Back to the Future (Critical Essay‪)‬

The Reification of "Theory" The demise of "theory" has been variously predicted, willed, resisted and repudiated since the start of its career. ([dagger]) In the early days of that career, reactions against it were often conservative, so that it became a badge of one's progressivism to be a principled supporter of it, even if only because of a general democratic belief in the importance of debate. Despite his disagreements with structuralism, Raymond Williams supported Colin McCabe in the Cambridge debacle of the early eighties, as did Frank Kermode. (Both Kermode and Williams developed complex relations to theory as it came to be known and practiced, though for different reasons.) The radical credentials of theory were considerably bolstered by Terry Eagleton's own Literary Theory (1983), a text which has been crucial in the establishment and dissemination of a certain canon of theory to more than one generation of undergraduate students. Doubtless, the mere fact that Eagleton, as a Marxist, was on the side of theory also contributed to the perception of its inherent subversiveness. Today, in the U.S., the language and values of theory have become identified with those of the left to the extent that an attack on the former appears by definition to be an attack on the latter, though the reality of this situation is cast in partial doubt by one of the most forthright critics of the politicized academy: "the real battle that is now shaping up is not between radicals and conservatives but between radicals and old-style liberals. Or perhaps one should now say that the classical liberal position--which fought for ideals of quality, disinterested scholarship, and for advancement according to merit, not adherence to a given political line--is now castigated as conservative and reactionary" (Kimball 229). Clearly, for Kimball, the current conjuncture represents a change in understanding of what constitutes reaction. His truck is with a real or perceived relativism which is nonetheless hitched to an expressed desire to undermine dominant political, institutional and ideological arrangements. This seems to me accurately to capture the general ideological complexion of what appears to have been a determined and highly organised backlash against theory in the U.S., one which, as Ellen Messer-Davidow has demonstrated, has been highly successful in denying funding to theory-led projects, especially those perceived (consequently) to be left-wing (193-233). In this context, any challenge to theory may be perceived as part of a more general reactionary agenda, and indeed, informally, I have heard responses to Eagleton's After Theory along precisely these lines. This is no doubt because, superficially, Eagleton appears to share certain preoccupations with the Kimballites, since attempts to rehabilitate ideals of truth, objectivity, virtue and morality and to return to foundational thought, tend to be considered self-evidently the province of the political right these days.