后结构主义是指跟随在结构主义觉醒之后出现的一套思想，它试图去了解这个无法挽回地被分割成数个体系的世界。

后结构主义者与它的结构主义前辈最明显不同的地方在于，他们抛弃了结构主义的简化主义方法论。他们挑战结构主义宣称自己是能够诠释所有文本的批评后设语言（metalanguage），并且认为一个文本之外中立全知的观点是不可能存在的。后结构主义者追求的是意符的无限扮演（play），并且不会给予任何一种阅读方法比其他方法还要更高的地位。也因此，后结构主义领域中很少有互相一致的理论，但是每个理论都是从对结构主义的批判为起点。后结构主义是针对历史相对论、意义与后文艺复兴的理性哲学批判的批判性理论，但反对结构性语言学为理论基础，强调片段不连续性，不相信历史进化和知识累积论。而后结构主义的研究是带有政治性的，因为许多后结构主义者相信，我们认为我们居住的这个世界事实上只是一个社会建构，在当中有许多不同的意识形态推动着想要成为霸权。

Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of mid-20th-century French and continental philosophers and critical theorists who came to international prominence in the 1960s and 1970s.

Post-structuralism is defined by its relationship to its predecessor, structuralism, an intellectual movement developed in Europe from the early to mid-20th century which argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure—modeled on language (i.e., structural linguistics)—that differs from concrete reality and from abstract ideas—a "third order" that mediates between the two. Post-structuralist authors all present different critiques of structuralism, but common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute those structures. Writers whose work is often characterised as post-structuralist include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, and Julia Kristeva, although many theorists who have been called "post-structuralist" have rejected the label.