|
|
4.0 out of 5 stars
Theory in search of a subject, Nov 2 2003
You need to have some familiarity with the exciting, contemporary, cutting-edge American literary intellectual scene to get the very best out of this. Being a simple foreigner like Pooh, and a scientist to boot, I don't. That hasn't bothered me much in the past, but now I'm not Saussure.The question is how much theoretical overkill the poor old bear can take. The answer is, while theory is its own justification and the printer ink holds out, the sky's the limit. A galaxy of thinkers is here to enlighten us, courtesy of Prof. Crews: the Derridean, replete with deeply stunning insights and theoretical rigor verging on mortis; the neo-Marxist, living embodiment of Dr. Johnson's wise remark on hope and experience; the barking second-generation feminist; the Lacanian-Deleuzoguattarian (they won't lie down, you know); last but very far from least, the Vicar of Bray type, right-on author of 'The Last Theory Book You'll Ever Need' and several sequels in the same vein. The footnotes - genuine quotations from philosophico-literary theorists - should be studied with the attention they deserve. These are the guardians of the culture. Go on, give yourself a fright. For me the best-realized figure is the Roger Kimball clone, Dudley Cravat III, who by some extraordinary oversight has been invited to contribute to this panel. I suspect the author has most sympathy with, or anyway least antipathy to, this character, but that doesn't save him from a ribbing. "Much has changed, and all of it for the worse, since we ourself, nearing completion of our Harvard dissertation, attended the MLA convention of 1976 and discovered that once-abundant assistant professorships for tradition-minded young scholars had vanished overnight." Amazingly, many of these theories can be applied with equally gratifying success to subjects as diverse as anthropology and art history (not to mention fundamental physics, but that's another story). The names may change, the fads certainly, but forty years on this crew will still be transgressing importantly, if they haven't disappeared up their own discourse: Felicia Marronnez peering myopically at the world through the lenses of a new theory of everything (or nothing, depending on how you look at it); Carla Gulag fixated on some new Jameson and panting for the revolution; N. Mack Hobbs, America's highest-paid (and therefore indisputably best) humanities professor; and Dudley Cravat III harking back to a lost golden age when French theory with an American accent ruled the world. An acquired taste, perhaps, but an interesting and very clever concoction.
|
