These are uncertain times for literary scholars. The era of big theory is over. The grand paradigms that swept through humanities departments in the 20th century psychoanalysis, structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction, post-colonialism have lost favor or been abandoned.....
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Well, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.
In my world, theory is just another word for philosophy and there is basically never enough of examining the conditions of life and times and arriving at knowledge, making judgments and taking action.
These guys have just forgotten the other half of their job description which is teaching students how to do that for themselves.
I guess I am a little disappointed that these panelists can not see that the entire world (or at least the progressive activists wings) are engaged in intense policy fights and discourses on virtually every topic they ever wrote about. What was abandoned?
Chuck Grimes