Lost in the post: (Post-)structuralism between France and the United States

Despite what the words 'structuralism' and 'post-structuralism' would seem to imply, the relationship between them is not simply chronological; it also has a geographical component. The term 'post-structuralism' emerged when American academics came to read the internal fault lines of French structuralism as debates over the validity of structuralism itself. By focusing on the American reception of Jacques Derrida, I show how his immanent critique of Claude Lévi-Strauss, in both the 'Of Grammatology' articles of 1965-66 and the 'Structure, Sign, and Play' paper presented at the famous structuralism conference in Baltimore the following October, came to be understood as a critical breakthrough. This supersessionary reading was facilitated by the way structuralism was related to a homegrown movement. American scholars read into the work of French thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault their own dissatisfactions with the 'New Critics'. By showing how 'post-structuralism' was forged in these local American debates, I shed light on its fraught reception and the political and methodological questions that have dogged it since its birth.