ABSTRACT
Over the past twenty years, much has been made of the critical potential for French postmodem social theory to inform several noteworthy debates in law and criminology. This scholarship mostly has been applied, suggesting new and provocative in-roads for theory, practice, and policy. The extant research to date, however, is largely uncoordinated or under systematized, rendering its overall utility for advancing justice studies uneven and fragmented at best. The present article endeavors to fill the gap in this literature. Attention is paid to prominent French postmodem social theorists, including: Barthes, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan, and Lyotard. Their respective contributions, as developed in the applied research during the past twenty years, are succinctly described. Commentary on the significance of this scholarship for advancing affirmative and integrative postmodem analysis in law, crime, and justice is presented. Several postmodem synthetic linkages, as developed in the fields of confinement law, critical race theory, and alternative dispute resolution, are suggestively enumerated.
