I had a chance to read again some of the infamous 2003 issue of Critical Inquiry devoted to "The Future of Criticism," really the Future of Theory. Here's a description of the originating situation from W.J.T. Mitchell's introduction to the special issue:
On 11–12 April 2003 the editorial board of Critical Inquiry gathered in Chicago to discuss the future of the journal and of the interdisciplinary fields of criticism and theory that it addresses. Academic conferences are, as we all know, a dime a dozen; and the board meetings of academic journals are not usually reported (as this one was) in the New York Times and Boston Globe. There was something different about this meeting, something (if you will forgive a lapse from editorial neutrality) quite special, unique, even extraordinary.
[...]
The symposium was divided into two sessions: a public “town meeting” on Friday, 11 April and a closed meeting of the board and editors on Saturday, 12 April, which was further subdivided into sessions on theory, politics, and technology. Approximately 550 people from the academic communities of Chicago and beyond came to the public session; the Swift Hall auditorium was filled with a standing-room-only crowd, and the overflow space in Swift Commons also filled up with people watching the discussion on closed-circuit TV. The event was covered by major newspapers, dismissively by the New York Times (“Latest Theory Is That Theory Doesn’t Matter”) and with a touch of wit by the Boston Globe (“Crisis Theory”). The question remains: why should the convening of an academic journal’s editorial board muster so much interest? What critical or theoretical “crisis” drew together this critical mass?
I remember feeling incredibly pissed back when this came out. I feel differently now - still not a great feeling, but it is more complicated than simply "pissed." I was disappointed at the time that a mode of thought I had invested myself in heavily as a technique capable of social change, transformation, amelioration, revolt, whatever was being disowned, right at the critical moment, by its inventors and first-generation inheritors themselves.
Later in the piece, Mitchell includes the prompt that he sent out to those who would participate in this conference.
Critical Inquiry in the Twenty-first Century: A Call for Statements
The aim of this meeting is to set an agenda for critical inquiry, both the intellectual practice and the journal for which it is named, in the coming century. We want our diverse and multitalented editorial board to spend two days brainstorming about the possible, probable, and desirable futures of criticism and theory in the human sciences. What are the crucial topics, themes, and issues that will demand special attention and "special issues"of a wide-ranging interdisciplinary journal in the coming decade and beyond? What transformations in research paradigms are on the horizon? How will technology change the transmission and production of knowledge? What will be the fate of the humanities, of literature, the arts, and philosophy, in what is widely heralded as a posthuman age? How will the very notions of criticism and critique change in the epoch and in the current state of perpetual crisis and emergency? What will be the relation of the coming criticism to politics and public life?
The first thirty years of Critical Inquiry witnessed the emergence of structuralism and poststructuralism, cultural studies, feminist theory and identity politics, media and film studies, speech act theory, new historicism, new pragmatism, visual studies and the new art history, new cognitive and psychoanalytic systems, gender studies, new forms of materialist critique, postcolonial theory, and discourse analysis, queer theory and (more recently) "returns"to formalism and aesthetics, and to new forms of public and politically committed intellectual work. These critical and theoretical movements (and this is only a partial and unsystematic list) have spawned whole new schools of thought, new educational and research institutions, new journals and collectivities of knowledge production. Have we now reached a plateau in which the future is likely to be one of consolidation, refinement, and continuity? Or are we at the threshold of new developments, whether reactive rollbacks to earlier paradigms or dimly foreseen revolutions and emergent innovations
Just as crucial as cagey predictions are utopian declarations of purpose. What, in your view, would be the desirable future of critical inquiry in the coming century? If you were able to dictate the agenda for theory and criticism in research and educational institutions, and in the public sphere, what would you imagine as the ideal structure of feeling and thought to inform critical practice? And, above all, what steps do you think need to be taken in the present moment to move toward this desirable future? What, in short, is to be done?
Five Suggestions
1. It has been suggested that the great era of theory is now behind us and that we have now entered a period of timidity, backfilling, and (at best) empirical accumulation. True?
2. It has been suggested that theory now has backed off from its earlier sociopolitical engagements and its sense of revolutionary possibility and has undergone a "therapeutic turn" to concerns with ethics, aesthetics, and care of the self, a turn of which Lacan is the major theoretical symptom. True?
3. It has been suggested that the major challenge for the humanities in the coming century will be to determine the fate of literature and to secure some space for the aesthetic in the face of the overwhelming forces of mass culture and commercial entertainment. True?
4. It has been suggested that the rapid transformations in contemporary media (high-speed computing and the internet; the revolution in biotechnology; the latest mutations of speculative and finance capital) are producing new horizons for theoretical investigations in politics, science, the arts, and religion that go well beyond the resources of structuralism, poststructuralism, and the "theory revolution"of the late twentieth century. True?
5. Following on number 4, it has been suggested that the criticism and theory to come may have to explore other media of dissemination besides those of the printed text, the scholarly article or monograph, or even language as such in its prosaic, discursive forms. What is likely to happen or ought to happen to the "arts of transmission" of knowledge in coming century?
I would be interested in hearing how we here at LS and our commenters would respond to Mitchell's 5 queries today.
My very brief answers are under the fold.
1. In terms of American English departments at least, yes, the game seem to be up, and folks have moved on, for reasons and toward effects both good and bad toward "empirical accumulation" of one stripe or another. In terms of the production of "great theory" itself, well, that's a tougher issue that in part depends on how we answer the next several questions, and others that aren't on the list.
2. Yes, absolutely. Excluding the rise of and continued engagement with the Frankfurt types.
3. I really hope so. I think this would be the right place to go, yes. At least for literature departments - a bit strange to suggest that the humanities in general take up the "fate of literature."
4. Well, isn't this a question for us! On evidence, however, at this point, I'd have to say not so much, but I'm not giving up hope.
5. Inevitably, sure. But I'm not sure this question really has much to do with the others. Or maybe it actually does, distantly. The "language as such in its prosaic, discursive forms" bit is quite interesting. I wonder what Mitchell was thinking about there...
Umm. Thanks? Or is that irony? I'm not good at subtlety, in case you hadn't noticed.
(For what it's worth, the gospel according to me is very fragmentary because it's been a long time since I've read any of the gospel[s]. I did once have an idea for a two part comic book which would tell the gospel stories in the style of the Kung Fu movies I watched as a kid. [Part I: Jesus Christ - Tougher Than Nails. Part II: Jesus Christ - Fists Of Salvation.] I packed that idea up when I realized I can't draw nor can I write scripts.)
Posted by: Nate | May 16, 2007 at 11:13 PM
I post as somewhat of an outsider; I'm merely a casual reader of LS and a few other blogs. Though I'm not an academic (yet), I think I have a vested interest in all this, as Philosophy is central to my life and way of thinking, and I hope to practice it one day.
I wish to only add two points. The first is that, as many in the said issue of CI explained, if there were ever a time for theory, it would be now. Admitting my fondness for platitudes, our world needs philosophy...now. This is not a time for the "personal, ethical" turn of the placid 90s. Unless one subscribes to Baudrillardian post-nihilism, there is more out there to be analyzed each day; I need not elaborate, as others have done this for me (9/11, war on terror, cybernetics, the internet, globalization, etc). Have all the intellectuals been struck by a case of mutual writer's block?
The second is an extension of Mitchell's fourth point. My greatest influences are the likes of Benjamin and Adorno, Baudrillard and McLuhan. How can one deny the plain fact that our epoch is wholly different from those past [while keeping McLuhan's prescient advice in mind: "It is the business of the future to be dangerous"]? One need only take a quick flip through Wired magazine or lose oneself for hours online to realize that there is a great bulk of 'splainin to do. Media studies, greatly indebted to Mitchell himself, has only gone so far in this process.
Perhaps this is the great irony beneath threads like this one, issues of Critical Inquiry like the one in question, and books like Eagleton's "After Theory"- has philosophy lost every reference point to the world except self-referentiality? Does philosophy have nothing to say except a) to comment on meaningless analytic investigations or b) describing the color and shape of its own exposed innards, a dying organism focusing its last efforts on its own impending demise?
Posted by: Ardevan | May 20, 2007 at 10:08 PM
I think the "theory revolution" used literary studies as a location to sort of democratize philosophy/theory, and let theory be developed and maintained in outside of "professional theorists," and I think largely that's happened.
In contrast I see no reason for literary professionals want to refocus their work on projects that don't specifically focus on generating new theory. But I think someone needs to... There will always be new experiences to theorize, and new ideas to be had. Theroy isn't dead, it's just moving else where and doing other things.
Posted by: tycho | May 22, 2007 at 02:08 PM
I post as an outsider as well, although to a certain extent I feel as if this perspective is a necessity in contemporary academia.
The only point I wish to make is this: If we truly believe that 'theory' is a site on which we can manifest and articulate political goals and provide revelatory insight spurring social change, then theory needs to be reborn in a different way. While I am sympathetic to some of the posters' insistence on intellectual engagement by means of academic efforts (writing books on avant-garde poetry that aim to provide knowledge for the limited few, adding a cup of water to what seems to be a draining bucket), I think that a new tactic is a structural necessity. The problem of dispassionate detachment is not symptomatic of only critical theory; it's a problem that any academic discipline faces. The only apparent solution is an intellectual engagement that utilizes all the rapidly proliferating mediums of communication and interaction populating the contemporary landscape; a new and revolutionary interaction with theory entails utilizing the intellectuals (somewhat priveleged) knowledge and infusing it into mediums or projects that have been analyzed but not genuinely engaged.
Theory must become practice if we are to ever to affect actual change outside of the comforting halls of academic institutions; we must insist on 'doing something' with our work.
Posted by: Eric | May 23, 2007 at 10:10 PM
Jake B. (who will never read this b/c I’ve way missed the boat here on May 24th now)
First of all, I know quite a few autodidacts, mostly working-class people I grew up with who didn’t or couldn’t go to university, and while many of them are brilliant, only a couple have read anything that could fall into the category of “theory”, and none of them understand it very deeply. It is most certainly not the province of the untrained, but “natural” thinker. What I think you are getting at though (and I may well be wrong), is that what is generally and dismissively referred to as theory-theory as epithet, as you seem to be using it here-is distinct from philosophy in that it is more concerned with creativity-engaging ideas and originality-than it is with rigorous, “subjugation” to a “specific line of men”. I’d never thought of philosophy as such a religious discipline before (religious in Kierkagaard’s sense of true belief being not something one comes to on the basis of sound theological argument but rather something one must accept in advance) but this is an interesting differentiation you are implicity formulating. Even though I disagree with it, it illuminates something of the nature of hostility to theory. Maybe its no accident that “theory” -zizek, benjamin, butler, and especially Lacan- ends up finding its most enthusiastic readers in literature departments, where perhaps the authority of disciplinary subjugation and confinement is least respected; where creativity and imagination become almost as important as rigor or the dictates of traditional scholarship; where the pretense (and function) of professionalism is most likely to be questioned. Although the freedom from rigor, when abused in bad faith (by laziness or those interested primarily in shock value), results in the atrocious embarrassments of thought and scholarship that have, I must admit, contributed to theory’s bad rep, does it not also relieve us of the “subjugation” you’re speaking of, which must, at least to some degree, result in a religio-ideological faith in the ideas that one must first bow before as to idols in order to gain admittance to their secrets? Of course your point would be stronger if “theory” was in fact as undisciplined and flighty as you imply, but what I think is actually the case is that it is -as all interdisciplinarity must be- a meeting ground for methodologies borrowed form traditional areas. Because of this, it doesn’t depend on the type of strict adherence to the authority of these methods a traditional discipline like philosophy does; it can afford to build its own methodological constellations, giving more or less importance to any particular tool than the originary disciplines did. In a sense, it puts itself together much like sociology did, which appropriated categories from the natural sciences and the humanities in a way appropriate to its purpose. Which brings me to its purpose and therefore, its future. I have no idea of course, but it seems to me that theory’s strength is in its boundarilessness (in comparison with traditional disciplines, I mean. Already, it is quite reified, but not comparatively). Its ability to reinvent itself and shapeshift in response to the necessities of political or social engagement, where the disciplines are bogged down in tradition, is the result of its relative newness and its kinship “creative literature” (and yes, I’m speaking specifically about N. American comparative lit departments, english depts, etc. here). When you say: “when I read "Theory" or cultural studies, I don't know if I am supposed to take the writing in good faith or if it is a parody” I think what you “don’t know” is precisely the point at which theory shows its true strength . AT ITS BEST, theory is sort of a parody of academia; its laughing at its stuffiness. This isn’t a failure to be engaged or to take politics, the world, or whatever, seriously, its the remedy for the blind faith in forms and methods that bog down professional intellectualism. If ALL it amounted to was a parody, that would probably be bad.
best
D. S
Posted by: | May 25, 2007 at 01:52 AM
Well I’m a latecomer to this discussion and certainly an outsider in terms of academia – but I think the important point here is Jodi’s instinct to fashion an alternative to neoliberalism. So I’m going to respond to that and not to the body of the questions above. (And Jodi – its an instinct I have everyday, so the following is my own thoughts to myself as much as a response to your point.)
I think this instinct is precisely the issue insofar as it is the apparent failure of leftist alternatives in the dominant politics that often seems to provide the most telling evidence of Theory’s failure or exhaustion. I could be wrong here, but somehow, subconsciously or otherwise, I feel a great many of us who were/are invested in the project that is/was theory take the ascendancy of neo-liberalism in general and GWB in particular as evidence of some sort of failure on the part of theory, or at the very least our problem to fix. I think on a certain level, we understand that this sensation is not logically consistent, but that doesn’t stop us from feeling the need to answer somehow, and immediately and right away, as it were. Thus, Theory is accused of not being the place for ‘properly’ political work, of being an insulated product of an irrelevant institution - a professional discourse without a profession, etc. etc. I have three things to say to this.
1. Theory cannot provide an alternative to neo-liberalism. There is a formal distinction between the two. Thus Theory can render visible the conditions of possibility for ideology, the advanced form of false consciousness of which neoliberalism is a particularly virulent strain, but it cannot take its place at the level of ideology itself. I think that many people realize this but have not thought through its implications. Theory will never be ideology, it may act ideologically in certain places – different issue, but it will never function as smoothly, wield influence so spectacularly, or circulate so effectively. This is what makes it different, and, as a result of this difference, many good people engaged in its practice suffer from ideology-envy, a lusting after the sort of influence whose ultimate bankruptcy they would quickly demonstrate elsewhere.
2. And following – Neoliberalism is not the enemy of Theory any more than Stalinism was its ally. Both are fictions of power engaged in managing the flow of resources in a specific way. Either we believe this, (or something rendered similalrly) or we don’t. If you don’t want to speak of these things in this way, if doing so does not satisfy your need for action – than do something else. But lets not kid ourselves, the privilege of thinking along with Theory is its concurrent investment in explanatory consistency, the approach of a vocabulary capable of describing our current situation with something approaching intellectual honesty – and this comes at the expense of the indulgent Manichaeism and vulgar satisfactions of an activist politics. I’m not saying there are not people have space for both moments in their lives, but lets not confuse the two.
3. Thirdly, and conversely, simply because Theory itself will never be satisfied in that way, that does not mean it is wholly without influence. Judith Butler has waned in importance, we laugh at her writing style, and some of us just think that she is, in some sense, simply wrong. That said, when I was born, gay marriage was illegal in my home state. Now, it is not. The comparison between Butler and the culture that legalized gay marriage is difficult and frustrating – we certainly would not argue that Judith Butler is responsible for legalizing gay marriage – or even that the two have anything, practically, to do with each other. Hell, chances are, we wouldn’t even agree on whether or not legalizing gay marriage was an altogether good thing. But nor would we argue that activist men and women who worked tirelessly day after day for shit pay in the non-for-profits who created the necessary climate for this to take place were altogether isolated from her ideas. Or from people whose thinking she influenced. Or – one step further – that Butler is not an iconic figure for the progressive movement that provoked the rightist backlash we are now suffering through. Which is to say, I think I understand the frustrations of working in a university and reading the headlines and thinking that nothings getting done, and certainly not to the impossibly high standards (read: abstract) of something like theory, but I think its only part of the story. There is a disparity between the great abstract heights that theory reaches for, and the concrete, slow, and often frustrating process of its praxis and dissemination. And this disparity helps provoke the feelings of frustration and uselessness that lie beneath assertions as to theory’s demise. But this is a mourning for a straw man – theory never worked the way it thinks it should, it works the way it has to, in fits and starts, and this is what makes it different, and in my mind, preferable to what I have been calling, roughly, ideology.
This is not to say anyone should be satisfied or happy with the current state of affairs. It is to say that Theory would do well to remember what it is, and how it works. It is not to say that all is well with Theory, there are major issues, specifically, I think, with regards the focus on race and gender at the expense of class. But we must be wary of making a category mistake in taking mere ideology (or mere Eagleton) as the evidence of the failure of theoretical thought; if anything, in the violence of its reassertion, in its paranoid behavior and crudity of expression – the reappearance on the political scene of a reactionary, archaic, unthinking neoliberalism testifies to how far we’d really gotten, and how much is left to be done.
Posted by: Squibb | May 25, 2007 at 11:50 AM
Squibb (and everyone),
Such excellent comments, and I'm sorry that I haven't had the chance to respond to them adequately. (I'm on vacation, with limited access and time... Easier for me to read them as they chime in on my cellphone than to respond...)
Let me say one thing in response to Squibb's comment: I agree with a lot of what you say here, but I still think it's haunted by a sort of defeatist attitude about the possibility of literary intellectuals and engagement. If "theory" can't really do the engagement thing, fine. But I'm not wedded to theory. But on the other hand it seems to me clear that all sorts of intellectuals of one stripe or another do intervene meaningfully in public culture all the time (newspaper columnists, writers of popular if heady books, etc...)
Of course there are serious problems with these interventions, but I guess I am starting to wonder if theory not only makes it difficult for us to intervene, but actually convinces us that it's not really important / right to do so. Do you see my point? The distinction?
Posted by: CR | May 25, 2007 at 02:12 PM
CR-
Briefly. And thanks for the quick reply.
I do see the point. I guess the distinction I am holding out for is one of locale. Thinking of the kind we are discussing (I think we share a dislike for the term ‘Theory’) does not do its work in the public square, to my mind. It does it in the university, over a period of many years, (or on one’s own, or in reading groups…etc. but slowly) In this sense, I do think it engages, but its engagement doesn’t necessarily register on the popular radar of engagement, the way, say, Dinesh D’souza does. So I guess my point would not be that theory doesn’t engage, only that it engages in its own way, as a transformative pedagogy that takes place over time.
I think we run into trouble when we assess this sort of pedagogical engagement on a rubric designed for other types of interactions, be that political activism, or media interventions, or what have you. And no doubt the Times article exaggerates what went on at that conference, but even granting that, I’m shocked at the lack of leadership displayed by the people on that panel.
I mean really, for my money – the presidency before us goes to a great length to confirm a number of the more radical things certain thinkers have been saying for a while now. If there is any constituency that shouldn’t be surprised by the Iraq war, and the rest of this administration’s shenanigans, shouldn’t it be the critical theorists? The people who have been telling us for years about that this is how power functions? Am I crazy here? I mean these people got handed a golden opportunity to say – see, this is what we were talking about – and instead they bitch about their own inability to stop what, to a certain extent, they themselves predicated? I’m not saying they should celebrate this period as a glorious confirmation but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a little self-respect.
I digress – I only mean to suggest that Theory does have an impact, but it’s a certain kind of impact. – and its not one that should preclude us from protesting, from writing letters to the editor, from interacting in ways we feel compelled too, because quite honestly, its not going to do that work for us. And to think it will or damn it for not doing so – or worse, for not telling us what exactly what to do in the first place - denigrates the work that it does do. And if this means giving up some of our pretensions to a certain revolutionary radicalism, so much the better.
It occurs to me I may have missed your point, if so, please let me know.
Posted by: Squibb | May 25, 2007 at 05:44 PM
“Theory will never be ideology, it may act ideologically in certain places – different issue, but it will never function as smoothly, wield influence so spectacularly, or circulate so effectively. This is what makes it different, and, as a result of this difference, many good people engaged in its practice suffer from ideology-envy, a lusting after the sort of influence whose ultimate bankruptcy they would quickly demonstrate elsewhere.”
I think this hits on something really crucial here: No matter how well a well dressed, well-educated, bespectacled progressive can argue in the face of someone about to mug her/him, those years of erudition are valueless in the face of brute force, which has no interest in playing by the rules of the silly, civilized game that only people with a lifetime investment in these things seem beholden to. The rule of logic and reason are a closed universe and those of us who practice it-who are surrounded by others who practice it- tend to forget this. Something about the left-even the politically engaged left-that has always frustrated me is its obsessive dependence on critical, reasonable, logical thought to do anything. Take this new Bill Moyers documentary on the failure of the news media to call the Bush administration on its bullshit . Everyone’s been talking about it as if it’s a revelation and yet the left was disclosing all of this information years ago: the plagiarized Colin Powell speech, the firing of Phil Donahue, etc. Everyday the journalistic left-Amy Goodman, Patrick Cockburn, F.A.I.R.,-all of these people and groups and many more flooded the world with sound arguments that , for those who play the game of reason, destroyed the foundations for Bush’s invasion. But who besides self-referential intellectuals are playing this game in which reasoned argument scores the most points? Ideology, GWB. D’Souza, etc. are that ideology standing on a street corner with a baseball bat, playing a different game all together, dismissive of the cumbersome, un-pragmatic hold of reason. Any attempt to directly engage critical, reasoning, discourse in a political battle with the face of brute stupidity is a lost cause; like standing outside the gates of city wielding a book and a pen as an army of horses prepares to trample you. To directly engage in political struggle with these forces is not only foolish but impossible. Maybe before we ask the question : where is theory going , we ought to ask: what the hell did it think it was doing in the face of all of these thoughtless giants that unthinkingly trample anything in their path? Does anyone expect a good argument to fend off a stampede of buffalo? It seems absurd to me that the end of theory or whatever is the result of disappointment or unexpected bewilderment in the face of neo-liberal hegemony . Did theorists actually think -actually BELIEVE what they were doing had any direct impact on politics BEFORE? Did anyone expect that some incomprehensible books would win more adherents -even in a popularized form(like maybe zizek‘s Lacan/Hitchcock book or something)-than the stupid satisfactions of patriotism and the like? I mean, holy shit, Al Gore was too much of a “high-fallutin” intellectual for a lot of people. If this is really the case, then the ivory tower is a thicker fortress of ideology in its own right than anything the right has been able to steer into the minds of “the public”. If there was anyone who had given up more public political engagements with the assumption that theory was where direct political energies could be placed-if that is the sort of thinking theory perpetuates-than it is certainly an obstacle to any sort of response to neo-liberal ideology.
But I’m not so sure it has this effect on its practitioners. Though few theorists are otherwise meaningfully politically engaged, would these people be engaged if they weren’t theorists? Wouldn’t they find some other excuse not to commit themselves? Theory is a strange thing in that it is discursively political, yet not publicly engaged. It is like a well-spoken, well thought out prayer , prayed in bed alone at night in the dark to someone who is listening from the distant future. I think its value lies in how it will be received well into the future, not in its usefulness-which is nil- to the present. Even the most pragmatic politics are founded on some sort of theory that has somehow managed after centuries to filter into collective consciousness, and I think this is the only sense in which theory can be political-in its possible effects on and reception in, the future. Look at how Freud’s ideas have made their most marked influence. They are everywhere today, yet they had no effect whatsoever on the crises of WWII.
chris
Posted by: | May 25, 2007 at 07:15 PM
Oh yeah, one more thing. As I wrote earlier (as D.S.), I think a core strength of theory is its creativity; its ability to propose beautiful ideas. Isn’t what makes Walter Benjamin so vital isn’t the logical or reasonableness of his ideas, but their beauty, passion, originality, etc. His political beliefs would be almost laughable today if they weren’t so heart-wrenchingly beautiful. In the face of brute neo-liberal illogic, the intellectual Left needn’t, for the millionth, futile time, try and out reason the Right, but rather, focus more on its passionate and beautiful engagment with Utopian human possibilities. And not even in a dogmatically political way, but in a way that attracts minds that are frustrated with the banality of Right-wing survivalist ideology. Theory should be formulating the other worlds that are possible. Like the political left, the intellectual left tends to pay the defensive role-arguing AGAINST the stupidity of the Right and refusing to supply alternatives. Even Benjamin didn’t propose to show us what a redeemed communist utopia would look like. Maybe people actually WANT to hear about what it would be like. Even if what theorists say about other worlds never comes to pass, at least putting out ideas about these possibilities will engage people to begin imagining again. Its no accidnt that the 19th century was full of utopian dreamers-Fourier, Bahkunin and the like, while it was also full of politically active revolutions. thanks forproviding a forum for me to think some of this out.
chris
Posted by: | May 25, 2007 at 07:34 PM
Some fabulous late comments here.
squibb: So I guess my point would not be that theory doesn’t engage, only that it engages in its own way, as a transformative pedagogy that takes place over time.
Yes, yes! This is kind of what I've been getting at in a discussion with Nate over at his blog. While we kind of reached an agreement at this point, I would want to go one step further by saying that there's no guarantee that the transformative effects of that pedagogy will remain limited to the site of its application. Insofar as theory operates on ideas and intellectual practices, in other words, the "political" (i.e. transformative) effects of its operations would most likely be felt first and foremost in that sphere which is defined or constituted by ideas and intellectual practices. However, forms of thought and forms of practice (etc.) defy all attempts — whether deliberately political, or imperceptible and institutional — to restrict the sites of their application or operation. Put simply, the limit between the "inside" and the "outside" of the university is porous, and no amount of policing or management can utterly contain academic practice (e.g. "theory") within walls of the university. Consequently, it remains possible that the transformative effects of "theory" may exceed its primary site or context of operation, such that "it" may have some (albeit, largely unpredictable) impact on "the world outside".
chris (aka D.S.): Theory is a strange thing in that it is discursively political, yet not publicly engaged.... I think its value lies in how it will be received well into the future, not in its usefulness-which is nil- to the present.
I would argue (or at least hope) that theory's value lies precisely in opening a relation to the future — perhaps to futurity as such — precisely through its uneven, somewhat unpredictable, affirmation of "the political". Or that "theory" plays a part in keeping that relation open.
CR: I guess I am starting to wonder if theory not only makes it difficult for us to intervene, but actually convinces us that it's not really important / right to do so.
This is when the question of what exactly is meant by "theory" becomes unavoidable. I've already said why I don't buy the idea that "theory" is (or needs to be) somehow opposed to the other forms of academic practice, supposedly more "empirical" and "historical" than theory, that Mitchell names. Certainly, I don't see "theory" as necessarily drawing back from political intervention or as denying the importance of such intervention.
Even if we accept the idea of "theory" as some utterly formal, a-historical exercise, however, I still think that theory's commitment (as it were) to political intervention is much more powerful, or at least potentially so, than many would otherwise think. This is because the formalisation of theory brings with it, surprisingly perhaps, the concretisation of a particular kind of political practice: the questioning/challenging of (certain forms of) authority. Undoubtedly, we could debate for months about the importance or extent of such forms of authority and about the political value or effects of their questioning, or even about whether the questioning of such forms of authority can be owed to theory alone. Even so, I think most of us would agree that the rise of theory amounts in the first instance to a challenge to certain traditional (hence authoritative) ways of thinking and acting.
The formalisation of theory amounts to the simplification, in the sense of elementalisation, of a certain kind of intellectual practice, making it more amenable to dissemination (hence, institutionalisation) via the apparatus of the education system (and other related networks). I wouldn't want at this stage to go any further in speculating on the possible extent or effects of that dissemination. But I do think that it provides a point of focus for pursuing a more materially grounded conception of the political (i.e. transformative) possibilities of "theory".
Posted by: rob | May 27, 2007 at 08:35 PM
Do you have a viable business but lack the necessary finances to get it off it’s feet?
Posted by: RamonGustav | September 13, 2010 at 08:14 AM