[lbo-talk] The Latest Theory Is That Theory Doesn't Matter

Christian Gregory christian11 at mindspring.com
Tue Apr 22 07:08:41 PDT 2003



>If theory's political utility is this dubious, why did the theorists spend so much time talking about current events? Catharine R. Stimpson, a panelist and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University, offered one, well, theory. "This particular group of intellectuals," she said, "has a terror of being politically irrelevant."

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



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