Slate on the Death of Literary Theory

November 19, 2005

In Slate yesterday:

By never firmly establishing what it itself was for, the English department cultivated habits of withering self-reflection and so became one mechanism by which the university could stay in touch with its nonutilitarian self and subject its own practices to ongoing critique. Did the theory era produce bullshit by the mountain-load? Of course it did. But by allowing “literary theory” to turn into a pundit’s byword, signifying the pompous, the outmoded, the shallow, the faddish, we may have quietly resolved the argument over what a university is for in favor of no self-reflection whatsoever.

A brief history of teaching English as a profession, the Sokal hoax, and some French intellectuals… what more could you want?

[cosmopoetica literarytheory literature]

Tags: Fiction and Lit, Poetry and Poetics