Theory: The Mourning After

Jean-Michel Rabaté’s Crimes of the Future reunites a number of interconnected essays that address the meaning and significance of theory in today’s world. As the critic demonstrates, these are urgent issues. Their urgency stems from the pressure globalization applies, ever more markedly after the end of the Cold War, on theorists to consider the role their work holds inside and outside the academy. While theory seems to be thriving, its ongoing “global reproduction” must be accompanied, as Rabaté proposes, by major adjustments of the inherited theoretical canon so as to make sure theory remains up to the challenge of thinking through the present world and its future.