Post-structuralist thinkers displaced existentialism by treating philosophy as a game of signs

Evidence

I also became aware that the existentialists were already considered out of fashion. By the 1980s, they had given way to new generations of structuralists, post-structuralists, deconstructionists and postmodernists. These kinds of philosopher seemed to treat philosophy as a game. They juggled signs, symbols and meanings; they pulled out odd words from each other’s texts to make the whole edifice collapse. They searched for ever more refined and unlikely wisps of signification in the writers of the past. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 87

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how intellectual movements supersede one another — echoes of later postmodernist critiques in books the reader has encountered. — connects to: Post-structuralist philosophy rejected lived experience and active human subjects — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 88; Existentialism holds that philosophy grows out of concrete lived experience — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 54; Existentialism sought lived experience rather than explaining it away through abstract systems — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1025 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Post-structuralist philosophy rejected lived experience and active human subjects #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 88
• Postmodernist thinkers rejected existentialism as outdated and overly human-centered #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 916
• Poststructuralism emerged as a coherent ‘68 thought’ constellation #expands (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 290
• Existentialism holds that philosophy grows out of concrete lived experience #complicates (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 54
• Existentialism sought lived experience rather than explaining it away through abstract systems #complicates (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1025