An Exquisite New Book Tackles a Subject That Was All the Rage in the ’80s and ’90s

In the 1980s and 1990s, French theory transformed American academia into a competitive arena where intellect was a currency and philosophers were treated like pop stars. Emily Eakin captures this era in her new book, The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory. She looks back at the rise of structuralism and poststructuralism, movements that defined a generation of graduate students and literary scholars before eventually fading from the spotlight.

Eakin does more than explain dense concepts from thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan. She provides a candid look at the personal lives of these men, moving beyond their reputations as untouchable intellectuals to show them as flawed, narcissistic, and often chaotic individuals. The book explores why these figures held such sway over American thought, detailing their rivalries and their penchant for performative debates that often mirrored boxing matches rather than scholarly discourse.

While the peak influence of these theories has passed, their impact remains woven into how we navigate information today. Eakin argues that the movement succeeded in training a generation to look for hidden meanings, challenge binaries, and remain skeptical of political rhetoric. The book serves as a history of an intellectual movement that promised to reveal the inner workings of language and society, even if it often became lost in its own complexity.

Ultimately, the book offers a grounded perspective on an era that many remember for its impenetrable jargon and intense academic gatekeeping. It connects the personal stories of these French thinkers to the broader cultural shifts that followed, explaining why their focus on the systems within language continues to matter. Eakin manages to provide clarity on a subject once known for being famously difficult, making the history of theory accessible to those who were not there when it was the only subject that mattered.