Empire Of Meaning

After the brilliance of Derrida, Foucault, Barthes - what? By most accounts, the French intellectual scene, poststructuralism, has split in two. On one side, a few select philosophers as media stars are pressed for their opinions on virtually every subject; on the other side, an atomized community of scholars in the social sciences are bound up in technicalities and muffled by the lack of a common language. This great divide, the author contends, augurs a tremendous change in the structure and conduct of intellectual life. What this shift means - how it has occurred and what parts various thinkers have played in shaping it - is the subject of this book.