The structuralism conference at The Johns Hopkins University in 1966 was intended to introduce into the United States structuralist theory, an approach to reading in which a poem or novel is viewed as a closed entity that has specific meanings. When Jacques Derrida read his paper, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” the demise of structuralism and the arrival of a new theory, deconstruction, was unexpectedly announced.

Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2023. 3p.