"During the 1960s, Barth and Foucault were already placing a question-mark against the figure of the author, and urging us to study discourses rather than individual authors and texts. During the 1970s Derrida became celebrated for raising radical doubts about our capacity to offer interpretations of texts at all. He popularised a tendency to emphasise ambiguity, lack of closure, the impossibility of ever ascribing intentions to authors with any degree of assurance. For a time this approach enjoyed an immense vogue, especially in the United States. I should add that, while these movements gave rise to sometimes bitter debates, I myself sympathised to a considerable degree with much of what these post-structuralists wanted to say."