French Theory

French Theory refers to a body of postmodern philosophical, literary, and social theories. The term emerged in American universities and research work in the 1970s, from a school of thought born in the 1960s in France, and owes much, in terms of dissemination, to the journal Semiotext(e), founded by Sylvère Lotringer in 1974 at Columbia University.

French Theory met with particular enthusiasm in American humanities departments from the 1980s, where it contributed to the emergence of cultural studies, gender studies, and postcolonial studies. French Theory has also had a strong influence in the arts and in the activism world. The label "French theory" was applied in American academic research in the late 1970s; the term "post-structuralism" was used in relation to intellectual history, and "French postmodernism" was common among its detractors.

At the same time as the impact of the work of these French authors gave birth in the United States to an intellectual movement called French Theory, the names of the French philosophers involved were demonized in France as "libidinal" and leftist. In the U.S., the theory faced considerable reluctancy and resistance, highlighted by the critiques of Camille Paglia and Alan Sokal (cf. Sokal affair and Fashionable Nonsense, co-authored with Jean Bricmont). Intellectual historian François Cusset argued that French Theory's recognition in North America owed more to its negative invocation in a political context by its detractors, than to its supporters in "a handful of departments of English and comparative literature."