Introduction

Abstract

Since the 1960s, poststructuralists in various fields have interrogated a host of social, cultural, and political phenomena in different domains, whilst seeking to provide critical explanations of the various puzzles that often arise from these problematizations. Perhaps it is a bit too farfetched to claim that ‘We’re all poststructuralists now!’, thus echoing the once common refrain about the pervasive influence of Marxist theory in shaping our view of society, even though its assumptions about the determining role of the economy in social life, or the reduction of social identities to class structures and relationships, were not universally accepted. Yet I do think it is true to say that many of the problems that are addressed by poststructuralists, as well as the various answers they advance, continue to make a significant contribution to our understanding of social phenomena. What is more, poststructuralists also provide important conceptual resources for other more mainstream traditions of social and political theory in their efforts to elucidate the social world, and they caution against problematic or essentialist paradigms. This is certainly the view of Francois Dosse, the leading historian of the structuralist and poststructuralist movements, who argues that despite ‘the dead ends’ into which these approaches have run on occasion, they have ‘changed the way we consider human society so much that it is no longer even possible to think without taking the structuralist revolution into account’ (Dosse, 1997, p. xxiii).