Naming the Multiple

Poststructuralismas a name for a mode of thinking a style of philosophizing a kind of writinghas exercised a profound influence upon contemporary Western thought and the institution of the university. As a French and predominantly Parisian affair poststructuralism is inseparable from the intellectual milieu of postwar France a world dominated by Alexandre Kojve''s and Jean Hyppolite''s interpretations of Hegel Jacques Lacan''s reading of Freud Gaston Bachelard''s epistemology George Canguilhem''s studies of science and Jean-Paul Sartre''s existentialism. It is also inseparable from the structuralist tradition of linguistics based upon the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jacobson and the structuralist interpretations of Claude Lvi-Strauss Roland Barthes Louis Althusser and the early Michel Foucault. Poststructuralism considered in terms of contemporary cultural history can be understood as belonging to the broad movement of European formalism with explicit historical links to both Formalist and Futurist linguistics and poetics and with aspects of the European avant-garde especially Andr Breton''s surrealism. Each essay in this unique collection by and for educators is devoted to the work and educational significance of one of ten major poststructuralist philosophers.