Post-structuralism and post-modernism are two influential intellectual currents that emerged mainly in the second half of the twentieth century and challenged the assumptions of modern social thought. Although they overlap considerably, they are not identical. Both question universal truths, fixed meanings, stable identities, and the belief that reason and science can provide objective and complete knowledge of society. Post-structuralism developed primarily from French intellectual debates during the 1960s and 1970s. It is closely associated with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Gilles Deleuze. Post-structuralists challenged structuralism, which argued that social and cultural phenomena are organized by underlying structures, such as language, social systems, or cultural codes. Post-structuralism argues that