is there a reason that anyone should give a shit?
the idea that it's unusual for an academic to take a term without subjecting a term to analysis as careful as Rajan's is laughable in the context of this conversation -- and the bizillion and one like it. e.g., doss just took up "paranoid structuralism" without bothering to find out what it wasn't he wasn't criticizing. heh.
meanwhile, i can't figure out what you're saying since you're speaking to a specialist area. people other than english litcritters deal with pomo/poststruct theories. i poked around on google but without knowing what to look for, too many false positives to get a read on Rajan's thesis
in sociology, the concern you raise, which could be something else, but which i can't understand because it's not detailed enough to get out of its silo, so i can only relate to my own discipline: the concern doesn't make any sense. we do two kinds of "theory": meta-theory or what is commonly called _social theory_ (philosophy) and _sociological theory_ which deals with theory-building based on substantive work in a specific area. In other words, we do both philosophy *and* empirical theory. Sometimes, a scholar slides between both: Habermas for example. (A big weakness of Postone's analysis where he mistakes Habermas's epistemological work for empirical work)
whatever you're talking about, it seems peculiar to your disciplinary concerns and so "americans" probably needs to be replaced with litcritters in u.s. english departments.
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