectual discourse with different
projects and c) as Sirinelli proposes, entertain relations of sociability
which not only include sympathy and amity, but also rivalry and enmity
(1988: 12).8
An intellectual generation generally consists of cohorts of different ages
and the generation of structuralism can be divided into three different major
groups. Jacques Lacan (190181) and Claude Lvi-Strauss (born 1908) may
be placed into a senior group. The group of producers born around 1920
comprises Roland Barthes (191580) and Louis Althusser (191890), and
the generational group of around 1930 includes Michel Foucault (192684),
Jacques Derrida (19302004), Pierre Bourdieu (19302002), Jean Baudrillard
(19292007), Gilles Deleuze (192595), Jean-Franois Lyotard (192498),
Michel de Certeau (192586) and Grard Genette (born 1930). A junior
group is made up of Philippe Sollers (born 1936), Tzvetan Todorov (born
1939) and Julia Kristeva (born 1941).
These groups were exposed to different political and historical circumstances (see Winock, 1985: 28ff.; Sirinelli, 1990). The older members
experienced war and occupation, just as did the existentialist generation.
While Lvi-Strauss and Althusser participated as soldiers in the Second World
56
War, Lacan had temporarily been in contact with right-wing intellectuals of

the pre-war era (such as Charles Maurras, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Cline and
Robert Brasillach, who played no role anymore in the post-war period). The
members of the age group around 1920, in particular, witnessed the mythical
prestige enjoyed by the French Communist Party (PCF) immediately after
the war (Althusser and for a short time, Foucault, were party members see
Sirinelli, 1986).
The Algerian war was an important collective experience for the age group
born around 1930. Bourdieu was stationed in Algeria from 1955 onwards
(Bourdieu, 1958), where he taught from 1958 to 1960. Althusser and Derrida
were born in Algeria. Lyotard was engaged in the anti-colonialist movement
(see Rioux and Sirinelli, 1991). However, the event which proved to be
formative for all of them (and less for other intellectual generations) was
the theoretical effervescence of the 1960s (Saussure, Freud, Marx) and the
political upheavals of 1968. These are the common points of reference which
inflected their intellectual careers in many ways.
Other producers can be seen as belonging to the intellectual generation
of structuralism, even though their impact was limited to more academic
audiences, since they did not enter the arena of public intellectual debate.
Such producers are Saussures disciples in linguistics, such as mile Benveniste
(190276) and A. J. Greimas (191792), epistemologists such as Gaston
Bachelard (18841962) and Georges Canguilhem (190495) or the cultural
historian Georges Dumzil (18981986). While these scholars were the
source of important stimuli to the structuralist generation (one has to think
of Greimas influence on Barthes, Bachelards on Althusser, or Canguilhems
on Foucault), they did not act as public intellectuals. Many more producers
were formed during the structuralist effervescence without expounding their
distinctive theoretical projects yet. This is especially true for the numerous
students and commentators of Lacans or Althussers works. Surely, many
relevant cases can be named, e.g. Toni Negri (born in 1933), Jacques Rancire
(born 1940) and Alain Badiou (born 1937), the Althusserians Pierre Macherey
(born 1938), Etienne Balibar (born 1942), Michel Pcheux (193882) or the
Derridian philosopher Jean-Joseph Goux (born 1943).
In a certain proximity to the structuralist generation, numerous other
networks, schools and groups formed around certain journals. In the academic
57
field, historians such as Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch constituted a circle
around the journal Annales as early as the 1920s. The relationship between
the Annales historians and the structuralists was determined by a constructive
and gracious atmosphere of discussion. This can be concluded from the
debate on structuralism that took place in Annales at the beginning of the
1960s (Delacroix, Dosse and Garcia 2005: 186ff.). For Raphael this exchange
was some sort of academic diplomacy on the part of the editorial office of
Annales, which in this way continues its strategy of dialogue between history
and the social sciences. Simultaneously, the debate also covers up the deeprooted reservations of many historians against such forms of abstract theory,
ahistorical models and non-empiric, generalizing interpretations (1994:
280).9 Paths crossed with Barthes, Derrida or Bourdieu, especially in the
sixth section of the EPHE and the later EHESS, which was mostly directed by
historians of the Annales milieu (namely 194756 by Lucien Febvre, 195672
by Fernand Braudel, 197277 by Jacques Le Goff, 197785 by Franois Furet
see Rieffel, 1993: 430). It was Braudel who recruited intellectuals like Barthes,
Derrida or Bourdieu, who can thus be considered to be emblematic of an
institutional elective affinity with the Annales historians.
Another group is constituted by theorists and philosophers who, like Henri
Lefebvre, Cornelius Castoriadis or Andr Gorz, pleaded for an anti-bureaucratic socialism and lobbied for the autogestion movement (Hirsh, 1981).
Together with Claude Lefort, Castoriadis ran a small journal called Socialisme
ou barbarie which critically reflected on the authoritarian systems of Sovietstyle socialism (Gottraux, 1997). Even though this journal ceased to exist in
1965, its theoretical ideas continued to have a subterranean influence and with
the rise of liberal political theory they experienced a renaissance at the end of
the 1970s. Another group was formed around Pierre Bourdieu and his journal
Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales (ARSS) at the beginning of the 1970s.
While Bourdieu was influenced by structuralism, his group turned, during
the 1980s, into an intellectual phenomenon in its own right. Mathematics
and formal logic also played a certain role in the intellectual discourse of
the time, which is hardly surprising if we take into account the circumstance
that the structuralists privileged form over content, while maintaining their
distance from the humanities in the name of a rigorous science of social and
human life. Thus, Lacan, Sollers and the post-Lacanian philosopher Alain
58
Badiou again and again refer to set theory (thorie densemble) as well as to an
anonymous collective of mathematicians known under the name of Bourbaki.
Further, A. J. Greimas and Oswald Ducrot drew upon formal logicians
such as Robert Blanch. A number of theoretical tendencies, internationally
known under the label of French feminism, developed at the intersections
of philosophy and literature. While this strand is hardly representative of
mainstream feminism or of other theoretical tendencies of the time (Moses,
1998; Duchen, 1986; Galster, 2004), we can mention among these feminists
Luce Irigaray, who formulated a theory of feminine speech, or Hlne Cixous,
who discussed gender questions in her numerous novels or theatre pieces. For
the aestheticcultural field, a number of writers can be named, e.g. Georges
Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, who, after having met each other at the Collge
de Sociologie (19379), founded the journal Critique just after the war.
In the magazine LInternationale Situationniste (Martos, 1989), a few iconoclastic performance artists came together, inspired by the media-theoretical
reflections of Guy Debord (1992). The Nouveau Roman may be considered
to be a kind of literary equivalent to the structuralist tendencies in the
sciences humaines. As opposed to the ontological literature of a Blanchot
or Bataille, the authors of the Nouveau Roman were representative of the
criture-tendencies in contemporary art. Along with the Oulipo-Project or
the supports-surfaces-Group (the latter comprising, among others, Daniel
Dezeuze, Bernard Pags and Claude Viallat), these tendencies foregrounded
the play of the artistic material and thereby problematized transcendental
notions of depth and consciousness (subject, meaning, reality ). Similar to
Derrida and Deleuze, many representatives of the Nouveau Roman published
with Minuit. Along with Barthes, Jean Ricardou defended the Nouveau
Roman. Ricardou acted as a theoretical bridgehead for the Nouvelle Critique
(1990) and worked for the journal Tel Quel.
None of these groups succeeded in establishing an event similar to structuralism or in developing a coherent discussion involving the different regions
of the intellectual field. It is the theorists of structuralism who crossed the
academic, aesthetic and political production circuits of the field and thus
came to play a key role in intellectual discourse. Unlike the clusters grouped
around magazines, institutions and/or intellectual leaders, the structuralist
generation did not have an identifiable centre (although a few theoretical
59
leaders may be named, such as the intellectual troika of Lacan, Althusser

and Foucault, to whom we may add Lvi-Strauss). This dispersal in the intellectual space allowed a kind of hegemonic division of labour that bound its
various regions together. Thus, the theoretical conjuncture of structuralism
must be considered as resulting from the combination of diverse factors that
turned the institutional periphery of the academic field into a central place for
hegemonic intellectual praxis. Is it not by crossing symbolically dominating
and institutionally dominated places that the theorists of the structuralist
generation were predestined to exercise a critical function in public discourse?
The different positions they occupied in the field proved to be complementary.
Numerous ties developed between structuralists and non-structuralists,
between their different political positions, between philosophers, ex-philosophers and non-philosophers, between schools and networks to which they
belonged, between elite academics and autodidacts and between their various
institutional places. This intellectual division of labour amplified the symbolic
presence of each producer.10 While it does not matter if they met as adversaries or as allies, the members of the structuralist generation benefited from
the mutual resonance between them.
The explicit reference to intellectual peers the quotation or the naming of
a colleague appears to express an intellectual pecking order that corresponds
more or less to the biological age of the producers. Thus, Lacan is situated at
the top. He seldom drew upon the colleagues of his generation. Foucault, by
contrast, directly names Lacan a few times (Foucault, 1994a). Then follow
Althusser, Deleuze and Derrida, who sometimes refer to Lacan and Foucault
(Deleuze, 1986; Althusser, Balibar, Establet, Macherey and Rancire 1965;
Althusser, 1993) or distinguish themselves from these theorists (Derrida,
1967b). Bourdieus battle against philosophy leads him to draw clear demarcation lines against Derrida (Bourdieu, 1979: 578ff. [494ff.]) and Althusser
(Bourdieu, 1975). Barthes can be considered the theoretical diffusion cell
of his generation since he popularizes other theoretical projects (Greimas,
Derrida). Sollers symbolically inferior status can be read off from the
exposed way in which his Thorie densemble (Tel Quel, 1968) is spearheaded
by the contributions of Foucault, Derrida and Barthes. This is also true for
Jean-Joseph Goux, who cites Derrida frequently and for some students of
Althussers.
60
Around the mid-1970s, the intellectual model of structuralism, which

combined academic legitimacy with political and aesthetic ambitions, showed
first symptoms of a crisis. By around 1980, the structuralist hegemony fell
apart, in the same way that the academic and existentialist humanisms had
been superseded by the structuralist generation in the 1960s. In this crisis, the
intellectual projects of the 1960s and 1970s were subject to a process of rapid
obsolescence. What is more, the fundamental rules of the intellectual game
changed. With the transition to a new discursive regime, sometimes called
neoliberalism (Winock, 1985: 32), the golden era of the great intellectuals
(Winock, 1985: 22)11 and the age of intellectual prophecy ended (Hourmant,
1997: 7).12 Now the intellectual ducked down, pulled back into the institution, closed himself up in the journal of his caste, his specialisation, his
level (Hamon and Rotman, 1985: 207).13 While some intellectuals returned to
academic scholarship, others submitted to the heteronomous production logic
of the increasingly industrialized mass-media market.
3.4 The neoliberal turn of the 1980s

Is it not a sign of receding intellectual ambitions when Barthes, who had
once propagated the death of the author, now discovered the joys of
individual literary experience while increasingly exhibiting his pessimism
(1975; 1977), when Philippe Sollers in 1982 terminated the journal Tel Quel
to turn back to pure literary production, or when Althusser indulged in the
genre of self-criticism (Althusser, 1974; 1976; Wood, 1991)? Is the relation
between political and intellectual power not fundamentally redefined when
Philippe Sollers and Raymond Aron got involved in the same action group
against totalitarianism, when Roland Barthes was seen having breakfast
with President Giscard dEstaing, when, in 1978, the first Lacanian became
minister in a right-wing government (Fabiani, 1979: 299f.)? Around 1980,
the crisis of the anti-humanist theorists was in full swing. Now their leading
figures disappeared. Lacan lost the ability to speak and passed away in 1981.
Barthes died in 1980 after being hit by car while crossing a street. Mentally
deranged, Althusser killed his wife in 1980 and spent the rest of his life in a
psychiatric ward. Althussers students Nicos Poulantzas and Michel Pcheux
61
committed suicide in 1979 and 1983 respectively. Foucault died of AIDS in

1984 after his stays in California. Some time later followed Certeau (1986),
Deleuze (1995) and Lyotard (1998). The spokesmen for the existentialist
generation, Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron, died too (in 1980 and 1983
respectively). But this period was not only marked by the death of the most
important post-war producers, but also by the symbolic retreat of others.
Thus, in 1981, just after Franois Mitterands election, journalists began a
heated argument over the silence of the intellectuals (see Le silence des intellectuels de gauche by Philippe Boggio in Le Monde, 27/28, July 1983 and see
Sirinelli, 1990). Few were still taking on the role of the critical intellectual
(such as Bourdieu, who continued the intellectual models of Sartre and
Foucault with his critique of neoliberalism). Centre-right voices, which had
barely existed in the 1970s (with the exception of Raymond Aron), came to
dominate the public debate (Le Dbat, 1988).
The years around 1980 marked a generational as well as an institutional
change in the intellectual field, which saw a transition to new rules of symbolic
production while defining a new relation to heteronomous fields, such as
economics and politics. This turn to neoliberalism changed the relationship
between the poles of the field massively and permanently. With freelance
producers disappearing, the academic pole consolidated while mass media and
culture now became an industrialized business. Thus, the tripolar structure of
the modern period evolved into the bipolar configuration of postmodernity.
Now, the crucial lines of conflict ran, on the one hand, between experts,
advisors and technocrats with access to political decision-makers and media
intellectuals, who enter intellectual discourse with no specific cultural or
academic competence, their legitimacy based solely upon their presence in
the mass media; and on the other hand, academic researchers, mainly working
on specialized subjects and for restricted audiences. Therefore, the relative
autonomy of the intellectual field is considerably diminished to the extent that
it no longer controls its own agencies of legitimation and also can no longer
create them of their own power (Debray, 1979: 120 [80]).14 Is it this loss in intellectual autonomy that explains why postmodernity is, for many French and
European intellectuals of the time, synonymous with reaction and decline?15
After the growth crisis in the 1960s, the academic field in France showed
signs of consolidation. The number of researchers in letters and the human
62
sciences fluctuated at a level between 220,000 and 230,000 after the hiring
freeze in 197172 (Prost, 1981: 397). The end of the expansion phase spread
disillusion among students and researchers, who saw their career expectations
frustrated. The circulation rates of many intellectual journals sank between
1968 and 1980, from 8,000 to 5,000 for Tel Quel, from 12,000 to 10,500 for
Esprit and from 10,000 to 7,000 for Les Temps modernes (Kauppi, 1990: 82
[102]). The typical print-run of more specialized academic monographs
went down as well, from 2,200 at the beginning of the 1980s to only 700
copies by the end of the 1990s (A.L., 1999: 131). Yet, while Barluet diagnoses
a relative decline of the academic book market in the 1980s, especially in
the domain of the human sciences (2004), Auerbach sees in the developments of the 1980s more of a normalization accompanied by a pronounced
rhetoric of crisis (2006).16, 17 The notable exception of Bourdieu notwithstanding, publishing houses now rarely attained sales figures over 10,000. The
Presses Universitaires de France (P.U.F.) symbolized the problems in academic
publishing. In the 1990s, P.U.F. strayed into troubled waters when the circulation numbers of flagship book series such as Que sais-je? fell from 5,800 to
4,100 (Crignon, 1999: 129). After a peak in 1979/80 with about eighty new
publishing houses set up in the human sciences, the number of new foundations dwindled to around thirty by 1987 (Bouvaist, 1998: 132). At the same
time, the academic publishing business became more and more dominated
by big business and multi-media companies which introduced streamlined
production methods and caused a true colonisation of publishing houses
through financial investors (Bouvaist, 1986: 100).18 Thus, the human sciences
saw pressure mounting from two sides: from small, specialized publishers
without a non-academic readership and from big publishing houses which
preferred essays, pamphlets and bestsellers to conceptually ambitious texts
(cf. Bourdieu, 1999).
Heralding the transition to normal science (Kuhn, 1968), this development
minimized the incentive to develop projects of intellectual innovation. Now,
the fields of specialization were carved out and established lines of research
focused more on methodological solidity than on sweeping theoretical visions.
After the end of the institutional dynamics in the early 1970s, triggered by the
numerous new academic positions, fewer new producers entered the field.
Established producers saw their career expectations thwarted and had to
63
stay in their current positions. It is no wonder that the number of assistants

dwindled again: from 49 per cent (1967) to 37 per cent (1976), which seems
to correlate with the large number of PhDs in 1977 (Cohen, 1978: 134f.).
Philosophy was especially affected by the aging of the disciplines. By 1986,
the number of under 35-year-olds was under 1 per cent and the number
of under 45-year-olds decreased to 19.5 per cent (Pinto, 1987: 142). Due
to the sinking number of available positions and the growing number of
producers, academic institutions seemed to become more exclusive again. The
borders were reinforced between inside (researchers with jobs) and outside
(researchers without jobs), as well as between the top (researchers with
influence on the career opportunities of others) and the bottom (researchers
lacking that institutional influence).19, 20 Furthermore, since the universities
started producing their own junior scientists, ENS graduates were affected
by a more and more difficult labour market, which had them retreat to more
classical disciplines (philosophy, letters). And finally the academic centre,
where far and wide the most positions had been created in the 1960s, could
again symbolically stand up to the institutional periphery. After the faculties
had been merged to form full universities in 1968, these institutions established themselves as independent institutions of education and research
alongside the Grandes coles and the CNRS (Musselin, 2001: 53 [31ff.]). The
1968 education act (loi dorientation) had disestablished the mandarin chair
system with its personal assistants, temporary employment contracts and
institutional hierarchies (1989: 25, 43). Yet, despite the decentralization of
academic power, the relationships between the producers were soon marked
by personal dependence and institutional hierarchy again. Thus, it does not
come as a surprise that for certain observers the beginning of the 1980s was
characterized by new signs of subordination, an emphasis on the disciplinary
aspects of recruitment, and even an enhancement of bureaucratic power
(Bessert-Nettelbeck, 1981: 311; cf. Musselin 2001: 59ff. [35ff.]).
In the course of the educational expansion many of the formal or informal
networks which decided over the distribution of jobs were established as official
research centres, teams and groups (laboratoires, centres de recherche).21 Yet,
the theorists of the structuralist generation rarely succeeded in this process. In
most cases, they did not try to turn their informal intellectual groups into institutionally recognized research teams. One exception is Bourdieu (Lescourret,
64
2008). Unlike Lvi-Strauss, Foucault or Barthes, Bourdieu pursued a strategy

of institutionalizing his theoretical project from the beginning. In 1968, he
founded the Centre de sociologie de leducation et de la culture at the EHESS
with the support from Raymond Aron and later took over the direction of the
Centre de sociologie europenne. Through his position at the Collge de France in
1982, Bourdieu established himself as a leading albeit controversial researcher
in French sociology. His circle, well anchored in the universities, has the classic
characteristics of a group of disciples surrounding a mandarin (Clark, 1971):
clearly defined lines between those inspired by the master theorists and the
rest of the discipline,22, 23 an easily recognizable theoretical language, inner
and outer solidarity of the group (manifested in common publication projects
such as the bestseller work La Misre du Monde, Bourdieu, 1993) and their
own journal (ARSS at Seuil). Bourdieu directed book series, such as Le Sens
Commun by Minuit or Liber by Seuil, as well as the review journal Liber (1989
2002), translated into nine languages. Last but not least, there was a division
of labour between the theoretical head and the students, who tend to carry
out less prestigious work and aim to pursue the implicit or explicit hypothesis
of the master (Clark, 1971: 31).24 Students who showed their own theoretical
ambitions parted company (like Luc Boltanski, who became research director
at the EHESS in 1984; or Jean-Claude Passeron, Christian Baudelot and Robert
Castel). More recently, certain conflicts inside the group were performed as
spectacles with mass-media involvement (see Verds-Lerouxs polemic against
Bourdieus sociological terrorism, 1998).
However, around 1980 important changes occurred not only at the
academic pole of the intellectual field, but also at the mass-media pole (cf.
Lemieux, 2003; Pinto, 2007). On the one hand, advertising, mass culture and
the audio-visual media (television, video and more recently the digital media)
began to boom. Therefore, the fields centre of gravity moved more in the
direction of the mass-media pole. On the other hand, there were new technologies and production methods in the mass-media industry which caused the
big publishers to be subjected to multi-national corporations and financial
markets. Now, the media cycle (le cycle mdia) started, which means that
1) the distributors of thought become separated from the thinking producers
and 2) the distributors now determined not only the extent but also the kind
of production to be published or broadcast (Debray, 1979: 136 [91]).25
65
This sea-change was accompanied by a change in the political climate; it

could be witnessed in the public controversies surrounding the translation of
Alexander Solzhenitsyns The Gulag Archipelago, which came out in French
in 1974 (Jennings, 1993). Now the dark sides of Communist rule became a
topic in the politicalintellectual debate, where conservative positions were
heard again. Even though the existence of Siberian labour camps had long
been known, it was only in the mid-1970s that intellectuals had to take a
stance on this question. In this situation, two new types of producers became
visible: first, the new media intellectuals, who gained media visibility without
previously establishing themselves in more specialized fields (unlike Zola
and Gide in the aesthetic field or Sartre and Foucault in the academic field).
The paradigmatic figure of the media intellectuals was Bernard-Henri Lvy
(born 1948), a normalien who acted as the leader of a group of essayists
(Andr Glucksmann, Maurice Clavel, Michel Le Bris, Christian Jambet and
Guy Lardreau) known under the label nouveaux philosophes (Lvy, 1976;
Quadruppani, 1983). The nouveaux philosophes differed from their intellectual
predecessors not only by virtue of their anti-Communist rhetoric and their
apocalyptically tinged neo-rationalism (Morin, 1986: 77), but also thanks
to a strategy whose primary aim was to gain the attention of the mass media
(Boudon, 1980: 22). These producers entered mass-media discourse without
going the hard, long and arduous route of academic careers. Sometimes they
(e.g. Alain Finkielkraut or Pascale Bruckner) went so far as to invert the usual
order of phases completely, beginning their careers as journalists or essayists
and becoming academics later (Pinto, 1992: 100f.).
Other normaliens, too (e.g. Rgis Debray, Guy Hocquenghem, Andr
Comte-Sponville see Rieffel, 1994: 225), have preferred quick mass-media
attention to the more time-consuming projects required to build up an
academic reputation. While these journalists write in the name of scientific truths (think of Pascale Bruckners sociology), they often stick up for
questions and problems that have long been obsolete in the academic debate
(such as the debate on Western civilisation). Alain Finkielkraut, for instance,
propagates a rather traditional academic philosophy and addresses moral
and ethical questions and the meaning of life (1987). These intellectuals do
not publish with small publishers like Minuit, oriented toward limited circles
of peers. They publish with big publishing houses such as Grasset, geared to
66
the production of bestsellers. While the mass media had allowed a Sartre or
a Foucault to give a voice to academic or aesthetic tendencies, or to political
movements (see James, 2005), the mass-media figure as both start and
end-point for these media intellectuals.
Apostrophes became the symbol of the new era. Apostrophes (197590)
was a late-evening show, moderated by Bernard Pivot, which discussed new
books in the field of the humanities and which crucially contributed to the
phenomenon of the nouveaux philosophes. Thus, the place of intellectual
discourse changed: independent intellectual journals (such as Les Temps
modernes) lost their symbolic authority to magazines with circulations in
the millions (such as the Nouvel Observateur). These magazines publish
young academics who possess the inevitable Open-Sesame (the Agrgation),
yet show no desire to finish the standard academic programme (the PhD)
(Hamon and Rotman, 1985: 233; Pinto, 1984).26 The intellectuals of the media
cycle have distinguished themselves from previous generations of intellectual
producers by a liberal to right-of-centre attitude and are inclined to the moralizing philosophy of armchair theorists. It is no wonder that the representatives
of preceding generations such as Gilles Deleuze denounced the literary and
philosophical marketing and the unsubstantial thinking of these intellectuals
as a fatal reaction (Deleuze, 1977: [2f.]).27 Next to these intellectuals, who rely
solely on their mass-media presence, there is another, more academic type of
neoliberal intellectual: conservative political scientists and political philosophers. By turning against the radicalism and the sectarianism of the 1960s
and 1970s, these theorists pleaded for a neoliberal consensus based on the
respect for individual liberties. Political philosophers such as Marcel Gauchet,
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Pierre Manent, Bernard Manin, Philippe Raynault and
Pierre Rosanvallon belonged to this new intellectual generation. As Thomas
Pavel (1989a: 2) points out, they represented a renewed sense of moral and
political responsibility which made it possible to talk again about erudition,
history and philology; about ethics and axiology, too in Paris (1989a: 144).
An expression of this tendency was the polemic against the anti-humanism
of 1968 by Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut (Ferry and Renaut, 1988b; cf. Pavel,
1989b). For these two philosophers, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, Lacan,
Bourdieu/Passeron and Deleuze are representatives of a 1968 philosophy
opposed to the virtues of subjectivity of the 1980s, which found expression
67
in the rediscovered consensus around the morality of human rights, or the

growing demand even on the Left for the autonomous individual and
society vis--vis the state (Ferry and Renaut, 1988b: 26 [xxi]).28 Moreover,
the controversies arising from the publication of Victor Farass book about
Heideggers Nazi involvement (1987) cast a shadow on the post-war theories
of what Pavel calls the era of suspicion (1990: 174),29 inspired by the threefold
H Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, in the name of whom the theorists of the
1970s had aimed at a criticism of ideology, the decentring of the subject and
the deciphering of latent structures. Like the discovery of the Soviet Unions
totalitarian character in the debate on Solzhenitsyns The Gulag Archipelago,
the controversies surrounding the discovery of Heideggers Nazi past bore
witness to the changed hegemonic constellation in the intellectual field. Now
a model of intellectual practice was established that called into question the
totalitarianism and the anti-humanism of the 1960s.
In 1980, the journal Le Dbat was founded by Pierre Nora and Marcel
Gauchet. It saw itself as an organ of this new intellectual generation (with
articles from, for example, Franois Furet, Mona Ozouf, Jacques Revel, Pierre
Rosanvallon, Herv Le Bras, Jacques Julliard, Luc Ferry, Gilles Lipovetsky, Paul
Yonnet, Alain Finkielkraut, Simon Nora, Alain Minc and Nicolas Tenzer).30
The locations, the rhetoric and the habits of the neoliberal intellectuals
differed markedly from the model of the engaged intellectual as it had been
represented by Zola, Sartre, or Foucault: The liberals are against herd-like
mass demonstrations; they prefer to socialise in a more bourgeois way, more
inclined to the personal home than to collective gatherings (Winock, 1985:
27).31 Unlike Sartre or Foucault, the neoliberal intellectuals no longer saw
themselves in an antithetical relation to political power but rather as ethically
informed advisors and experts for technocratic decision-makers. In elite
think tanks (such as the Fondation Saint Simon founded in late 1982), intellectuals such as Franois Furet, Pierre Rosanvallon, Jean-Claude Casanova,
Luc Ferry, Jacques Julliard or Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie came into contact
with government representatives, business leaders and mass-media corporations (Rieffel, 2002). Is it any wonder that one of these neoliberal intellectuals,
Luc Ferry, was named education secretary from 2002 to 2004 in the Chirac/
Raffarin government, or that Pierre Rosanvallon moved into the Collge de
France in 2004 to succeed Pierre Bourdieu?
68
In view of this return to order, propagated by media intellectuals and

political theorists of the 1980s, most of the theoretical projects of the
1960s and 1970s disappeared from the public scene. With the exception
of Bourdieu, who lent his weight to the general strike of 1995 and acted as
a critic of neoliberal globalization and political philosophers like Etienne
Balibar, Jacques Rancire and Alain Badiou, who theorized against neoliberal
globalization as a regime of exclusion, the rest of the intellectual generation of
structuralism exited the public stage.
Theory is perhaps one of the more spectacular symptoms of the coming
of age of higher education in France, the factors which had contributed to
such a theoretical flowering doubtlessly were the very same that would later
lead to its decline. For after 1973, when the period of rapid growth in higher
education came to an end, not only had relations within the institution been
calmed, scientific production itself normalized (Kuhn, 1968), its producers
having begun to age; but there had also emerged a structure of symbolic
production in which the Bohemian iconoclasm so characteristic of the
producers of Theory was no longer needed. Having emerged in the wake of
the new universities, Theory would never find its place in a French university.
Its intellectual inheritance was developed elsewhere.
From Theory in France to French Theory:

The Making of Poststructuralism in the
Post-national University
The 1960s and 1970s were a period of unprecedented ferment in French intellectual life. Theorists such as Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes
and Deleuze, with their conceptual edifices and their visionary intellectual
projects, captured the attention of readers well beyond the world of the
university. The success of these prophets of Theory crowned the short century
of French intellectuals, which had begun with the Dreyfus affair at the end
of the nineteenth century and came to an end at the beginning of the 1980s
with the silence of the intellectuals, along with the deaths of Sartre, Aron and
Foucault. Artists, men of letters and other professionals with a specific cultural
competence then entered the public debate to take a stand on the political and
moral questions of society. While in the first third of the twentieth century
most intellectual impulses still emanated from art and aesthetics (with figures
such as mile Zola or Andr Gide leading the way), the last quarter of the
century, by contrast, saw mass-media producers coming to the fore, especially
journalists, experts or essayists with access to television (as, for instance, the
nouveaux philosophes around Bernard-Henri Lvy). Yet, no time was more
dynamic and productive than the three decades after the Second World
War. Jean-Paul Sartre, a philosopher, writer and authority in political-moral
questions, symbolically bypassed different, otherwise separated circuits of the
field and thus came to incarnate the figure of the total intellectual. Likewise,
the protagonists of the post-existentialist conjuncture led by the triumvirate
of the specific intellectual Michel Foucault, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
and the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser sought to broadly influence
the intellectual public sphere not solely concerning political and aesthetic
70
questions, but especially concerning the theoretical debate in the booming

sciences humaines. The representatives of this intellectual generation were
mainly academic producers. Intellectual discourse now took place under the
sign of Theory.
Theory is the name for an intellectual discourse which operates with a
body of theoretical texts in certain social contexts. If Theory in France was
the product of a particular conjuncture in the French intellectual field after
the war, its protagonists are today canonized figures in the social sciences and
humanities. Certain changes in institutional structures of the field contributed
to this brief but consequential outburst of theoretical activity around 1970.
Thus, one cannot ignore the numerous new producers arriving in the schools
and universities, which in turn is related to an institutional crisis in the
academic field. This evolution was manifested in a particularly dramatic way
in the domain of letters and the human sciences. Not only did this increase
in numbers constrain all groups to more innovation; it also put to a hard
test personal relations and institutional hierarchies between a small group of
professors and a very rapidly growing group of assistants. While a whole range
of new disciplines, such as sociology and media and communication studies,
semiotics and psychoanalysis, were being established, many new producers
had to be accommodated in a discourse where theoretical projects delineating
new intellectual orientations met with high demand.
One can also point out a new economy of symbolic production which
permitted the diffusion of theoretical knowledge well beyond academic
circles. Besides Gallimard the prestigious publishing house which welcomed
the most prominent authors from the human sciences as well as members
of certain intellectual avant-garde movements (Andr Gide and Jean-Paul
Sartre) there were two other publishing houses playing a decisive role:
Le Seuil and Les Editions Minuit. These transformations in the domain of
academic publishing were accompanied by the appearance of numerous
intellectual organs and specialized reviews such as Tel Quel, whose directorship was entrusted to a quite young team centred around the writer
Philippe Sollers. Thanks to such opportunities, the generation of Theory was
able to have an impact on a public beyond the realm of academic debate,
a public in search of intellectual orientation in the fields of theory, art and
politics.
From Theory in France to French Theory
71
Most crucially, Theory emerged against the background of the (re)birth of

the French University, which found its modern form in the era of 1968. The
spectacular growth of the universities in the 1960s had revealed the archaic
nature of the institutional structures of higher education, essentially organized
into faculties whose roots still went back to the days of the ancien rgime. The
swelling of the lower academic ranks students and assistants went hand
in hand with the critical questioning of the hierarchical order characteristic
of the system of institutional reproduction (of the mandarins of the old
school). It was the peripheral institutions which in the end profited from
this symbolic crisis, bodies such as the Collge de France and cole des Hautes
tudes (EHESS), which do not grant diplomas, or those new universities such
as Vincennes, which do not require a baccalaureate as the basis for admission.
If, for many observers, from within the French intellectual field Theory in
France carries the unmistakable stamp of the 1960s and 1970s with its characteristic ambiance (social optimism, political contestation, cultural innovation,
etc.), this historical varnish disappears as the theoretical texts of the time start
to circulate outside the French intellectual field and Theory in France turns
into French Theory. Theory now increasingly appears as a timeless discourse
in the international human and social sciences. Disengaged from their institutional contexts, its authors are now presented as canonical figures engaging
in a debate over universal questions in the international human and social
sciences.
Considering the international success enjoyed by Theory outside of France
since the 1970s, we might do well to recall that, in translation, texts are recontextualized against the background of specific institutional conditions. This is
why the passage of texts from one field to another is not a neutral operation.
Who in France is capable of placing the University in Irvine, where Derrida
held a series of courses in the 1980s, upon the checkerboard of American
universities? And what American reader is familiar enough with the complex
functioning of French institutions to understand what it means for a philosopher to teach at the EHESS, as Derrida did beginning in 1983? Far from
being external to conceptual work, these institutional conditions have been
mobilized in the creation of French Theory the movement following upon
the North American reception of theoreticians such as Derrida and Foucault,
Deleuze and Barthes (Cusset, 2008). The institutional context which the
72
readers tacitly refer to while interpreting theoretical texts can reinforce the
impression of dispersed theoreticians coming from opposing fields of origin
in the one field and of representatives of a movement more or less unified by
a theoretical programme in another field. For while a reader from the French
field would no doubt have trouble joining together in the same camp an
ex-normalien teaching at the Collge de France (Foucault) and a self-taught
impresario (Lacan), the first thing to be seized upon by a typical American
reader would be the fact that both come from France. Hence the hypothesis,
widespread among international observers, that these theorists shared an
intellectual project (such as poststructuralism) quite distinct from other
tendencies (such as American pragmatism, British analytical philosophy, or
German historicism). It is this effect of translation which makes it possible
for a corpus of texts, read in different fields, to be perceived as referring to
different paradigms, schools and tendencies. To read texts in new contexts
does not make their interpretation less true. Rather, texts are always contextualized and recontextualized and the example of the North American reception
of theoretical texts from France reminds us of the creative effects that these
appropriations have had on Theory.
Just as texts cannot be read without instructing the readers about their
contexts, theoretical texts need to be contextualized, too. If texts always need
to be contextualized to be understood, this does not mean that readers able to
place texts in the original context (i.e. the context they claim to be the context
of origin) can access their true meaning. In the act of interpretation, texts
always refer to some context and different readers contextualize texts differently.
Academic readers tend to mobilize their tacit background knowledge of the
institutional contexts in which the texts originated. For readers from another
field, constructing the context presents a special challenge. A common strategy
for these readers is to ethnicize the texts known to be of a certain nationality
and to put together in the same camp or movement (such as French Theory
against the indigenous traditions of pragmatism in the USA) the authors from
another academic system. Another common strategy is to project the contextual
knowledge they have of their own field on the texts from another field (such
as the perception of French Theory as being a literary phenomenon among
USA-based social scientists). In this act of re-inscribing a text from a sourcefield into a field of reception, the content of the text does not remain the same.
73
In this manner, texts are framed, contextualized and interpreted in ways which
their author can be perfectly unaware of, as is testified by Michel Foucaults
surprised reaction to the label of poststructuralism (see introduction). In this
way, poststructuralism turns out to be a translation effect, which betrays the
contextualizing activity of readers outside the French intellectual field.
A number of reasons can be cited for why these producers could be labelled
as poststructuralists in the international reception since the 1970s but never
in France. Thus, one needs to take into account the delay with which certain
texts that play a role for a certain debate in one field are translated into the
language of another field. Indeed, some of those who are widely seen as intellectual leaders of poststructuralism outside France had distanced themselves
from structuralism before the works from their structuralist period were
translated. Therefore, works like Foucaults The Order of Things (1966) or
Barthes Mythologies (1957), which French observers generally associate
with the structuralist period of the 1960s, were received by English and
German-speaking readers only in the 1970s together with the later resolutely
anti-structuralist statements of these authors. Thus, the order of the translations appearance has changed the way in which these works have been read in
their different contexts of reception. While Althusser was translated immediately after the renaissance of Marxist theory in the late 1960s, some of the
more important writings by Lacan, who had been the senior of his intellectual
generation in France, were published only a decade later.
An indication of the different contextualizations made in different fields is
given by the paratextual blurbs, which change considerably from one language
to another, especially when it comes to the producers institutional positions
and careers matters to which international readers are not necessarily attuned.
In the French editions, the paratexts often reveal whether an author (such as
Foucault, Derrida and Althusser) is a normalien or teaches at a university. With
the help of this paratextual information about the person, readers can classify
producers according to more academic producers (Foucault, Derrida and
Althusser) and less academic producers (Lacan and Sollers), whereas in the
poststructuralist discourse outside France, all these producers are perceived
as being academic figures to varying degrees. There are further contextual
aspects of these texts which only readers with a French background will tend
to pay attention to. One such aspect, for example, is whether the books in the
74
bookshops are put into traditional shelves (especially philosophy, where one
would find Derrida) or modern shelves (sciences humaines: Foucault, Sollers;
psychoanalysis: Lacan; Marxism: Althusser).
Another reason for the different international reception of these authors,
in contrast to their French reception, is the specific ensemble of publishing
conditions in both contexts. In France, a certain number of the publications
appear with publishing houses with a strong focus in sciences humaines. This
was especially so with the then still relatively new publishing houses like Seuil
(Lacan, Sollers), Minuit (Derrida) and Maspero (Althusser) who accentuated
the avant-garde character of these texts. In contrast, Gallimard and Presses
Universitaires de France (PUF), where some of Foucaults and Derridas books
were published, had hosted the intellectual projects of previous avant-gardes
(Gide and Sartre), whereby especially PUF publishes in the field of the more
academically oriented humanities. In contrast, none of the publishing houses
of the English translations has a distinct sciences humaines profile: Lacans
Seminar XI is at first distributed by Hogarth Press; Althussers For Marx by
Allen Lane; Foucaults The Order of Things by Tavistock; Derridas Speech and
Phenomena by Northwestern. This is why, in the USA and in Great Britain,
where some of the texts later editions are published by publishing houses
with a Cultural Studies agenda (such as Foucault at Routledge), the authors
are more likely than is the case in France to be perceived as representing one
movement defined by a shared intellectual problem, whereas in France, it is
rather the dates of publication (between 1964 and 1967) that may constitute
the perceived unity of these producers.
Yet, one can also point out institutional reconfigurations which may have
contributed to the creation of French Theory in the USA. Just as the rise of
the structuralist generation was accompanied by institutional changes in
the French field, a significant institutional transformation began in the USA
humanities when poststructuralism entered the scene. The difference from
the situation in France could not be more striking: while Theory in France,
situated in the fields institutional periphery, emerged during a period of
unprecedented expansion of the French educational system, French Theory in
the USA, by contrast, started in the institutional centres, in leading research
universities like Yale or Berkeley, during the onset of a first major contraction
in the humanities of the USA.
75
Thus, one can ask: What are the institutional transformations of the field
in which French Theory was received? What are the institutional dividing
lines characterizing the humanities in North America in the mid-1970s and
1980s? To sketch out a brief history, Theory is established in two stages: the first
moment is that of High Theory of the Yale School of Deconstruction (Guillory,
1999). It is Paul de Man who, along with Jacques Derrida, paves the way for the
theoretical preoccupations within departments of literature in the years around
1980. This was like the preceding theoretical movement of New Criticism,
associated with Ransom and Brooks, in the decades between 1930 and 1960.
If the practice of the New Criticism resembles deconstruction in certain ways
as it privileges work on the formal organization of the literary text (cf. the
Derridean slogan Il ny a pas de hors-texte), deconstruction is more iconoclastic with its criticism of the literary text which is soon used for more general
political and ideological criticism. The reception of Michel Foucault, which
began on the West coast, contributes to the passage to what can be called Low
Theory around 1990. From here on, the literary text ceases to be the object of
privileged study, questions of mass culture, of identity and politics having taken
centre stage in the intellectual scene. The history of French Theory, then, begins
in the United States in departments of English, extends to the entire literary
and aesthetic field, to parts of history, anthropology and geography, but largely
remains absent in the social sciences, in philosophy and in linguistics.
In order to explain this wholesale transmission of a few theorists from
France, one should draw attention to the specific conditions of academic work
in American society, marked as it is by a relatively weaker valorization in
mainstream media, which serves to keep the American university more or less
confined to the enclave of the campus itself. But one must also consider the
factor of disciplinary ecology, characterized by a stricter division into liberal
arts, intellectually dominated by English departments and social sciences,
ruled by positivist and economistic paradigms, especially since the eclipse of
the more qualitative pragmatist approaches in sociology since the 1980s. It is
the domain of literary criticism, then, that increasingly dominates the intellectual debate and outshines the social sciences with its increasing interest in
contemporary questions of power and politics.
This redefinition of literary criticism as an intellectual discipline goes hand
in hand with the emergence of new hierarchies of dominant or dominated
76
producers on the symbolic map. These are marked by new rules regulating
the division of symbolic profits within the field: first of all, what comes to the
fore is an ever-accelerating rhythm of new tendencies as a host of new fields
of study with rather ill-defined contours see the light of academic day. Often
created by the editors of anthologies (less and less often by the authors of
monographs), these more or less ephemeral fashions give birth to numerous
ideas and concepts which gather in the air, changing every two or three
years. Taking into due account this logic of new and post-, translated into
currents such as post-colonialism and New Historicism, the producers and
their products constantly face the dangers of ageing and obsolescence, which
in turn put most long-term projects to rest.
Against the background of more intellectualized humanities, one can note
an acceleration of productive cycles as a result of which the tensions increase
between young researchers (above all those doing work in contemporary
culture) and those colleagues who have largely had their time. Such hierarchical see-sawing between younger and older scholars is not simply a question
of symbolic prestige, as research funds are often distributed according to
the weight of a given academic fashion. Thus, it comes about that relations
between the generations begin to be marked by tensions. In the end, what
common ground is shared by a humanist philologist with conservative
tendencies and a politicized intellectual with more interest in Madonna and
Spielberg than in Shakespeare or Byron?
As a consequence, symbolic capital is redistributed throughout the field.
Between the stars who monopolize everyones attention and the obscure or
invisible figures (the deadwood), the gulf widens (Moran, 1998; Wiener,
1990). Sometimes still in his or her thirties, the producer becomes a star
by redefining the boundaries of a new field. After having reached a plateau
around the age of 40, the star commences to decline and, by the age of 50,
may well have passed into oblivion. It is against the background of a new
system of academic stardom vs. deadwood that the reception of French
theorists takes place and the uvres of Derrida & Co. become a new
theoretical currency.
If these tendencies testify to profound changes in the symbolic and institutional organization of the field, then ideas do not exist in an isolated manner;
and the case of Theory can be seen as particularly revealing in the matter of
77
institutional contexts in which texts circulate. Thus, the symbolic take-off

inspired by Theory equally accompanies and enacts a mutation in the rules
of academic production and reproduction of the producers. In this period,
the principle of competitive symbolic production the model of the market
generalized and extended to the domain of research begins to bear upon
the American academic field, constituting a clear point of departure from the
educational system of Europe, where the institutional model derived from the
nation-state will be cast into doubt only later as is borne out by the Bologna
process, managerial modes of academic governance etc. today.
The most obvious sign of change marking the field of the human sciences
in the United States in that epoch, is the abrupt halt to the fields expansion at
the beginning of the 1970s. Only a few years before, towards the close of the
1950s, the Sputnik shock had unleashed a grand campaign for the human
sciences, conceived as an antidote to communist barbarism. In the ensuing
fifteen years, the number of university students had increased five-fold, with
a proportional rise in new teaching and research positions, particularly in
English. This tendency peaks in 19712, when more than 64,000 students
complete a degree in English. The sudden drying-up of available tenure-track
positions is a particularly mournful experience for those involved, since for
more than a century this field had only known uninterrupted and bountiful
growth. The descent is as long as it is painful. By the year 19823, the number
of students finishing with an English degree nationwide is down to 33,000, a
decrease of nearly a half in twelve years; only at the beginning of the 1990s
did this category of students once again pass the threshold of 50,000. Since
the total number of students (in all categories) remains more or less constant
throughout this period, the proportion of students enrolled in English was
halved, falling from 8 per cent to 4 per cent (ADE Bulletin, 1995).
This contraction is immediately translated into the number of positions
open to specialists in literature. At this point the job crisis begins which
would last until the end of the 1990s (Aronowitz, 1994; Brub, 1998).
The relationship between supply and demand of young researchers would
continue to deteriorate due to the fact that English departments did not cease
the expansion of their doctoral programmes for a long time after. A vicious
circle thus opens up; when constrained to reduce expenses, departments have
recourse to their pool of doctoral students, who provide a more cost-effective
78
reservoir of classroom instruction. The drop in new doctoral students between

1971/72 and 1983/84 is therefore less marked; and since the beginning of the
1990s there have been almost as many new doctoral candidates as there had
been at the beginning of the 1970s (ADE Bulletin, 1995).
While the job crisis underscores the ebb experienced by the human
sciences in America during that period, such an evolution is in no way specific
only to the American field, for the same tendency was observable in France
and other countries from the beginning of the 1970s. In the United States,
this low point in quantitative terms also brought about a qualitative slump
that had no equivalent in Europe (except perhaps in the British field since the
beginning of the 1980s). What changed is the manner in which producers are
institutionally reproduced, that is, the modes of recruitment, which becomes
in a certain sense professionalized, following less and less subjective criteria
than the humanistic erudite. Thus, one can observe, first of all, the increasingly privileged status accorded to research and publications in a discipline
that had traditionally been defined by teaching; furthermore, the dissolution
of networks directed by the mandarins, such as the networks of old boys,
who had been able to place their students through personal relations. The new
accent is on the research imperative sustaining a rejuvenation of theoretical
discourse even though the average age is climbing as a result of the dearth of
new positions. With young colleagues ever more subject to the logic of publish
or perish, the market for symbolic goods is transformed into a market for
qualifying works, i.e. a market by and for young researchers (Guillory, 1996).
It is in this way that the privilege of age is contested: often, the dominant
producers at the institutional level (such as the older tenured professors) turn
out to be dominated at the symbolic level. Conversely, producers without a
titled position often turn out to be symbolically dominant, since it is they who
contribute to what passes for the last cry on the symbolic market.
Only from around the mid-1970s does the field of the humanities begin
to absorb producers coming from lower social levels, such as ethnic minorities, women and the activists of the 1960s. It is this new group of literary
critics who support the turning-point marked by Theory, poststructuralism
and postmodernism, all the while steering towards a politicization of the
humanities. This change of climate becomes particularly clear during the
presidency of Ronald Reagan, when opinion polls carried out at American
79
universities reveal a marked liberal shift. Accordingly, if between 1969 and

1984 the percentage of those considering themselves left or liberal declines
from 46 per cent to 39 per cent, it jumps to around 56 per cent by 1989. This
tendency is particularly clear in the research universities, where 67 per cent of
respondents in 1989 declared themselves to be on the left, whereas at smaller
colleges, oriented more towards traditional teaching and subject-matter, the
proportions of right and left tendencies are more balanced (Lipset, 1993).
Unlike the situation in France, where Theory peaks during the climax of
the state-driven expansion of national higher education, Theory in the USA
emerged during a long crisis of the humanities which was accompanied by
new post-national modes of academic governance. Thus, one can make out a
shift towards the entrepreneurial or corporate university and to academic
late capitalism (Rhoades and Slaughter, 1997) which change the rules of
academic production. As a consequence, the percentage of instructors with
precarious and temporary positions rises from 22 per cent in 1970 to 43 per
cent in 1991 (Rhoades and Slaughter, 1997: 20) thanks to more and more
graduate students replacing a significant number of their own professors in
the teaching of undergraduate students. Also, there have been new labour
movements arising not only from non-academic personnel, but also from
instructors. The strike of the teaching assistants at Yale University in 1992, for
example, catapulted to public view the social situation of graduate students
(Newman, 1996). Another aspect of this change of regime one can witness,
since the 1970s, is the great expansion of the power of university administrations. While in the former system professors enjoyed a high level of
autonomy and independence, this academic freedom has been cast in doubt
by the resurgence of administrative power in the last few decades. By tending
to centralize decision-making powers, presidents and deans have sometimes
reduced teachers and researchers to subaltern positions vis--vis the administrative power operating above them (Brisset-Sillion, 1997). Here, perhaps, the
parallels which can be made with classical labour relations in the industrial
sector can be seen most strikingly. Finally, as a further sign of the ongoing
redefinition of academic work, one must point to the efforts within academic
research in the human sciences to draw conscious attention precisely to the
problem, problematics, which affects political behaviour as well. Thus, the
rate of unionization is supposed to have passed from 0 per cent in the decade
80
of the 1960s to around 44 per cent by the middle of the 1990s with as
many as 66 per cent having joined unions at state-run universities (Rhoades
and Slaughter, 1997: 18). In this context, indeed, the Humboldtian ideal of
knowledge as the free pursuit of self-discovery becomes rather obsolete.
Through the medium of Theory, a new symbolic regime is put in place, which
redraws the lines of division between old and young producers, stars and
has-beens, left and right.
In this process, Theory has passed from one field to another in which local
conditions could not be more different. In France, this intellectual ferment
commences when the intellectual field makes the transition from a bipolar
(press versus academic research) to a tripolar structure (academic, aesthetic
and journalistic). It is this tripolar structure of the intellectual field which will
offer favourable conditions for intellectual creativity, as certain figures with
well-developed competencies prove able to short circuit sub-fields in order
to capture the attention of a broad public. While the theoretical effervescence
characteristic of French debates in the 1960s and 1970s took place at certain
intersections between sub-fields, the phenomenon of Theory in the United
States from the 1970s onwards was always limited to the academic field,
largely at the most prestigious centres of literary criticism located in the Ivy
League (such as Yale) and in California (Berkeley and Irvine).
In France, theorists associated with structuralism, psychoanalysis and
Marxism found themselves at their peak during the unprecedented period
of growth undergone by the university system around 1970, while their
American colleagues began to show interest in their theories during the
profound crisis affecting the academic labour market from 1975 to the
end of the 1990s. Finally, with quite the opposite of the French university
system emerging from the national educational boom of the 1960s, one may
note a striking displacement in the relations between the nation-state and
scholarship in the American academic field. There, if one may draw inspiration from rgulation theory, a rigid regime in terms of the production of
knowledge in state universities was gradually overtaken by a flexible regime,
based on entrepreneurial principles and endowed with its own symbolic logic
as early as the 1970s. Centre versus periphery, crisis versus boom, flexibility
versus rigidity: these are the distinctions governing the institutional terrain
that proved so susceptible to that productive translation known as Theory.
81
Theory, therefore, emerged at the moment when the French nation-state

had endowed itself with an institution the University bearer of a mission
of cultural education, whereas in the USA Theory is born at a particular
conjunction when new ways of producing academic knowledge testify to
the crisis of the nation-state in the domain of higher education (Readings,
1996). If, since the last third of the twentieth century, the relation between
the nation-state and the human and social sciences has been changing, first
in North America, then in Europe, Theory is perhaps one of the symptoms
of this change, in the course of which canonical disciplines which had played
such a key role in the development of the nation-state especially philology,
history and philosophy are under pressure to redefine themselves in a
globalized academic space.
The Moment of Theory: The Social after Society
The two decades around 1970 were a period of exceptional theoretical

productivity in French intellectual life. Theorists who started out as specialists
of small disciplinary fields entered the public debate while a number of
writers, men of letters and journalists developed an interest in theoretical and
epistemological questions. It was a time of productive encounters between
theorists both inside and outside academia who articulated philosophical,
political and aesthetic questions such as Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser,
Algirdas Greimas and Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Philippe Sollers,
Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari. This is the moment of Theory: the coming
into existence of a theoretical discourse which goes beyond comfortable
disciplinary niches, opening up spaces of intellectual experimentation and
engaging in the struggles of contemporary politics.
Theory emerges in the intellectual space which saw the effervescence of
political theory in the eighteenth century and the rise of social theory in the
nineteenth century. During the twentieth century, this space is increasingly
dominated by interdisciplinary debates in the social sciences and humanities
around language, communication and discourse. Inspired by Marxism and
psychoanalysis, Theory emerges in the last third of the twentieth century
most spectacularly so in France, where structuralism signals the advent of
Saussurean linguistics as a general model for the fledgling social and human
sciences. While structuralism points to a brief but consequential debate in
French intellectual discourse around 1966/67, many of its protagonists have
since been received as representatives of a poststructuralist movement in the
international theoretical discourse of the social sciences and humanities.
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An unmistakable sign of the linguistic turn that characterizes social and

cultural theory in the last third of the twentieth century, Theory originates
in the debates over structuralism and poststructuralism. While both structuralism and poststructuralism revolve around the same body of canonical
theoretical texts, it is difficult to make out the shared features which could
justify bringing together theorists as different as Foucault and Derrida under
the same label. Indeed, one cannot but register a certain indefiniteness
surrounding the underlying ideas of structuralism and poststructuralism
terms which are difficult to account for in purely theoretical terms. They
raise the question of how the relationships between the protagonists of
theoretical discourse are perceived, how theorists are grouped together in
certain camps and movements, how relations of proximity and distance
between the producers are constructed, how theoretical authority is attributed
to certain figures, or how theoretical texts can be read against the background
of certain social and historical contexts. Therefore, these designations remind
us of the social value and significance that certain theoretical texts can obtain
when they are received in intellectual communities.
Many strands in the social sciences have pointed out the social and
historical contexts in which types of knowledge, both in everyday and more
intellectual forms, are produced. Historical materialism (Marx and Engels,
1969), interpretative sociology (Weber, 1921), institutionalism (Durkheim,
1991; Meyer, 1980), interactionism (Goffman, 1974), social phenomenology
(Berger and Luckmann, 1966), Science and Technology Studies (Latour, 1987;
Knorr Cetina, 1981) are among these strands which have problematized older
philosophical traditions conceptualizing knowledge as a set of pure ideas,
abstract concepts and universal truths. If knowledge is constructed by the
community which recognizes certain ideas as relevant, legitimate and true,
Theory too, is involved in social struggles over what counts as legitimate
knowledge in which the participants mobilize their non-theoretical resources,
such as time, relationships or money.
Such a sociological approach to theoretical knowledge is forcefully
presented by Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieus theory of symbolic production
reveals the structural constraints, hierarchies and inequalities which limit
and orient what is done, thought and said by intellectuals. With a focus on
the conditions, interests and power underpinning an intellectual game often
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presenting itself as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge, Bourdieu outlines

a powerful frame of analysis. Drawing on concepts such as field, habitus
and capital, his sociology makes a case for investigating the non-theoretical
conditions of theoretical knowledge production, which works especially well
with respect to the intellectual field in France the example after which his
field theory has been modelled.
Yet, as much as Bourdieu bears witness to a profound renewal in social
theory since the 1970s, a number of problems need to be mentioned
problems which can remind us of more general problems in classical and
post-classical social theory. By turning Theory from an object of sociological
inquiry into a source of inspiration for social theory, one can make the
case for a rapprochement between Bourdieus sociology and Theory, whose
heritage Bourdieu never fully acknowledged regardless of the important role
of structuralist thinkers such as Saussure and Lvi-Strauss in his uvre. While
shifting the focus from society as a constituted order, to the social as a space of
positions yet to be constituted in discursive praxis, Theory can open up new
routes for theorizing the social. Inversely, post-classical social theory can help
prepare a social turn in Theory.
A closer look at the underlying theoretical assumptions in Bourdieus
sociology can reveal a number of difficulties, especially when one leaves
the circumscribed realm of the intellectual field in France. For Bourdieu,
symbolic producers or intellectuals broadly understood (i.e. artists, writers,
researchers, teachers, cultural workers, etc.) produce symbolic products (e.g.
books, paintings, articles, etc.) in order to improve their social positions
vis--vis other producers. Bourdieu situates the producers on two social levels:
on the level of the social space (e.g. the macrocosm of French society) and
on the level of the field (e.g. the microcosm of French academic researchers).
In the social space, the agents occupy certain positions in a three-tiered class
structure divided into high and petty bourgeoisie as well as the popular classes.
By means of their resources (e.g. economic, cultural and social capital, most
of which is inherited in the family) and against the background of a socially
acquired habitus, they participate in an ongoing game of distinctions in which
their positions in the social structure are produced and reproduced. In the
field of symbolic production (let us take the academic field as an example),
by contrast, they compete for symbolic recognition (e.g. through widely cited
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publications) of specific goods (e.g. reputation) and for institutional positions

(such as professorships). Bourdieu aims to reveal the objective positions of
the producers who use their capital to produce symbolic products. By placing
their products on the market of intellectual goods, the producers hope to
generate symbolic profits in the specific social games of their field and thus to
gain the recognition they need to consolidate and to improve their positions
against all others producers in the field. Yet, how can one determine the
positions of leading representatives of Theory such as Foucault and Derrida
in the field?
This question cannot be answered without reflecting on the role the
sociological observer plays in the intellectual discourse he or she wants to
observe. Indeed, Bourdieus position is not a neutral one. Having started
out as a philosopher himself, Bourdieu distances himself from humanistic
disciplines such as philosophy and letters, whose scholastic attitude he
criticizes. Scholasticism is betrayed by the claim to pursue pure, universal
knowledge unaffected by the social and historical constraints of the social
games in which they are involved. Thus, Bourdieu puts social researchers (like
himself) in opposition to humanist scholars, who place more emphasis on
teaching than on research and value personality higher than the specialized
work in research teams. In order to counter the verdict of scholasticism,
Bourdieu demands social reflexivity from theorists and intellectuals, who
are unavoidably involved in tacit social struggles with others over what is
considered high academic quality or legitimate cultural taste, an appropriate life style or normal cultural practice. Therefore, Bourdieu invites
intellectuals to reflect on the social conditions of their own work and to be
aware of the symbolic violence they can exert over others. Bourdieus objective
is to reveal the social constraints on theoretical work, which are sometimes
camouflaged by an ideology of natural talent, of disinterestedness and of
epistemic purity. It is little wonder then that Pierre Bourdieus field theory
of symbolic production has met with such controversial reactions, especially
among many intellectuals in France, who have castigated him for his sociological terrorism (Verds-Leroux, 1998). Indeed, a fundamental asymmetry
seems to be built into his sociological project in that in order to show social
reflexivity, one needs to adopt Bourdieus sociology. Yet, Bourdieu does not
exempt himself from the social power games in which theoretical knowledge
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is produced. Therefore, every truth claim needs to be grounded in the social

position the symbolic producers occupy in their fields, including Bourdieu
himself and the author of these lines.
However, there are other problems which need to be addressed. A first
problem arises if one thinks of how the producers are symbolically related to
their products. For the theory of symbolic production, the producers improve
their social positions to the degree that their products yield symbolic profits
on the market of symbolic goods, e.g. being cited by others in the case of
academic research, defining an aesthetic current in the art world, shaping the
opinion of others in journalism. If symbolic products are produced to increase
the symbolic profits of their producers in the field, the underlying assumption
is that producers are linked to their products in a certain way, that one can
see through the products as it were and recognize the producer as originator
of symbolic production.
Yet, whose products do we deal with in a field where many producers read
and write symbolic products but only a few are recognized as authors of ideas?
Certainly, a great deal of symbolic activity among Western intellectuals can be
seen as being subject to the legal regime of authorship. However, while there
may be good reason to see authorship as a historical institution, it would be
problematic to see authorship as a regulative ideal of what intellectuals really
do as participants of intellectual discourse. Indeed, even if symbolic products,
including this monograph, are usually signed by an author, it is clear that the
way that certain ideas are attributed to certain originators does not necessarily
follow the same regulations of authorship. Hence, authorship needs to be
seen as a product of discursive dynamics in which many participate. Indeed,
those who enter intellectual discourse can never be entirely certain that their
real contribution to intellectual discourse will be recognized. That is why
producers often invest considerable energy in making sure their products get
a fair share of academic attention and recognition.
But what are they anyway given that authors can still exist in the
community as symbolic names while socially and biologically dead? Does
the product belong to a symbolic figure (the author) or a social being (the
symbolic producer)? Theory provides textbook examples for the wide gap
that can separate both: Derrida as a social being, participating in real social
practices (e.g. in upgrade panels at EHESS, writing letters of recommendation
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for friends and colleagues, travelling between Paris and San Francisco, giving
lectures in various places all over the world) is not the same as Derrida the
symbolic name, cited, talked and written about as a representative of intellectual camps and theoretical currents. The discursive practices that make
Derrida very real for others in the community are well beyond the remit
of Derrida as a social being. Indeed, if a symbolic position like the one of
Derrida is produced and reproduced by many participants of intellectual
discourse, the position of Derrida cannot be traced back to the one social
position of the symbolic producer, Derrida occupied in the intellectual field,
but it needs to be traced back to the many participants that write and talk
about him in the intellectual community (think of how these lines contribute
to reinforce the position of Derrida!). This is why authors who continue to be
around once symbolic producers drop out of the intellectual game. Symbolic
names such as Derridas can emerge independently of and even against the
explicit intention of the symbolic producers (e.g. Derrida). Surely, Bourdieu
is perfectly aware of the contingent dynamics of reception.1,2 However, does
the theory of symbolic production still work if the cleavage between the social
being and the symbolic figure is not an exceptional but a systematic one, if the
symbolic figure can be immortal whereas the social and human being always
has to die? Therefore, if the association of producer and product is constructed
in contingent discursive dynamics, how is the position that a producer
occupies in the field as a social being reflected in the symbolic products that
he or she places on the market of symbolic goods? If the authorship of their
products is negotiated discursively in communities and therefore is always
subject to contestation, how objective can the positions which the producers
occupy be through their products? If the link between the producers and their
products is a rather fragile and fuzzy one, can their positions and the field ever
be as objective as Bourdieu assumes them to be?
A second problem of Bourdieus sociology is that the theory of symbolic
production presupposes a homology of the symbolic and the social positions
that the producers occupy. According to Bourdieu, high socioeconomic
positions (reflected in the money, institutional power of producers, etc.)
tend to go hand in hand with cultural and symbolic practices whose legitimacy is highly and widely recognized (e.g. through educational diplomas).
While systems of oppositions can differ between groups, between circuits of
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production and those of reception, between the mental representations and

social reality, the producers habitus tends to synchronize them over time.
The homology of social and symbolic, economic and cognitive structures is
indeed fundamental in Bourdieus work. To postulate a homology of positions
constitutes an empirical claim in that there can remain a gap between the
different systems when the structure of the field is not yet fully realized. Yet,
the principle of homology also implies a theoretical argument, namely the
idea that the producers meaning-making ability depends on the degree of
homology realized among them as well as that the absence of homology can
be a source of fundamental change. Thus, it is in case of a perfect homology,
that symbolic production reflects the structures of social reality. With respect
to Flauberts novel Sentimental Education, for instance, Bourdieu claims a
homology which restitutes in an extraordinarily exact manner the structure
of the social world in which it was produced and even the mental structures
which, fashioned by these social structures, form the generative principle of
the work in which these structures are revealed (Bourdieu, 1992: 58 [31f.]).3
As a regulative ideal, the homology principle produces problems that
are similar to the problems that can be encountered in structuralism. If
meaning depends on the existence of an overarching structure, a shared
code, a grammar that remains stable across different situations, practices
tend to be repetitive rather than creative. From a strictly structuralist view,
social practices, which do not prolong the structure already in place, produce
nothing but incomprehensible white noise a position which cannot explain
the many new situations in which meaning emerges and which Bourdieu
rejects. Yet, while Bourdieu restricts innovations in the field to those privileged factions which have the resources for controlled deviation and thus for
changing the rules of the game, one can ask whether there is not a creative
part in every symbolic practice? Is the challenge not rather to seize symbolic
production as a necessarily creative practice? In Bourdieu, social practices
are systematically placed in a given system of oppositions in order to make
sense. But how can one repeat a practice without creating a new position?
The appropriation of old positions is bound to lead to new positions, at least
in some respects as one will not become Bourdieu by imitating Bourdieu but
rather a Bourdieusian. Indeed, practices never deal with situations which are
fully defined. Symbolic production, in other words, needs to be seized as a
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discursive practice which deals with situations where there is no working

script and recipe, where messiness rather than order is the challenge, where
conflicting, incompatible constraints call for creative practical solutions. This
is why with Theory one no longer expects to discover the social structures of a
given field or space to be prolonged, reproduced, or represented in discourse.
Rather, one asks how Theory as a discursive practice constitutes rather than
represents the social space in which the participants can occupy positions that
have not existed before.
Thirdly, with Bourdieus approach it is difficult to delimit and demarcate the
social arena in which intellectuals engage in symbolic production. Bourdieu
locates symbolic production in a small structure the field which is part of
a larger structure the social space. Both are seen as more or less confined
structures of inequality, divided into the hierarchical strata of producers
whose social positions are objectively determined by the volume as well as the
composition of their social resources (capital). The ruling classes are divided
between a dominant fraction whose power is based primarily on their political
and economic capital (managers, politicians, etc.) and a dominated fraction
with cultural capital (professors, artists, media workers, etc.). Yet, what
are the arenas in which a theoretical discourse such as Theory takes place?
While symbolic producers usually address different audiences subsequently
or even simultaneously (in political, aesthetic and academic domains), their
products circulate in various fields where they are contextualized in different
ways: in the French field, they tend to be read against the background of a
specific socio-historical conjuncture (i.e. the revolution of 1968, the rise of
the sciences humaines and the advent of mass higher education, etc.) whereas
outside France they are more likely to be perceived as timeless figures representing a French theoretical current among other internationally established
strands (such as German idealism, Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophy and
American pragmatism). In their reception, French theorists have not only
been reframed in terms of a poststructuralist movement, but they are also
seen with a new quality, as representing a universal canon (Bourdieu, 1990).
As a consequence, pioneers of Theory like Foucault and Derrida are difficult
to consider as symbolic producers in a constituted field; rather, they stand
in for new theoretical subject positions in a terrain whose boundaries are
yet to be constituted, whose shifting horizons and multiple spatial layers
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testify to dynamic processes of constitution and reconstitution of the social

space. Therefore, if Theory cannot be placed in a closed arena, should it not
be regarded in terms of a discursive practice which delimits, structures and
reconfigures the terrain in which their participants are positioned?
The discourse of Theory invites us to reflect on some of the challenges in
Bourdieus field theory the producer as an author, the symbolic as a means
of representation and the social as a closed arena. Indeed, Bourdieu rejects the
naive idea of intentional, creative authorship. Moreover, he is well aware of
the opacity of the symbolic products and the multiple uses that can be made
of them. Finally, he discusses how structural change can be realized and new
positions can be articulated. However, if he accepts the critique that can be
made of authorship, representation and structure, an intellectual phenomenon
such as Theory can encourage Bourdieu to take the direction of a discourse
theoretical critique of some of the essential assumptions in classical social
theory, namely the idea of the centred actor as a source of action and society
as a constituted structure.
Therefore, if Bourdieu brings classical traditions of social theory starting
with Max Weber and Emile Durkheim to an end and perhaps reaches
beyond them, how can one account for Theory as a discourse whose actors
are discursively constructed in a space which cannot easily be delimited? As
we reach the limits of Bourdieus sociology, this is the point where Theory
changes its role. It is no longer a mere object of social research. Theory itself
can provide some of the concepts and arguments needed for post-classical
tendencies in contemporary social theory. Therefore, after a discussion of
what can be considered as classical social theorys four key concepts actor,
action, society and knowledge alternative, post-classical concepts will
now be outlined such as the divided subject, discursive praxis, the social and
critique.
Actor
A central category in classical social theory, the actor produces social order
as an unintended consequence of his or her intentional actions. Yet, the
concept of the actor is a contested one: while Weber highlights the active role
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of actors as intentional meaning-makers, Durkheim is prone to considering

them as dupes who only realize structural regularities. With the concept
of habitus, Bourdieu pleads for a compromise: the habitus is the instance
mediating between the creative praxis of the actors in a specific situation
and the structures of inequality characterizing a field or space. Even though
Bourdieu prefers the notion of the producer as an agent of social forces over
Webers intentional actor and Durkheims individuals driven by socially
shared norms and values, Bourdieu too, shares with Weber and Durkheim the
idea of the actor as the intentionalist origin of social practice. Inscribed into
the producers body, the habitus is the locus where practices are perceived,
engendered and aligned according to the position the producer occupies in
the social structure. It is the habitus that gives a certain unity to the producers
ongoing practical activities and enables them to act as strategic actors always
eager to improve their place in the social.
Action
If classical social theory puts the actor at the centre of order-constituting
practices, action can be seen as a conceptual correlate of the actor. Webers
definition of social action as a purposeful, intentional activity comprises a set
of practical activities under the control of the practice-generating instance of
the actor, whereas the more structuralist tendencies in Durkheims sociology
make a point of the structural constraints on social action. For classical
social theory, a social action is intentional behaviour influencing the action
of others. Shaped in the social communities, a social action reflects the
intentions, purposes and goals of those engaging in the action. Actions are
unconscious to the degree that they are embedded in habitualized activities
and are not always reflected on in the interaction process. Thus, while classical
approaches aim to ground action in the actors intentions, motivating and
directing social action, the intended meaning of an action is rarely problematized. Bourdieu rejects intentionalist action theories, which is why he prefers
the agent over the actor. The agents are the smallest units of analysis who
compete for improving their positions in the society.
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Society
Actors produce social order which in turn produces actors. Through their
actions, the actors define their relationships with others, as a result of
which social configurations emerge, in which the actor occupies certain
positions (as somebody holding a certain socioeconomic status, a professional category, a set of roles, etc.). If both Weber and Durkheim ask how
the actions of many individual actors result in social structures which
then constrain and orient individual behaviour, Bourdieu puts emphasis
on the class hierarchies which are reproduced by the habitus. Therefore,
in Bourdieu social order tends to be conceptualized in terms of a structured whole, a society, in which every actor has his or her defined place.
Metaphorizations and visualizations of society as pyramids and houses,
congruent circles and bounded territories point to the obsession of classical
social theory with society as an orderly structure. If society permeates the
social imaginary of classical sociologists up to Bourdieu, societal representations tacitly replicate the historical ideal of a territorially contained,
culturally and linguistically homogenized, politically centralized society
modelled on the nation-state.
Knowledge
Classical social theory has resulted from a crisis in modern Western thought.
When the theological and philosophical aspirations towards absolute
knowledge waned between the Reformation and industrialization, social
theorists from Marx onwards began to discover the social forces behind the
abstract and idealist veneer of theoretical knowledge. Social theory, therefore,
invites to ground theoretical knowledge in the social conditions which make
it possible. In Bourdieu, the knowledge of the social sciences becomes socially
reflexive as he calls to mind the non-conceptual resources that theorists
mobilize, the subtle ways of camouflaging social hierarchies and legitimating
social inequalities in theoretical knowledge. By pushing for the methodological objectification of the social positions that the producers occupy in
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the field, Bourdieu pleads for an epistemological break between the observed
knowledge and the knowledge of the observer.
In the course of the twentieth century, classical social theory fell into
crisis. The most important symptom of this crisis has been the weakening
authority of the sociologist as an expert on social matters. The position of
the sociologist-king, who claimed to overlook the social whole, crumbled
when social-scientific knowledge became common sense in so many areas
of social life. As a consequence, essentializing, homogenizing and totalizing
representations of the social have been made problematic by both micro- and
macro-sociological strands of thought. Structuralist and poststructuralist
figures have influenced a number of recent developments in social theory,
notably in feminist, Gender and Queer Studies, Governmentality Studies,
Science and Technology Studies and in Cultural and Postcolonial Studies.
Theorys potential impact on social theory, however, is yet to be explored.
Given that Theory, especially its more recent developments, has dealt extensively with social, political and cultural questions, the lack of exchange
between social theory and Theory may partly be explained by the way Theory
has been received in the USA, where it has been a phenomenon almost exclusively limited to humanities departments.
One can recall here (see Chapter 2) the intensive exchange between
linguistic and social, cultural and political theorists in Theorys beginnings,
testified in such social scientists as Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard,
Claude Lvi-Strauss and Pierre Bourdieu (one can also think of the ways in
which Deleuze/Guattari will later inspire Bruno Latours Actor-NetworkTheory). With the onset of their American reception, questions of social
theory moved to the background, at least initially, as American poststructuralism, focused as it was on aesthetics and culture, has never found its
place in the American social sciences (with the exception of anthropology).
Yet, this changed during the 1990s, when Theorys third phase began. A
new generation of political theorists and philosophers now came to the
fore, many of them from Europe (such as Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar,
Jacques Rancire and Slavoj iek). Theory now deepens its engagement in
political theory, notably in the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
(1985) and of Toni Negri and Michael Hardt (2000). If Theorys second phase
revolved around questions of cultural representation and Theorys third phase
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around questions of political representation, it is now time to ask what role

Theory can play in reconceptualizing the social. I want to conclude with four
theoretical directions which may be symptomatic of Theorys fourth phase.
The following transitions can be taken as indicative of the social turn that we
now can see in Theory, largely concomitant with a discursive turn in postclassical social theory: a) from the unified actor to the divided subject, b) from
strategic action to discursive praxis, c) from society as a contained territory to
the social as an open terrain and d) from knowledge to critique.
From the unitary actor to the divided subject

Post-classical strands problematize the notion of the actor as a unitary source
of action. Indeed, through the concept of the unitary actor, classical social
theory had collapsed two entities into one: the agent, who responds to the
practical challenges of ever-new situations and the occupier of a socially or
institutionally recognized position. As a result of fusing practical agent and
position holder, the actor emerges as an intentional origin controlling the
practices by means of which social order is constructed.
If one distinguishes the agents, who participate in the construction of
subject positions, from the subject positions, which define their place in the
social, the post-classical question then would be how to account for the rules
and mechanisms by means of which agency, intentionality and subjectivity
are constructed in discourse. Against this background, social theory has
been characterized by two tendencies over the last 100 years: the rise of the
actor as a practical expert in the everyday world (notably in interactionist
and praxeological strands of qualitative research) and a growing awareness
of subjectivity as the privileged locus of power in contemporary neoliberal
capitalism (think of the critique of freedom in critical, post-Marxist and
constructivist approaches). Both tendencies suggest giving up the idea of the
actor as a unitary source of social action.
Theorys vocabulary can help make this theoretical movement clearer.
If Theory has emerged from the critical interrogation of the subject in
philosophy (Derrida, 1967a) and the author in literary theory (Barthes, 1994),
it cannot but reject the implicit humanism in classical social theory, which
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traces social actions to an action-producing instance, the actor. From the

point of view of Theory, the actor can no longer be seen as a given but needs
to be deconstructed into its subpersonal voices. Accordingly, with Lacan,
one can divide the subject into a practical agent (le sujet de lnonciation)
and the symbolic positions he or she occupies (le sujet de lnonc see
Lacan, 1973: 156 [139f.]). Using language, the agent operates with voices,
speakers and perspectives which are bundled together so as to create an
impression of coherence and unity for the other participants of discourse.
Thus, subject positions are symbolically constructed and established places
covering up the multitude of voices, perspectives and speakers which the
participants mobilize in discourse. An illusion of inner unity created by
the polyphonic interpellations of others, the speaking and acting subject is
a social construction by means of which the participants of discourse are
placed in the social and can exist as somebodies. Identified and labelled,
categorized and related to others, subject positions are the streamlined
products of discursive practices which repress its underlying divisions, rifts
and fissures in discourse (Angermuller, 2013).
As a socio-symbolic being, the subject is entangled in discursive practices.
While many agents participate in discourse, not all of them can attain the
recognized status of a subject or actor. Yet, to exist socially, it needs to
engage in a discourse with others. Indeed, it is not enough to claim to be
somebody (your daughters father, the forty-fifth US president, the founder
of poststructuralism). To be somebody, such a claim needs to be ratified and
acknowledged by others (your daughter, American voters, other intellectuals).
The participants enter the discursive positioning as socially under-defined
beings. It is in discourse that they are defined as socially existent. Mobilizing
positions which are defined before we are born and resources which are
unequally distributed among the participants (as Althusser put it, the former
subject to-be will have to find its place, i.e. become the sexual subject
(boy or girl), 1995: 228 [176]),4 this discursive positioning game exceeds
their intentional control, as a result of which some subject positions come to
be more established than others. Yet, however successful or unsuccessful the
participants of discourse are in occupying coveted subject positions, they can
never overcome the constitutive division between their existence as practical
agents of discourse and the symbolic positions, roles and points of view that
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are attributed to them by others. Therefore, the unitary actor needs to be

replaced by the divided subject.
From intentional action to discursive praxis

While for classical theory the intended meaning can be easily read off from
the surface of social actions, post-classical tendencies emphasize the opacity,
contingency and autonomy of social practice. Practices are opaque in that they
do not reveal in direct immediacy what is intended by the actors. They are
contingent in that they never fully replicate what is already there (an intention,
structure or law) but always testify to the practical sense of the actors. They
are autonomous in that they follow their own logics distinct from the theories
that the actors produce about what exactly is going on. Inasmuch as social
order is never absolute, practices are always bound to create something new,
which is why the participants are easily exceeded in their intentional efforts to
anticipate and control the ongoing flow of practical activities.
Most of these acts involve the production of utterances. Utterances are the
linguistic realizations of speech acts by means of which practical activities are
encoded and decoded by the participants (Angermuller, 2013). By using utterances in social settings, a participant of a discourse can consolidate his or her
position as somebody here and now in view of others there and then. It is in
discursive practices and processes that they occupy ephemeral positions (such
as somebody entering a supermarket and becoming a client) or institutional
positions (such as somebody being appointed a civil servant). Thus, to the
degree that language (i.e. the capacity to encode and decode acts linguistically) is tied up with social practices and social practices need language to be
performed, every social action needs to be considered as a discursive practice.
From society as contained territory to the social as an

open terrain
With its focus on order and structure, classical sociology tends to merge the
social with the constituted order of society. Yet, if classical representations
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of the social tend to replicate the ideal of the nation-state, they tend to be
oblivious of the constitutive heterogeneities and inherent contradictions in
the social. Post-classical social theory, by contrast, does not stop at the level
of society. Rather, it asks how the social the unformed plasma of social ties,
practices, and elements is turned into the contained structures of society
through discursive representation. Post-classical social theory, as I conceive it,
aims at bringing non-order back in. It accounts for the fuzzy and the ambivalent, the rebellious and the recalcitrant, the material and the bodily aspects
of discursive practices constituting social order. It perceives the social as an
open terrain with gaps and holes which need to be sutured through discursive
practices. As opposed to the bounded territory of society, the social is conceptualized as a multiplicity of positions and practices, as an uneven and unstable
terrain where competing and incompatible logics and constraints prevent
social order from closing in on itself. It requires a great deal of practical
skills, knowledge and resources to navigate on the terrain of the social, where
rocks and precipices, swamps and jungles obstruct the smooth movement
of people, things and ideas (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980). Practical creativity
needs to be shown at every point in order to create new paths, bridges and
channels. Whereas society takes its point of departure from the constituted
social order, the social implies going the other way round: social order is no
longer a given, but the problem and the question is how practices of discursive
representation constitute social objects rather than merely reflecting realities
already there.
The social is in constant movement. Some regions follow a tendency of
territorialization: the fluids of the social coagulate, semi-structured matter
emerges and clods of social order crystallize in the plasma of the social. Yet,
other regions see reverse tendencies of de-territorialization: structures fall into
desuetude, order is undone, society erodes. There can be no territorialization
of the social without the de-territorialization of society and vice versa. If some
regions of the social become territories of society, they are de-territorialized
again when turning into fallow zones of the social. The question is then how
society is constructed and deconstructed in the social by territorializing and
de-territorializing practices.
By mapping society onto the social, classical social theory encloses the
heterogeneous multiplicity of the social within the bounds of society. It
99
participates in the policing practices, which lock the social into the closed
structure of society and put its excessiveness under societal control. The representations of society canalize and domesticize the recalcitrant practices of the
social; the multiplicity of the social is turned into the bounded and smooth
territory of society. In opposition to classical social theory, which presents
society as the official, hegemonic image of the social, Theory perceives society
as a dislocated structure through whose gaps and fissures one can make out
the heterogeneity of the social. Or in the words of Laclau: the social always
exceeds the limits of the attempts to constitute society (1990: 91). Yet, if
society is ontologically based in the social, one cannot trace the social back
to society. Rather than projecting society onto the social, the question is how
to undo society, in order to recover the social before it is put under societal
control through discursive practices of representation.
Theory has resolutely contributed to deconstructing theories of society as
a closed structure, in which every element occupies a defined place. Yet, even
though the social has often been relegated to a secondary place, especially
among North American commentators of Theory, the social cannot be
subtracted from the cultural and the political. This is what Laclau recognizes
even though he presupposes a primacy of the political over the social. In
Laclau, the political is conceptualized as a contingent praxis of articulation
and the social as the sedimented structure produced by the political. However,
if the political needs the interstitial points of the social which have not been
sutured by discursive praxis, the political cannot be thought outside the social
even though it never simply prolongs the constituted structures of the social.
In order to avoid the idealisms of aesthetic, cultural and political theory,
we need not only ask how the social is shaped by discursive practices; but
also how the social shapes, engenders, makes possible discursive practices.
Discourse and the social are co-constitutive.
From knowledge to critique

Concerning the question of the role social theory can play in society,
Theory invites us into a radical critique of the truth effects social theory can
bring about by reflecting on its own imbrication in institutional systems of
100
knowledge-power (Foucault, 2004). With respect to knowledge about society,

Theory critically reflects on the ways social theory regulates and produces its
own truth claims. If classical social theory makes the case for reflecting on
the social conditions which make it possible, post-classical social theory goes
a step further, by pointing out that social theory is never a neutral means of
representation, but constitutes its objects in representing them discursively.
Aware of it being imbricated in a complex of power and knowledge, postclassical social theory reveals the rules and mechanisms, the processes and
resources which make certain knowledges true, coherent and legitimate. It
recognizes itself as bound up in a system of bringing forth the very realities
it claims to investigate. Knowledge itself is becoming the problem, as social
theorys truth claims need to be placed in ongoing power struggles within the
academic field, as well as outside.
With respect to knowledge in society, it rejects homogenizing representations of the social which repress its inherent splits and fissures. Instead, the
social is considered as a space ruptured by contradictory and irreconcilable
forces. A heterogeneous multitude, the social is opposed to society as a
hegemonic, homogenized representation of the social. Theories of society,
which overlook the constitutive antagonisms and contradictions of the social,
unavoidably take sides with the dominant view, i.e. society which presents
itself as the universal view. They then become part of a societal regime of
governmental practices policing the social. Post-classical social theory, by
contrast, aims at deconstructing societal representations of social order. It
breaks with the idea of structured and contained order as a regulative ideal
of the social. Critical of existing society, post-classical theory reveals the
autonomous flows and fluids, the contingent processes and practices which
recall the limits of societal representation.
Theory privileges social theory which goes the way of critique: instead of
participating in controlling, policing and canalizing the social, social theory
after Theory helps reveal the gaps and fissures in society which can never
achieve full closure. While critically reflecting on its own functional role in
constituting society, it raises awareness of the hierarchies and oppositions
by means of which society is inscribed into its own conceptual edifice and
refrains from policing the social and from replicating the constituted structures of society. Aware of its own phantasms of intentional control, social
101
theory acts as a facilitator releasing alternative representations of the social

whose effects can go beyond its intentions. Therefore, rather than domesticating the social as society, social theory goes beyond society by thinking out
the critical potentials of the social.
In conclusion, Theory today may well have become a canonized knowledge
in the social sciences and humanities. However, Theorys consequences for
social theory remain yet to be spelled out. Indeed, the question of how Theory
can help theorize the social, leads us onto a terrain where everything still
needs to be done, but perhaps the first contours can be glimpsed already.
Notes
Chapter One
1 All quotations are based on the publications in the original language. The page
numbers given in the square brackets refer to corresponding passages in the
published translations. The translations given in the text are normally adapted
by myself. The original quotations are found in the endnotes indicated by roman
numerals at the end of the book.
2 autant je vois bien que derrire ce quon a appel le structuralisme il y
avait un certain problme qui tait en gros celui du sujet et de la refonte du
sujet, autant je ne vois pas, chez ceux quon appelle les postmodernes et les
poststructuralistes, quel est le type de problmes qui leur serait commun
(Foucault, 1994c: 447).
3 un espace intellectuel poststructuraliste (Dosse, 1995: 19).
4 on parle plus de Foucault, de Derrida et de Lvi-Strauss Berkeley et sur
certains campus texans que dans les sminaires ethnologiques de lcole des
Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales [] le transfert des ides en a transform la
perspective, et les grands penseurs franais ont t rappropris par la tradition
intellectuelle anglo-amricaine [] Personnellement, je restais perplexe devant
le chambardement post-structuraliste des annes quatre-vingts (Bahloul, 1991:
49, 50, 52).
5 une translation lourde, durable, qui dpasse le furtif effet de mode (Cusset,
2003: 285).
6 surcods, graduellement amricaniss, largement d-franciss; noms devenus
incontournables outre-Atlantiques sans que le pays dont ils sont issus ait jamais
pris la mesure du phnomne (Cusset, 2003: 12).
7 While these specialists of theory history often prefer alternative labels (e.g.
Theory) to the term poststructuralist, which in the USA from time to
time is associated with the deconstructionism of the Yale School, the label
poststructuralist is often found in use in introductory works and anthologies.
8 Droz counts 82 French book titles coming out in 1998 alone about the events of
1968 (2002).
9 la figure hroque de lintellectuel (Leymarie, 2001: 3).
104 Notes
10 But see Lamont (1987), Bourdieu (1990), Boltanski, (1975) and for a view of the
nineteenth century see Charle (2004), Schriewer (1993), Karady (1998), Charle
(1996) and Espagne (1988).
11 In this context a few attempts in the North American humanities are made to
include Bourdieu in the poststructuralist canon of French theorists (Guillory,
1993; Modern Language Quarterly, 1997).
12 la construction dune thorie de la culture sur le modle de la thorie
saussurienne de la langue (Bourdieu, 1986: 41).
13 un univers o exister cest diffrer (Bourdieu, 1992: 223).
14 Bourdieus approach has formed the theoretical backbone for numerous studies
in intellectual sociology, e.g. Luc Boltanski and Pascale Maldidier (1970),
Anna Boschetti (1984), Patrick Champagne (1990), Christophe Charle (1990),
Jean-Louis Fabiani (1988), Philippe Gottraux (1997), Johan Heilbron (2004),
Victor Karady (1986), Niilo Kauppi (1996), Frdrique Matonti (2005), Louis
Pinto (1995), Fritz Ringer (1992), Gisle Sapiro (1999), Alain Viala (1985).
Chapter Two
1 A telling example is Bossinade, who sees poststructuralism developing in the
mid-1960s in France and emphasizes the influence of 1968 at the same time
(2000: 3ff.). In her account, it remains unclear, however, how 1968 affected
the poststructuralist works of Lacan and Derrida, which had already been
published by the mid-1960s.
2 La coutume dsigne, elle chantillonne tort ou raison: un linguiste comme
R. Jakobson; un sociologue comme C. Lvi-Strauss; un psychanalyste comme
J. Lacan; un philosophe qui renouvelle lpistmologie, comme M. Foucault,
un philosophe marxiste qui reprend le problme de linterprtation du
marxisme, comme L. Althusser; un critique littraire comme R. Barthes; des
crivains comme ceux du groupe Tel Quel Les uns ne refusent pas le mot
structuralisme, et emploient structure, structural. Les autres prfrent le
terme saussurien de systme (Deleuze, 2002: 238).
3 However, Jean Piagets genetic structuralism, the functionalist structuralism
in the social sciences from mile Durkheim to Talcott Parsons, or Noam
Chomskys transformational grammar hardly enter into this discussion.
4 Lvi-Strauss, who started mentioning the term only in 1972, offers the following
ironic definition of structuralism: It is normally understood as a Parisian
fashion, as it surfaces every five years and leaves its five-year trace behind (cited
Notes
105
in Ory and Sirinelli, 1992: 206, n. 1). Likewise, for Foucault, structuralism is a
category, which exists for the others, for those who do not belong to it. From
outside, one can say this one, that one and that one are structuralists. One
should ask Sartre who the structuralists are, since he believes that they formed
a coherent group (Lvi-Strauss, Althusser, Dumzil, Lacan and I), a group
which represents a kind of unity, but this unity, take it from me, is not felt by us
(1994b: 665 [54]).
5 Boudon reports, for example, of that political meeting at which one influential
member of an important political party had given a lecture on the subject of
Marxism and humanism. He proved the incompatibility between structuralism
and humanism and concluded that the structuralist party supported the cause of
the Chinese against the Soviets (Boudon, 1968: 10).
6 A Bordeaux, o nous rdigeons cet avant-propos, un membre influent
dun important parti politique vient de donner une confrence sur le
thme marxisme et structuralisme. Il y dmontrait lincompatibilit entre
structuralisme et humanisme, et en concluait que le parti structuraliste faisait le
jeu des Chinois contre les Sovitiques (Boudon, 1968: 10).
7 avec papisme, excommunications, tribunaux (Deleuze, 1977: [4]).
8 rle ambigu (Karady, 1986: 322).
9 Thus, Kauppi mentions the fascination as much as the aversion which the
normaliens often experience when faced with their non-normalien colleagues.
For Kauppi a normalien-habitus is the result of a specific, elementary,
intellectual training: extreme presumptuousness, a pedantic concern for style,
hatred of verbal improvisation, frequent Latin and Greek citations, a conceptual
thinking style, the use of French classicists, excessive abstraction and so on. As a
counter-reaction, intellectuals could romanticise the scholarly method as many
representatives of the sciences humaines-intelligentsia of the 1960s did , in
which they developed, for example, quantitative history, deductive models and
statistical methods, and placed excessive trust in them (Kauppi, 1996: 21).
10 le brassage dides [] une certaine dose dclectisme que lon retrouvera plus
tard incorpore dans certains travaux thoriques qui feront date, en particulier
dans le domaine des sciences humaines et sociales (Rieffel, 1994: 219f.).
11 The normaliens network extends to publishing houses (Jean-Franois Revel
at Seuil, Roger Caillois at Gallimard, Michel Prigent at PUF), as well as to
newspapers and to magazines: Pierre-Henri Simon and Thomas Ferenczi at Le
Monde, Maurice Clavel and Jacques Julliard at Nouvel Observateur, Jean-Franois
Revel at LExpress, then at Point, Jean dOrmesson at Figaro, Alain-Grard Slama
at Point, then at Figaro (Rieffel, 1994: 225).
106 Notes
12 ils russissent encore cette date conserver une vritable hgmonie sur
les postes les plus importantes des disciplines nobles (philosophie, lettres
franaises et anciennes, histoire ancienne) (Karady, 1986: 362).
13 fuite en avant, notamment par un changement de discipline (Karady, 1986: 322).
14 La Sorbonne reprsentait la cl de vote de lensemble, dont dpendait la
carrire des professeurs comme des tudiants (Baverez, 1993: 295).
15 Il nexiste aucune sparation ou rupture entre carrires de lyce et carrires dans
les facults acadmiques (Karady, 1986: 271).
16 Among others, Lvi-Strauss, Foucault, Barthes and Bourdieu taught at the
Collge de France. Louis Althusser and Alain Badiou taught at the ENS, as
did Jacques Derrida for some time. Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Pierre
Bourdieu, Grard Genette, Michel de Certeau and Oswald Ducrot researched
and taught at the EHESS. Etienne Balibar, Jean Baudrillard and Henri Lefbvre
taught at Nanterre. Spearheads of the academic Left, including Roland
Barthes, Georges Balandier, Jacques Derrida, Georges Canguilhem, Jean-Pierre
Vernant and Emmanuel La Roy Ladurie, were on the founding committee of
the University of Vincennes, the embodiment of the modern, the avant-garde
and therefore a bastion of anti-academia. Its philosophy department, built up
by Michel Foucault, appointed Michel Serres, Jean-Franois Lyotard, Jacques
Rancire, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou and Franois Chtelet. Hlne Cixous,
Luce Irigaray and Nicos Poulantzas also taught at Vincennes. Vincennes was
very quickly perceived as a wild University that broke the framework of the
established order and was at the mercy of the inner conflict between Maoists,
Trotskyites and Communists (Rieffel, 1993: 439).
17 incarnation de la modernit, de lavant-garde et donc la bastion de lantiacadmisme; Trs rapidement Vincennes va tre identifie une universit
sauvage, cassant le moule de lordre tabli et livre aux luttes intestines entre
maostes, trotskistes et communistes (Rieffel, 1993: 439).
18 les dtenteurs de pouvoirs temporels (cest--dire, plus prcisment, du
contrle sur les instruments de reproduction), souvent peu considrs
intellectuellement, sopposent aux dtenteurs dun capital symbolique
de reconnaissance, qui sont souvent dpourvus de toute emprise sur les
institutions (Bourdieu, 1989: 383).
19 Compare the remark Derrida made to an American colleague about his relation
to the French universities: Here [in the USA], the people I know, the people to
whom I speak, are on the faculties. In France, its almost the contrary: Ive very
few relations with colleagues or with professors in the university (Salusinszky,
1987: 19).
Notes
107
20 la vague structuraliste a beaucoup d la rivalit qui opposait ces institutions

lUniversit (Pavel, 1993: 12).
21 Referring to the structural proximity of peripheral institutions and academic
outsiders, Kauppi emphasizes the ambivalence of the term marginal. He says,
What does it [marginal, J.A.] mean in this context? To start with, no degrees
were required at this time in order to attend lectures at the cole Pratique des
Hautes tudes, in contrast to the dominant University of Paris. When we take
into account the importance in France of the para-academic intellectual and
artistic circles and the various cliques, salons, journals and so on where the
cultural heroes of the moment are born, we can say that the sixth section (and
later EHESS, J.A.) was structurally positioned in such a way that it favored
face-to-face contacts between academics and writers, bridging the gap between
academic and literary networks (Kauppi, 1996: 72).
22 ambition dintelligibilit globale et systmatique (Furet, 1967: 12).
23 agitation symboliste (Crmant, 1969: 52).
Chapter Three
1 nombre de producteurs intellectuels qui staient cantonns une production
austre et savante (march de type I), sorientent vers les marchs de type II et
III (voir par exemple Deleuze, Althusser) (Boudon, 1980: 472).
2 Every program (sociology, history, and so forth) was planned in greatest detail,
down to the number of hours for every subject and every year. The examinations
were organised the French way: the universities were given no leeway and for
every program, the reform determined the nature of the different tests, their
length, and the assessment coefficients with which the final results were to be
calculated. Undergraduate and graduate programs were thus defined with the
same precision as secondary teaching (Prost, 1997: 140).
3 Chaque filire (sociologie, histoire, etc.) tait dfinie dans le plus grand dtail,
avec lindication dun nombre dheures dtermin pour chaque matire et chaque
anne. Les examens taient dfinis la franaise: les universits navaient pas le
choix et la rforme leur imposait, pour chaque filire, la nature des diffrentes
preuves, leur dure, et le coefficient dont elles devaient peser dans le rsultat
final. Le premier et le second cycle de lenseignement suprieur se trouvaient ainsi
dfinis avec la mme prcision que lenseignement secondaire (Prost, 1997: 140).
4 The turmoil of 1968 affected the universities above all. The Grandes coles
remained relatively calm and were hardly touched by the reforms. It was
108 Notes
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
only in the 1990s that these institutions envisaged implementing ambitious

reforms. Thus, softer entrance procedures than the rigid admission exams were
introduced: the ENS introduced a special programme for international students,
the Sciences Po cooperated with selected high schools in the suburbs and at the
ENA a systematic restructuring of the teaching programme was considered.
les vnements de 1968 marquent paradoxalement la naissance en France de
vritables universits (Prost, 1997: 154).
Le modle mandarinal, obissant une logique de profession librale,
connaissait alors son apoge (Baverez, 1993: 295).
Un seul assistant maidait en 1955; une dizaine soccupaient des tudiants dix ans
plus tard. Le gonflement des effectifs, aussi bien des enseigns que denseignants,
sobservait danne en anne. Lamphithtre Descartes tait plein quand je donnais
mon cours; je madressais des centaines dauditeurs que je ne connaissais pas.
Si je pris la dcision, la fin de lanne 1967, de quitter la Sorbonne et de devenir
directeur dtudes non cumulant la VIe section de lcole pratiques des Hautes
tudes, cest que javais le sentiment que le btiment craquait, que nous tions
paralyss, striliss par un rgime bout de souffle (Aron, 1983: 342).
La sympathie et lamiti, par exemple, et, a contrario, la rivalit et lhostilit
(Sirinelli, 1988: 12).
ein Stck Wissenschaftsdiplomatie der Annales-Redaktion, die damit
ihre Strategie des Dialogs zwischen Geschichtswissenschaften und
Sozialwissenschaften fortsetzte und zugleich auch tiefsitzende Vorbehalte der
Historikerschaft gegen solche Formen abstrakter Theorie, ahistorischer Modelle
und empirieferner Gesamtdeutung berdeckte (Raphael, 1994: 280).
Thus, Kauppi points to the momentous association between normaliens and
intellectual outsiders, who were not raised according to the local intellectual
code of etiquette and its rituals. This combination proved to be explosive, as the
non-normaliens/nes were eager to break the rules, and the normaliens/nes were
ready to partly legitimise this revision (Kauppi, 1996: 74).
lge dor des grands intellectuels (Winock, 1985: 22).
le prophtisme politique (Hourmant, 1997: 7).
se recroqueville, se replie sur linstitution, senferme dans la revue de sa caste, de
sa spcialit, de son rang (Hamon and Rotman, 1985: 207).
son autonomie relative a considrablement diminu, en ce quil ne porte plus en,
et ne produit plus par lui-mme, ses instances de conscration (Debray, 1979:
120).
Yet, it would be wrong to infer an inherent decline of normative standards in
postmodernity. The emergence of theoretical humanities in the USA may serve
Notes
16
17
18
19
109
as an example, where this debate occurs against the background of increasing

autonomy in the humanities and is accompanied by a clear shift to the Left
(Angermuller, 2004a).
In an interview with the Nouvel Observateur, Pierre Nora explains: N.O.
What was the public of your book series in 1970? P. Nora A double one: a
personal and a general. Both are on the verge of disappearing. The cultural base
of this public is shattered. Whole disciplines have fallen back into isolation,
such as linguistics and even psychoanalysis. Others have collapsed, such as
sociology, with the exception of the Bourdieu phenomenon. History still resists
this tendency, but a classical discipline such as criticism has failed completely:
besides Starobinski, Bnichou, and Fumaroli no survivors. One could believe
that the end of ideology has liberated the minds; it has locked them up. This
is accompanied by a clear decline of intellectual authorities at the expense of
unforeseen figures (Nora, 1999: 1324).
N.O. Quel public vos collections avaient-elles, en 1970? P. Nora Double:
universitaire et plus gnral. Les deux sont en voie de disparition. Cest surtout le
socle culturel sur quoi reposait la runion de ces deux publics qui sest fractur.
Des disciplines entires sont revenues leur isolement, comme la linguistique
ou mme la psychanalyse. Dautres se sont vanouies, comme la sociologie,
mis part le phnomne Bourdieu. Lhistoire rsiste, mais une discipline aussi
classique en France que la critique littraire a sombr corps et biens: hors de
Starobinski, Bnichou, Fumaroli, point de salut. On aurait pu croire que la fin
des idologies aurait libr les esprits; elle les a referms. Elle sest dailleurs
accompagne dun dclin trs net des autorits intellectuelles au profit de
personnalits quon nattendait pas (Nora, 1999: 1324).
lindustrialisation de la distribution va permettre une vritable colonisation de
ldition par les groupes financiers. Le relais sera pris ensuite par les groupes
multimdia (Bouvaist, 1986: 100).
Bourdieu describes the institutional mechanisms that lead to lasting relations
of dependence in the academic field: In all the situations where power is hardly
or not at all institutionalised, the establishment of durable relations of authority
and dependency is based on waiting, that is, the selfish expectation of a future
goal, which lastingly modifies [] the behaviour of the person who counts
on the thing expected; and it is also based on the art of making someone wait,
in the dual sense of stimulating, encouraging or maintaining hope, through
promises or skill in not disappointing, denying or discouraging expectations,
at the same time as through an ability to inhibit and restrain impatience, to
get people to put up with and accept the delay, the continuing frustration of
110 Notes
20
21
22
23
hopes, of anticipated satisfactions intrinsically suggested behind the promises

or encouraging words of the guarantor, but indefinitely postponed, deferred,
suspended (1984a: 118ff. [89]).
Dans toutes les situations o le pouvoir est peu ou pas institutionnalis,
linstauration de relations dautorit et de dpendance durables repose sur lattente
comme vise intresse dune chose venir qui modifie durablement cest--dire
pendant tout le temps que dure lexpectative la conduite de celui qui compte sur
la chose attendue; et aussi sur lart de faire attendre, au double sens de susciter,
dencourager ou dentretenir lesprance, par des promesses ou par lhabilet ne
pas dcevoir, dmentir ou dsesprer les anticipations en mme temps que par
la capacit de freiner et de contenir limpatience, de faire supporter et accepter le
dlai, la frustration continue des esprances, des satisfactions anticipes, inscrites
comme quasi prsentes dans les promesses ou les propos encourageants des
garants, et indfiniment recules, diffres, suspendues (1984a: 118ff.).
Under the pseudonym Frank, an anonymous observer describes the French
academic system before 1968 as organized by feudal clusters: Disciplines were
organised by groups or clusters, consisting of patrons who were the current
occupants of the prestigious posts at the Sorbonne, surrounded by their disciples
and followers. Other members of the cluster were located in less important
institutions, such as provincial universities, lyces, or research institutes. These
individuals depended for advancement, and often for the means to do their
research, upon the patron and his influence in the system. Thus, a few powerful
patrons influenced affairs not only within their own departments but also
in their disciplines and in the surrounding network of laboratories, research
institutes, journals, government advisory boards, and fund-granting committees.
As a result, they could effectively control the activities and the opportunities
to produce innovative work of virtually all other members of their disciplines
(Frank, 1977: 263f.).
Lets mention Bourdieus legendary conflicts with Touraine: Between Touraine
and myself there is an unbridgeable gulf. This opposition is of a scientific nature.
In sociology, people cannot co-exist whose approaches contradict each other. If
I am right, then what he does is not sociology. He or I (Hamon and Rotman,
1985: 45f.).
Entre Touraine et moi, il y a une division irrconciliable. Cette opposition
est dordre scientifique. Ne peuvent coexister en socio des gens qui ont une
approche de la discipline absolument exclusive. Si jai raison, ce quil fait nest pas
de la socio. Cest lui ou moi. A lcole la rivalit entre Pierre Bourdieu et Alain
Touraine est devenue lgendaire (Hamon and Rotman, 1985: 45f.).
Notes
111
24 les disciples tendent se consacrer de prfrence des travaux de moindre

envergure visant examiner les hypothses implicites ou explicites des thories
du matre (Clark, 1971: 31).
25 1) les diffuseurs de la pense sont dissocis des producteurs, 2) les diffuseurs
dterminent non seulement le volume mais la nature de la production (Debray,
1979: 136).
26 jeunes universitaires qui, bien que munis des ssames indispensables
(lagrgation), nprouvent aucune inclination pour le cursus rituel (la thse)
(Hamon and Rotman, 1985: 233).
27 leur pense est nulle; raction fcheuse; Ils ont une nouveaut relle, ils ont
introduit en France le marketing littraire ou philosophique (Deleuze, 1977:
[2f.]).
28 les vertus de lasubjectivit [] consensus retrouv autour de la morale
des droits de lhomme, ou de la revendication croissante, mme gauche,
dune autonomie de lindividu ou de la socit face ltat (Ferry and Renaut,
1988b: 16).
29 re du soupon (Pavel, 1990: 174).
30 A role model for the neoliberal intellectuals, Raymond Aron was a columnist
at the conservative newspaper Figaro and he was the conservative adversary to
Sartre (Manent, 1985). Aron played an important role in the institutionalization
of sociology in the 1960s. However, he did not develop a distinctive theoretical
profile in the debates of the time. His work comes mainly in the form of political
essays and outlines (on sociology in Germany, for example), which are taught in
technocratic elite schools like Sciences Po or ENA, where intellectual ambitions
are not given first priority.
31 Les libraux, eux, rpugnent en gnral aux manifestations de linstinct
grgaire; ils pratiquent une sociabilit de type bourgeois, plus tourne vers le
home personnel que rpandue dans les lieux collectifs (Winock, 1985: 27).
Chapter Five
1 The relationship between the creator and his creation is always ambiguous and
sometimes contradictory, in so far as the cultural work, [] derives not only its
value which can be measured by the recognition it receives from the writers
peers or the general public, by his contemporaries or by posterity but also its
significance and truth from those who receive it just as much as from the man
who produces it (Bourdieu, 1966: 875f. [957]).
112 Notes
2 Le rapport que le crateur entretient avec sa cration est toujours ambigu
et parfois contradictoire dans la mesure o luvre culturelle, comme objet
symbolique destine tre communiqu, comme message qui peut tre reu ou
refus, reconnu ou ignor, et avec lui lauteur du message, tient non seulement
sa valeur que lon peut mesurer a la reconnaissance accord par les pairs
ou par le grand public, par les contemporains ou par la postrit mais aussi
sa signification et sa vrit de ceux qui la reoivent autant que de celui qui la
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3 restitue dune manire extraordinairement exacte la structure du monde social
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4 lancien futur-sujet doit trouver sa place, cest--dire devenir le sujet sexuel
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Index
1968 7, 21, 235, 335, 38, 53, 636
aesthetics 23, 7, 16, 1819, 419, 5860,
656, 69, 75
Bourdieu, Pierre 812, 578, 638, 8491
Collge de France 9, 27, 337, 48, 64, 67,
712
Communist Party 245, 49, 56, 65
critique 5, 68, 99101
discourse vii, 3, 28, 301, 48, 703, 83,
8791
cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences
Sociales (EHESS) vii, 4, 27, 337,
48, 54, 57, 64, 71
cole Normale Suprieure (ENS) 9, 27,
29, 306, 4751, 63, 65, 723
economy 11, 47, 70,
existentialism 78, 234, 449, 61
expansion of higher education 2832,
4752, 74
linguistic turn 15, 19, 212, 56, 834, 94

linguistics 9, 19, 56, 75, 83, 97
Maoism 7, 24,
Marxism 1822, 389, 80
mass media 43, 50, 619
migration, intellectual 31, 37, 7181
modern(ity) 1819, 39, 417, 61
Neoliberal(ism) 608, 7981
Paris 12, 269, 42, 47, 523
philosophy 23, 301, 467, 93
politics 245, 61, 65, 78
postmodern(ity) 12, 39, 414, 61, 78
poststructuralism 17, 59, 1524, 369,
725, 834
psychoanalysis 18, 22, 289, 83
publishers, academic 49, 625, 734
religion 25
Generation, intellectual 27, 389
sciences humaines 4, 19, 2830, 38, 458,

505, 62, 70, 734, 77
social, the 83102
Sorbonne 326, 48, 504
structuralism 218, 357, 447, 53,
5560, 834
students 12, 4854, 624, 779
subject 1, 1819, 66, 957
higher education in France 339, 4555

higher education in the US and in the UK
34, 7181
humanism, anti-humanism 223, 60, 956
texts in context vii, 211, 204, 28, 706,

84, 90
Theory vii, 17, 1621, 6970, 834
translation 714
intellectuals 7, 1213, 21, 2330, 389,

456, 5661, 657
war 8, 289, 556
Feminism 3, 58
field 913, 305, 427, 8590
French nation-state 41, 7781
job market, academic 63, 77

journals 8, 489, 5760, 624, 667

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Why There Is No

4 From Theory in France to French Theory: The Making of

5 The Moment of Theory: The Social after Society

Dominique Maingueneau and many others who I first met at CEDITEC in

Introduction: The Intellectual Field in France

1.1 Poststructuralism: An international misunderstanding?

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

referred to the people we call postmodern or poststructuralist (Foucault,

Introduction: The Intellectual Field in France

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

Introduction: The Intellectual Field in France

1.2 Structuralism and poststructuralism in the sociology

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

Table 1. Primary and Secondary Literature on French Theorists

almost exclusively an Anglo-American phenomenon. Moreover, in the cases

Introduction: The Intellectual Field in France

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

Introduction: The Intellectual Field in France

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

Introduction: The Intellectual Field in France

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

singularity on a quite stable institutional terrain of social relations, Bourdieus

Introduction: The Intellectual Field in France

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

This book presents a historical tableau of the French intellectual field

Structuralism versus Poststructuralism: The

2.1 The transformations of Theory: From structuralism

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

In the North American humanities, the canonization of poststructuralism

Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

also the periodical Multitude, established by Yann Moulier Boutang), as well as

Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation

Table 2. Three Moments of Theory

Since the mid-nineties

Slavoj iek, Ernesto

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

a before (structuralism). Even though Northrop Fryes theory of archetypes

2.2 Why there is no poststructuralism in France:

Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation

suggests an intellectual movement headed by Foucault and Derrida, whereas

2.2.1 Theoretical lines of conflict: Structuralists and ex-, non- and

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

While linguists and semioticians (such as mile Benveniste, A. J. Greimas or

Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation

As the imaginary other of these theories, the contemporary reader of

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

2.2.3 Schools, clans, networks

Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation

seminars (Roudinesco, 1993). Another school was led by Louis Althusser

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

2.2.4 Disciplinary cleavages between the human sciences

Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

not surprising that, as a result of the expansion of higher education, which

2.2.5 Alternative education routes: Elite academics versus

Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation

Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France

preparation classes play an ambivalent role (1986: 322):8 the submission to a

Structuralism vs Poststructuralism: Birth of an Intellectual Generation

absorbed many of the once-freelance men of letters. After their conversion