T1 and t2?

I was flicking through a copy of Theory’s Empire today (in a bookshop, that is), trying to get some sense of the ‘Theory’ that this anthology of dissent was dissenting from. Anyway, I’m certainly not going to write a post about a book I’ve only browsed for some ten minutes, but one name I noticed in the anthology was Paisley Livingston. Now Livingston is by no means anti-theory, or at least he wasn’t when he wrote Literary Knowledge, which is the only text by him I own. So, for example, we find this on p. 13:‘

Again and again, the supposedly nontheoretical approach amounts to a tacit reliance upon a complex host of invisible theories: the sedimented and unexamined theory of genres, a prejudicial nationalist parcelling out of ‘literatures’, an unreflective periodization, a Eurocentric and elitist canon mirroring a ‘great man’ view of history, a wholly idealist aesthetics, an arcane and incoherent semantics, colonial ethics, and so on'.

Livingstone mentions also a ‘pseudo-empirical’ and ‘immediate’ approach to “particular facts”. The scare quotes imply a false immediacy; an invisible frame determining what does and doesn’t constitute a 'fact'. Again, the sense is that because certain conceptual distinctions, demarcations etc, are invisible, they allow an illusion of simply dealing with things 'as they are', without mediation/ interference. And this must be combated.

Now, that notion of ‘invisible theory’, a theory which is not even visible to itself, is something that came up in an exchange at Charlotte Street. I’m not entirely sure I agree with it. That is, when Livingstone talks about ‘invisible theories’ isn’t he talking about guiding assumptions, presuppositions and ‘methodologies’ that refuse to acknowledge themselves as such? The reason I’m not sure about calling these hidden assumptions/ implicitly conceptual distinctions ‘theories’ is that, to me, one definition of theoretical activity is precisely the making conscious and reflecting on hitherto invisible frames and suppositions. Don't we speak of 'untheorized' assumptions? That said, I suppose I’d be happy with ‘implicit theories’.

Anyway, it was on the whole right and proper that these 'invisible theories' were dragged into the light and subjected to critical scrutiny. And part of what was experienced as exciting and liberating about (what is now called) theory was precisely this working through, this objectification of hidden suppositions and ‘methodologies’. Such ‘making visible’, and the attendant and remorseless suspicion of ‘self-evidence’, of immediacy, are surely all constitutive delights of thinking as such, and the experience of freedom, of enlarged horizons, that comes with it.

Some time ago, my attention was drawn to a post in which Theory was likened to a puffer fish. The idea was that, when attacked, it inflated to twice its original size. To be honest I was a little baffled by this, as some of the actual examples given seemed to show the opposite: i.e., when attacked Theory ‘deflates’ to a position of false modesty. It says, in other words, ‘I am simply critical or systematic thinking as such. How could you object to such a thing?’ And indeed, no one surely could. Or Theory says, along with Coleridge, that to think at all involves ‘theorizing’ – you may imagine you’re theory-free, but this is illusory. We’re back to ‘invisible theories’. Mr Holbo suggests we keep Theory separate from theory in this more modest sense. And doubtless we should.

Now all I want to do here and at this stage is make an anecdotal point. You would expect people who are anti-Theory to at least to be perfectly happy with ‘lower case’ theory. But my experience has been that those opposed to Theory (roughly: 'a relatively modern trend within academia characterised by the hasty appropriation and employment of select post-modern thinkers') are also uncomfortable with theory as such, with a 'theoretical' approach to literature and literary texts. So, I tend not to meet people who say "It’s so regrettable that literary theory has been hijacked by these ‘Theory’ people, or even ‘these Theory people just aren’t doing good and rigorous theory". And I do often meet people who object forcefully to Theory in the name of an 'immediate', 'one-to-one' relation with the text. In other words, in the name of an anti-theory position. And indeed, there genuinely are, within literary studies, those opposed to the idea that there can be something called ‘literary theory’. They are opposed to this in principle. Okay, so this is just anecdotal, and it’s therefore up to the reader to agree or disagree based on his/her own experience. But I have certainly encountered such people.

And so as well as making the distinction, as Holbo suggests between Theory and theory, we might also distinguish those who oppose theory and those who object only to Theory, and let these two objections not be conflated. And let those who oppose Theory not use this opposition to smuggle in an anti-theoretical position.