Were the French structuralists of the 1960s really as cool as they seemed?
From our UK edition
‘Theory was cool. Theory was French. Theory was also, strange though it might sound, sexy.’ When Emily Eakin first encountered ‘theory’ as a Harvard undergraduate in the 1980s, it marked the start of an obsession, intense as a love affair. She wasn’t the only one. For the Anglophone world, France has long represented a style of thinking that is just that: stylish. It’s not for nothing that an estimated three million American tourists flock to the boulevards of Paris each year. The place is synonymous with glamour in its most alluringly intelligent form.
