In a lecture series delivered to graduate students and auditors at Duke University in the spring of 2021, the American philosopher and critic Fredric Jameson (1934–2024) surveys the key milestones of French theory—existentialism, structuralism, post-structuralism, semiotics, feminism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism—placing this turbulent era of thought within the context of major European political events: the Liberation of Paris, the Algerian War, the uprisings of May 1968, and the creation of the EU. Jameson brings the philosophical debates of the period to life by drawing on the works and lives of figures such as Sartre, de Beauvoir, Fanon, Barthes, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, and Deleuze, as well as groups like *Tel Quel* and *Cahiers du Cinéma* and thinkers such as Rancière and Badiou, offering his own perspective on a pivotal moment in intellectual history.