Poststructuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of *mid20thcentury French* and *continental philosophers and critical theorists* who came to international prominence in the 1960s and 1970s.
Poststructuralism is defined by its relationship to its predecessor, structuralism, an intellectual movement developed in Europe from the early to mid20th century which argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure— modeled on language (i.e., structural linguistics)—that differs from concrete reality and from abstract ideas—a "third order" that mediates between the two. Poststructuralist authors all present different critiques of structuralism. Still, common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism posits and interrogating the *binary oppositions* that constitute those structures. Writers whose work is often characterized as poststructuralist include *Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, and Julia Kristeva,*. However, many theorists who have been called "post-structuralists" have rejected the label.
*Existential phenomenology* is a significant influence; Colin Davis has argued that poststructuralists might just as accurately be called "post-phenomenologists".
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