Given the courses and exams and eyes of needles through which people must be filtered to get as far as university courses, it makes sense that attempting to understand e.g. Derrida/Lacan makes an attractive challenge for them.
It doesn't mean much, insofar as I've never read or studied them, but the general ideas that I understand to have been put forward by these uber-intellectuals seem to me, of themselves, to be quite wonderful. Pretty much all those points may just as well apply to any work of literary analysis.
What I think is important, and may well be missing from the perception of some, is that the creation of literature is not the reverse of its analysis.
The question of the importance, or not, of poetry - the question of whether it 'matters', as DG wrote - is also embroiled in this little conundrum of analysis touching material and passing through spirit, as it were. The joke is a lot less funny when explained.
As David Harsent says in the article linked above, with reference to the peculiar forms of expression that are poetry and plastic arts:
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Poetry is important for the same reason that the arts in general are important. They tell us how we live.
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The arts are marginal activities. I suppose TV and fashion and pop music are pretty pervasive, but even in those activities are people who seek the fringes. Think about whatever it is that you perceive to be artistic quality, and how it applies to the mainstream and the fringes. I think I can live with being a bit off-centre.