The format of this book is arbitrary and exact, the way paint is in a landscape by Alex Colville. It follows the program of the symposium that took place at the University of Ottawa, from April 25 to 27, 1986.

As Bakhtin leaps from the sidelines to centre stage, as Derrida clambers out of orchestra pit into the prompter's box, and Lancan swings from the flies, as Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, Saussure, Barthes, and a throng of others rhubarb their way through the text, one recognizes just how connected all the disparate elements of this critical extravaganza really are.