ABSTRACT
Though by no means the sole text behind poststructuralism, there is no branch of poststructuralist thought-on everything from literature, to gender and sexuality, to politics, sociology, and even animal welfare-that cannot be traced back to the arguments outlined in “Structure, Sign, and Play.” Along with a select few other French Theorists, Derrida lies at the heart of modern poststructuralism’s persistent concern with deconstructing apparent truths and theories of truth. A 2009 survey of the most cited authors in the humanities for
2007 showed both that poststructuralism was the dominant paradigm for research in the field, and that French Theory was its most important point of reference. Derrida was the third most cited author of the year, just behind the historian-philosopher Michel Foucault and the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.*1
Precisely because of this, however, both “Structure, Sign and Play” and Derrida’s thought more generally remain sites of strong contention and antipathy. The continuing suspicion that the arguments put forward in “Structure, Sign and Play” attack and undermine all areas of human reasoning-from scientific knowledge, to communication, to moral and ethical reasoning-remains strong. While some of the heat surrounding Derrida’s place in the 1996 “Sokal Hoax”* has died down, the debates surrounding his theories still smolder on.
