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Theoretical Downsizing and the Lost Art of Listening
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 28, Number 1, April 2004
- pp. 192-201
- 10.1353/phl.2004.0015
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
What is the proper role for Theory in literary study? An aid to reading? Or source of insight into the world beyond the text? Half-heartedly apologizing for the political-theoretical excesses of the past two decades, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Jean-Michel Rabaté offer up more of the same, with Spivak in particular recycling the ideas of others so as to revive literature as a source of political "Othering." Noting the ways in which Theory silences the sounds of "Others," I argue Valentine Cunningham's placing of Theory permits both texts and others to speak, and in so doing, teaches us to listen.