A broader intellectual movement that challenges the assumptions of structuralism, a school of thought that emphasized the underlying patterns or systems that govern language, culture, and reality. Post-structuralists reject the idea of a stable or transcendental subject or identity, and instead emphasize the role of discourse, power, and contingency in shaping social relations, ideology, and knowledge. Some of the key figures associated with post-structuralism are Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, and Jean Baudrillard.