In a worldless age, spread love without meaning.
Editor’s note: “I want to torment the world.” —Qianzai Gouzi
Original question:
What is the point of literary theory?
Literary theory is very different from physics, chemistry, and biology. Research in physics and chemistry can advance their respective fields, but research in literary theory cannot produce literature, and this is generally the case in practice too: most people who research literary theory do not engage in creative writing.
So why do people still study literary theory?
The questioner has asked a good question, but everything they say in setting it up is wrong. First, they assume that literary theory must perform the same function as theories in “physics, chemistry, and biology.” But that raises a question: does literature perform the same function as physics, chemistry, and biology? From the purely mechanistic perspective of physics, chemistry, and biology, literature itself should not exist, let alone literary theory.
Second, research in literary theory cannot produce literature (tacking “and this is generally the case in practice too” onto that sentence makes it badly formed whichever way you look at it…).1 Really? Long ago, Fredric Jameson described how painters, instead of looking at other painters’ work, read postmodern theory—“Baudrillard, Derrida, Lyotard,” and the like—in order to paint. Not to mention ordinary novelists. Did you know that Yu Hua was already citing the theories of Roland Barthes and Alain Robbe-Grillet decades ago? An important feature of French literary theory is that the way its authors expound theory is itself highly literary. Often, you cannot tell whether they are explaining theory or creating literature. This is also why the questioner’s claim that “most people who research literary theory do not engage in creative writing” is wrong.
The questioner’s mistake is actually quite representative: treating literary theory as literature’s handmaiden—and not even a competent one. If you do not know what literary theory is, it is perfectly natural to reach that conclusion.
So what is literary theory? Literary theory is a very recent invention. Wolfgang Iser says: “Literary theory is of recent vintage. It began to come to prominence after the Second World War.”2 Antoine Compagnon gives us a more specific date: “Around 1970, literary theory was at its zenith, driving the young people of my generation wild. New theories vied with one another in brilliance: ‘new criticism,’ ‘poetics,’ ‘structuralism,’ ‘semiology,’ and many more. No one who lived through those dazzling years can look back on them without boundless nostalgia.”3
There is unmistakable enthusiasm in Compagnon’s account—one might even call it a frenzy. In those days, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, Bataille, and Lacan were dazzling academic stars. They elevated theory to an extraordinary position. Terry Eagleton, who lived through the seventies, could naturally feel this too, and could not resist complaining: “In short, theory proved extraordinarily capable of inspiring blind infatuation. […] Theory grew so full of its own importance that it completely obscured what it was supposed to regulate.”
Even today, I still meet students from Dongda who complain to me that theory is more interesting to read than novels.4
We could say that the emergence of theory is inseparable from the vogue for deconstruction. More specifically, the emergence of theory is itself deconstructive. Deconstruction reverses binary oppositions, bringing the subordinate term into the dominant position in order to deconstruct the opposition. For example, we generally think production comes first, followed by consumption, but Baudrillard’s “consumer society” reverses their relationship. He loudly declares: “Western Europe has always given primacy to production, but now the relationship between production and consumption has been reversed.” Consumption precedes production. Likewise, the relationship between literary theory and literature was reversed during this period. One crucial development was the disappearance of literary movements. There had once been all sorts of movements: realism, naturalism, romanticism. But in the 1970s and 1980s, it would be more accurate to say that all the genuinely powerful, fresh movements were on the side of theory. Take deconstruction, which swept the globe: no literary movement after the 1970s has been able to rival its influence. To give a more concrete example, in Japan, Haruki Murakami’s novels sell in staggering numbers, yet they can no longer give rise to a literary movement in the old way. The intellectual current that really led the way in 1980s Japan was “New Academism,” something the critics put together.
Defining literary theory is extraordinarily difficult. That is what Paul de Man said—and he was someone very good at definitions. His exact words were: “the main theoretical interest of literary theory consists in the impossibility of its definition.” This is a genuine negation of the negation. First, literary theory cannot be defined: that is the first negation. The second negation leaves the content of the first unchanged, but changes the perspective from which we view it. Literary theory cannot be defined, but that is a good thing.
Compagnon has two short sentences that offer the best definition of literary theory. I mean this in Wittgenstein’s sense: to know what a word means, just look at how it is used. The two sentences are:
- Theory is opposition to common sense.
- Theory is combat.
Theory is opposition to common sense, so it necessarily opposes commonsense views of theory itself. This is a matter of epistemology. Theory is combat: this is a stance, a matter of ethics.
As for literary theory as an academic discipline, in a sense it is the least theoretical thing of all, because it has tamed theory. As Compagnon laments:
To call for theory is, essentially, to call for opposition—to call for opposition, to call for insurrection. Theory has an inescapable fate: academic institutions neutralize it by turning it into a method—what is known as “recuperation.”5