Past Imperfect, Future Unknown: the Discourse of Theory
Flaxman - Past Imperfect, Future Unknown - JCRT 4.2
Past Imperfect, Future Unknown: The Discourse of Theory
Gregory Flaxman
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Pragmatically speaking, then, we know that there has been, over the last fifteen to twenty years, a strong interest in something called literary theory and that, in the United States, this interest has at times coincided with the importation and reception of foreign, mostly but not always continental, influences. We also know that this wave of interest now seems to be receding as some satiation or disappointment sets in after the initial enthusiasm. Such an ebb and flow is natural enough, but it remains interesting, in this case, because it makes the depth of the resistance to theory so manifest.
—Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory.
Twilight of the (Theoretical) Idols
Whatever we think about theory, and today we are often encouraged to think the worst, perhaps we can all agree that its recourse has become a matter of profound tact. The "resistance to theory" that Paul de Man underscored in the mid-1980s has evolved over the last twenty years into something closer to disapproval, dismissal, and occasionally outright derision. The result is that one must ultimately understand the discretionary limits of theory as much as theory itself. In the most obvious sense, we might say that the savoir-faire of theory has degenerated into a game of proper names, for if the emergence of theory coalesced around the writings and teachings of distinct figures, the diplomacy of theory has come to lie in the capacity to grasp the right names to drop and the right times to do so. The proper name is now inextricable from the larger sense of its propriety. All things being equal, we know that Roland Barthes remains an ever-graceful option, Michel Foucault an acceptable turn, Jean-Fran'ois Lyotard a more delicate case, Jacques Lacan a prospective breech of etiquette, and de Man himself a point of almost certain instigation.
Remembrance of Theory Past: The French Invasion
The Position and Disposition of Theory
Propadeutic to Any Theory: The Four Discourses
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The Discourse of Hysteria and the Hystercization of Theory
Notes
Gregory Flaxman is assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the editor of The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema and is currently at work on a book about romantic comedy and the modern imagination of freedom.
' 2003 Gregory Flaxman. All rights reserved.
Updated 07/28/21.
http://jcrt.org/archives/04.2/flaxman/
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