Throughout the development of sociology as a discipline, the primary backdrop to fieldwork and sociological theory has been the distinction between self and other – or subject and object – expressed more broadly through the study of interactions between individuals and institutions. With the advent of poststructuralist thinking, also known as postmodernism, the preference for this distinction has become suspect by some contemporary sociologists and philosophers. Critics generally accuse postmodernism of holding subjectivity at a higher standard than objectivity, and postmodernism is exclusively relativist in the sense that it questions the unity of an objective reality. This is only partially the case; Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential authors on contemporary postmodernist thinkers, suggests that even the unity of a subject is suspect. Historically, many sociologists have viewed society as derived from the Subject, implying inalienable axiomatic rights. This also implies a sort of contract between individuals where the Subject defines the form and structure of societies. This notion is disrupted by the postmodernist suggestion that the Subject is a creation of society. This reflects Foucault's idea of ​​the “discursive production of the subject,” or that discourses about power relations create an imposed self-identity. This is not a new idea in sociology – and Foucault was more structuralist than postmodernist – but Derrida's main work focuses on "deconstruction", revolving around the idea of ​​"différance", essentially stating that "it there is nowhere to start” when it comes to determining the universality or truth status of individual “stories,” whether scientific or political. This is equally applicable...... middle of paper ...... m text must be taken into account. That is, concepts such as "human nature" are not manifest and stable facts about how the world "really is", but depend on the above factors. Essentially, deconstruction is concerned with how knowledge is produced. In contrast, popular structuralism in France in the 1950s and 1960s focused on the study of the structure of cultural products interpreted through linguistic frameworks. It was essentially a synchronic practice that attempted to analyze cultural products as objectively and scientifically as possible. The value that poststructuralism or deconstruction seemed to have was that it took an essentially diachronic view, looking historically at the descriptive methods used by the structuralists. It has forced a redefinition of taken-for-granted concepts and highlighted the potential biases inherent in our knowledge..