Rupture and Rapture: French Theory in Britain is a monograph which traces the reception of French theory - a constellation of philosophical, political, and psychoanalytical thinkers, among them Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva - in Britain during the late twentieth century. Its premise is that French theory's reception in Britain owed a great deal to institutions and individuals operating at least one remove from academia, among them the New Left Review, the British Film Institute, Screen journal, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the popular music press. The monograph argues that these were the sites through which French theory travelled in Britian, providing it with a unique trajectory, in contrast to its flourishing in America where its audiences were mostly confined to university campuses. It describes the ways in which French theory generated heated institutional debates, occasioned generational and ideological conflicts, and was professionally formative for many individuals. The thesis highlights well-known writers and artists (such as Laura Mulvey, Peter Wollen and Scritti Politti) and others whose contributions to the promotion of French theory - as well as British cultural history - have been underappreciated (among them Juliet Mitchell, Paddy Whannel, Claire Johnston). In making use of extensive archival research, readings both close and wide and freshly conducted interviews with key agents of French theory in Britain, this is a pioneering, wide-ranging, and deeply relevant account, showing how a rapture with ideas ruptured institutions. It answers a contemporary critical need to consider both the very notion of the humanities as a vital source of intellectual fervour, and also speaks to debates around Britain and its contentious relationship to Europe. The research moves between the historical to the sociological to the close-analytical and contributes to, and expands upon, scholarship on theory, institutions, and the social life of ideas.