Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory

Since the end of the 1960s, literary theory has been dominated by structuralist and post-structuralist writers claiming to be drawing out the implications of the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure. Although "post-Saussurean" theory has provoked a good deal of hostility, little adverse criticism has been directed at its philosophical underpinnings. This work subjects the fundamental ideas of Derrida, Lacan, Barthes and their followers to an examination and demonstrates the baselessness of post-Saussurean claims about the relations between language reality and self.