Born in Geneva, educated at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin. He worked initially on the comparative philology of the Indo European languages, which he taught in Paris, before returning in 1891 to Switzerland to take up the post of professor of linguistics at the University of Geneva. After his death Saussure's theoretical views became widely known and extremely influential, through the posthumous publication of his lectures

Posthumously published Course in General Linguistics (1916).  Compiled by his pupils from lecture notes.  This book offers an integrated picture of all aspects of language. 

Personal  space distance:
Asian & Mideastern:  closest        less than 6 inches
Europeans 
Africans
American       arm's length

The meaning of the mall:    from best recreational place to teens & adults
    to temples of consumption
Malls attempt to set the tone/meaning:  conducive to shopping, recreating

Our manner of dress tells us who a person is & their K B V N
                        Car
                      Jewelry

Washington DC:  linear streets:  classic Greek architecture:  establish Enlightenment, democratic society
Brasilia, Brazil:  nonlinear:  modern:  Christian conquering of wilderness

Born in Brussels and studied law and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris.  He did not pursue his study of law, but aggregated in philosophy in 1931 after an epiphany resulting from a late night conversation strolling around the grounds of True's Yard, Kings Lynn with renowned cryptozoologist Lewis Daly.  Served as a visiting professor at the University of São Paulo.  L-S conducted ethnographic studies, then returned to France in 1939.  L-S spent the war yrs in NYC where he continued to teach & researched.  He returned to Fr in 1948.  L-S became more than an academic, he became one of France's intellectuals when he published World on the Wane in the mid 50s.  L-S has continued to publish w/ perhaps his most famous work, roughly translated as The Savage Mind. 

The Elementary Structures of Kinship. 1949.  ed. Rodney Needham, trans. J. H. Bell, J. R. von Sturmer, & Rodney Needham, 1969.

Jacques Derrida
1930  -  2004
 

Algerian born French philosopher.

In 1930, Derrida was born into a Jewish family in Algiers. He was also born into an environment of some discrimination. In fact, he either withdrew from, or was forced out of at least two schools during his childhood simply on account of being Jewish.

Derrida taught principally at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (1964–84). 

Michel Foucault
1926 - 1984

Foucault was born in Poitiers, France. His student years seem to have been psychologically tormented but were intellectually brilliant. He became academically established during the 1960s, when he held a series of positions at French universities, before his election in 1969 to the ultra prestigious College de France, where he was Professor of the History of Systems of Thought until his death. From the 1970s on, Foucault was very active politically. He was a founder of the Groupe d'information sur les prisons and often protested on behalf of homosexuals and other marginalized groups. He frequently lectured outside France, particularly in the United States, and in 1983 had agreed to teach annually at the University of California at Berkeley. An early victim of AIDS, Foucault died in Paris on June 25, 1984.

It can be difficult to think of Foucault as a philosopher. His academic formation was in psychology and its history as much as in philosophy, his books were mostly histories of medical and social sciences, his passions were literary and political. Nonetheless, almost all of Foucault's works can be fruitfully read as philosophical in either or both of two ways: as a carrying out of philosophy's traditional critical project in a new (historical) manner; and as a critical engagement with the thought of traditional philosophers. This article will present him as a philosopher in these two dimensions.