Poststructuralism Texts

Okay, so Plato's Phaedrus isn't exactly a literary text, but you know by now that deconstructionists and poststructuralists don't give a dang about the differences between literature and philosophy...

Clever, contemplative, and darkly funny, "The Purloined Letter" helped spawn a genre that's still going strong. But even if you're not all that into detective fiction, this story is still worth a r...

If you think Jacques Derrida's writing is confusing, wait 'til you get your hands on Joyce's nigh incomprehensible dreamscape, Finnegans Wake (yup, there's no apostrophe). This novel's stream-...

Here's a play that seriously knows how to handle the threat of meaninglessness. Since deconstructionists and poststructuralists constantly find themselves struggling to remember what the point of i...

Beloved is one of the more powerful stories you're likely to ever read, and you know how poststructuralists feel about power. Toni Morrison throws us into a house haunted by murder and grief,...

Short, sweet, and to the point (well, as far as you could ever expect outta Derrida's writings, anyway), "Structure, Sign, and Play" is a good place to dip your toes into Derrida's ideas. This is w...

Reading Barthes is like reading love letters to literature. Sure, his language gets a little technical sometimes, and he's still structuralist enough to keep thinking up new ways to categorize what...

Another great introductory essay, Foucault's "What Is an Author?" won't just tell you what Foucault thinks authors' names are good for; it'll also give you a good sense of how he thinks discourse w...

If you're bothered by the thought that deconstruction and poststructuralism might really be as nihilistic, self-serving, and pompous as many critics say they are, give Homi Bhabha's "The Commitment...

If our earlier comparison of Gender Trouble to Jaws didn't make you want to read this book, we don't know what will. Once you've encountered Butler's ideas, you'll never be able to think...