Examines the past and future of Theory.
Claims that Theory s ongoing role is to question official knowledge.
Sketches the genealogy of Theory back to the 1960s and beyond.
Is Theory dead? Is it, as skeptics suggest, too distant from anything "real" to be useful, too sweeping in its referral of all texts to grand theses? Or is it a mask for fashion and self-promotion in academia? In this controversial manifesto, Jean-Michel Rabaté addresses current anxieties about Theory and claims that it still has a crucial role to play.
Acknowledging that he cannot speak about the future of Theory without taking stock of its past, Rabaté starts by sketching its genealogy, particularly its relation to Surrealism, philosophy, and the hard sciences. Against this background, he proposes that Theory, like hysteria, consistently points out the inadequacies of official, serious and "masterful" knowledge. Its role, he suggests, is to ask difficult, foundational questions, which entail revisionary readings of culture and its texts.
In this way, Rabaté claims, whether the theory of the moment is structuralism or globalization, Theory in its broader sense will always return, providing us with provocative and stimulating insights into what we do and how we read.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Introduction 1
1. Geneaology 1: Hegel's Plague 21
2. Genealogy 2: The Avant-Garde at Theory's High Tide 47
3. Theory, Science, Technology 93
4. Theory not of Literature but as Literature 117
Conclusion 141
Notes 151
Index 164
