Offering an introduction to the major poststructuralist thinkers, this text shows how Foucault, Derrida, Lacan and Zizek expose the depoliticization found in conventional international relations theory. poststructuralists are concerned with the big questions of international politics: it is precisely their work that analyzes the political and explains the processes of depoliticization and technologization. Paying particular attention to notions of the subject and subjectivity in relation to the political, and to the relationship between ideology and social reality, the author explores why Foucault and others matter for international relations.