Identity formation, the limits of linguistic signification, gender difference, and the possibility for political solidarity: Julia Kristeva has addressed them all. She serves up some of the most nuanced batches of critical theory to date, with all of the passion and rigor -- and often all of the enig

Dense, Feminism, Feminist, Poststructuralism, Severe, Silence, Structuralism

When Jacques Lacan announced a "return to Freud" in the early 1950s, Sartre and Camus shuddered with existential angst inside the fortress they had built around the rational mind. Indeed, the emergence of Lacan, with his emphasis on unconscious desires, spelled the downfall of Existentialism, the phi

Clever, Death, Intense, Perverse, Phallic, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, Sublime

Roland Barthes gleefully eluded any attempt to reduce or classify his thought. He was instrumental in spreading word of Structuralism and Semiotics both within and beyond the academy. His "Mythologies" -- a series of pithy readings covering everything from wrestling to soap ads -- remains a canonical

Eclectic, Homoerotic, Layered, Semiotics, Structuralism