Because of this ongoing and at times rather stridently oppositional stance, poststructural criticism has been associated with an adversarial stance that often takes on the established institutional and political forces in American society. The traditional view of individuals in society privileges the individual's coherent identity endowed with initiative, singular will, and purposefulness. However, this traditionalist concept is no longer seen as tenable in a poststructuralist view of human subjectivity. Some of the most important early essays signaling the turn to such a view of human subjectivity, and in particular of authorship, also appeared in the late 1960s, including influential works by theorists like Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes. The Fundamental Importance of the Reader With the destabilizing or decentering of the author and in more general terms of language as a system, the reader or interpreter has become the focal point of much poststructural theorizing.
Reader response is most interested in how individuals read the same text in vastly different ways.
As Arthur Applebee has pointed out, the English curriculum's primary objective should be the enhancement and maintenance of the conversational feature of culture within the domain of the English classroom. Finally, poststructural theory is having an effect on areas of professionalization and teacher education. Building Bridges between Literary Theory and the Teaching of Literature. From Structural Functionalism to Poststructuralism. The Social Foundations of Education and Pre-Service Teachers.