In the U.S., the theory faced considerable reluctancy and resistance, highlighted by the critiques of Camille Paglia and Alan Sokal (cf.
Intellectual historian François Cusset argued that French Theory's recognition in North America owed more to its negative invocation in a political context by its detractors, than to its supporters in "a handful of departments of English and comparative literature.
This gathering in the same philosophical school erases the singularities and strong theoretical divergences of their respective works; their only similarities are their similar critical approaches: French Theory was born from the conjunction of several factors in the U.S., including: Authors associated with this movement include, France: Louis Althusser, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, René Girard, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Rancière, and Monique Wittig; and in the US: Judith Butler, Stanley Fish, Donna Haraway, Fredric Jameson, Avital Ronell, Richard Rorty, Edward Said, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Strong media personalities under the title of the New Philosophers led French debate towards various forms of struggle for rights and the conquest of the political apparatus for humanitarian ends.
Intellectuals who claimed to be followers of Foucault, Deleuze, Baudrillard, and others disappeared from the forefront as the academic community gradually lost interest in them.