In this essay the author reflects on the engagement by translators and translation studies scholars in the United States with poststructural thought. The author finds that the use of deconstruction for causes such as feminism, postcolonialism, liberal humanism, and multiculturalism, for example, tends to be full of contradictions. After briefly looking at work by leading translation studies scholars in the United States, including Lawrence Venuti and Suzanne Jill Levine, Gentzler juxtaposes their work against that of postcolonial feminist Gayatri Spivak. He finds that poststructuralism in the United States tends to be used on a selective basis, often with a definite sociopolitical agenda in ways that are remote from the kind of double writing of continental scholars that challenges as well as opens up new avenues of interpretation. By way of closing Gentzker reviews poststructural translation practices by scholars in Canada and Brazil, suggesting that translation scholars in the United States could learn much from their neighbors.