It was always politically cynical, not to stay incredibly stupid, to imagine that literary theory was going to do any of the things that it promised--allegorically or otherwise. In the classroom Nietzsche and Marx can be an eye-opener for students. But Dennis, Nathan, Marta, Doug, Max, Yoshie, and, okay, everybody on the list, have a lot more to say about how to make a difference in the world outside the classroom than theorists ever did. And even if they are all to one degree or another familiar with theory, their effectiveness wasn't because of it. Seems like an obvious point, but such things take academics 30 years to figure out.
Christian