The Triangle of Representation (review)

The phenomenon of French theory began as a heady import to the English-speaking world in the late sixties. Produced originally at a moment at which the political stakes were very high—the war in Vietnam, mai 68, the free speech movement, various movements of liberation and decolonization—theory, with a capital “T,” was seen by many as an powerful antidote to a perceived complacency in the ivory [End Page 153] tower, many of whose denizens were almost smug in their belief in canonicity, deep meaning, genius, and the like. The refreshing heterodoxy and iconoclasm of Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida was perceived by many as a breath of fresh air. Theory, of course, came in with its own auto-critique: the volume, The Structuralist Controversy, edited by Eugenio Donato and Richard Macksey (1970), based on an epoch-making conference at Johns Hopkins, contained both Lévi-Strauss and a critique of Lévi-Strauss in Jacques Derrida’s famous article, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.”