Culture & Social Affairs

Just how 'French' is French Theory?

American universities adopted various philosophical, literary, and social theories that originated in France between 1960-80. But French Theory is not something that can be neatly labelled.

Just how 'French' is French Theory?

Abdel Salam Ben Abdelali
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The term ‘French theory’ emerged in American universities and research centres during the 1970s, drawing on philosophies developed in France during the 1960s. By 1980, it had gained prominence within campuses’ humanities departments, from which it later contributed to fields such as cultural studies, gender studies, and post-colonial studies.

US academics began labelling it ‘post-structuralism’. In a way, it represented an American evolution of French intellectual concepts. In the 1960s, there is no doubt that France was the world’s foremost ideas and theories factory. Politically, the Cold War was pitting capitalists against communists.

France in 1968

In France, things came to a head in May 1968. Workers staged the biggest strike in European history, student-led revolts paralysed universities, erected barricades in Paris, and an anti-establishment ethos pervaded. A significant segment of the French intelligentsia—particularly anarchists, Maoists, Trotskyists, Libertarians, Socialists, and Marxists—supported the uprisings.

French intellectuals active during that period include some of the country’s best-known names, including Louis Althusser, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Jean-François Lyotard, René Girard, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard. Many became household names, in part through best-selling books, Foucault’s The Order of Things and Lacan’s Écrits (both published in 1966) being two of the most prominent. Yet, not all sided with the uprising.

What became known as ‘French Theory’ was taken on in America by the likes of Judith Butler, Edward Said, Richard Rorty, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. They did not simply borrow the ideas but developed and evolved them.

French-American links

There is ample evidence of the strong relationship between certain American universities and contemporary French thinkers, as exemplified by Jacques Derrida. His philosophy of deconstruction helped us understand the relationships between words and meaning. For him, a context must be understood in the context of its opposite, such as ‘being’ and ‘nothing’.

He first crossed the Atlantic in 1956 as a new philosophy professor, spent a year at Harvard reading James Joyce, and then began translating Edmund Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry at Cambridge. Derrida continued to visit the US and, from 1975, held visiting professorships at renowned American universities, not unlike other notable French figures such as Paul Ricœur and Jean Baudrillard.

Attempting to categorise these thinkers under a 'French theory' label may not be suitable from a European perspective. This is particularly so given their staunch opposition to discussions of intellectual currents or philosophical schools (possibly a defining characteristic of what later became known as the 'Thinkers of '68').

Many French thinkers in the late 60s became household names with best-selling books, two of which are Foucault's The Order of Things and Lacan's Écrits.

Same but different

Gilles Deleuze, prominent among this group, addressed whether his ideas formed a cohesive school of thought in their own right or aligned more with others and suggested that he could not be easily categorised within a 'network'. Neither a doctrine nor an intellectual current, a network derives its identity from its interconnections. They are defined strategically and procedurally, akin to Heidegger's forest paths formed through exploration and movement, not preconceived guidance.

The network embodies a spirit that permeates a space enriched by the contributions of multiple thinkers who, as Heidegger articulated, strive to "say the same thing" (le même) without being identical (l'identique). This shared expression does not necessitate a consensus that unifies thinkers but rather an orbit that attracts them and an intellectual challenge that engages them.

Idea generation

They do not pose the same questions nor use the same concepts. Indeed, there is no one factor that groups them into a singular 'family' with a cohesive history and/or theory. Instead, there are individual trajectories and points of intersection. Their shared positions centre on self-critical inquiry, the deconstruction of the representation theory, and the rejection of historical continuity. Yet what really binds these thinkers under a common label is rather a methodological obsession.

Some scholars argue that the term 'French' in 'French Theory' masks the true German origins.

They do not so much rally around specific propositions, advocate for a particular doctrine, or construct a unified theory. Instead, they focus on exploring novel approaches to idea generation. Given the prominence of figures such as Freud, Nietzsche, and Heidegger in the ideas that emerged, some scholars even argue that the term 'French' in 'French Theory' masks the true German origins, with French thought serving primarily as a conduit for transmitting German thought.

The critical nature of this theory stems from the infusion of German dialectical thought (characterised by a focus on negation and critique) into French philosophy through productive dialogues such as with Lacan and Freud, Derrida and Heidegger, Foucault and Kant, and Althusser and Marx.

In summary, the concept of a 'French theory' as seen within American academic circles lacks coherence because the French thinkers within this grouping exhibit a distinct diversity in their interests and areas of research.

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