Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France: The Making of an Intellectual Generation(Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy)

French thinkers such as Lacan and Derrida are often labelled as representatives of 'poststructuralism' in the Anglophone world. However in France, where their work originated, such a category has never gained currency; this group of theorists were never perceived as a coherent intellectual group or movement. Outlining the institutional contexts, affinities, and rivalries of, among others, Althusser, Lacan, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida and Kristeva, Why There is No Poststructuralism in France insightfully traces the evolution of the French intellectual field after the war and Poststructuralism as a phenomenon. By critically embracing Bourdieu's concept of intellectual field, Angermuller places French Theory both in the specific material conditions of its production and the social and historical contexts of its reception, accounting for a particularly creative moment in French intellectual life which continues to inform the theoretical imaginary of our time.

Table of 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 4 From Theory in France to French Theory: The Making of 'Poststructuralism' in the Post-national University 5 The Moment of Theory: The Social after Society Notes References Index

About the Author :
Johannes Angermuller is Professor of Discourse and directs the DISCONEX research group at the university of Warwick, UK and at School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, France.

Review :
Angermuller is deft in cross-cutting between developments in French intellectual life and their often very partial, biased or distorted reception-history outside France. His shrewdly selective deployment of concepts from Bourdieu offers a number of striking insights into the formative conditions of (so-called) 'French Theory' and its uptake among critics and commentators in other national/cultural traditions. It is certainly the most comprehensive and thoroughly researched study of its kind to date and unlikely to be superseded as a standard work on the subject. Angermuller's work offers illumination in a much-neglected field; it pertinently avoids simple reductivism by emphasizing a constitutive antagonism in the object of theory and society itself.