Running with the Pack: Why Theory Needs Community

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Theory is stronger now than it ever was in the twentieth-century. The reason for this is not necessarily a deepening or intensification of the work of theory in traditional areas such as literary criticism and critique (though arguments may be made here), but rather a widening or broadening of its reach and domain.

Theory today is a multi- and inter-disciplinary endeavor that operates within and among the humanities (particularly, history, languages, linguistics, the arts, philosophy and religion in addition to literature), the social sciences (including anthropology, ethnic and cultural studies, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology), and many of the professions (for example, architecture, business, communication, education, environmental studies, journalism, law, museum studies, media studies, military science, public policy, and sport science, among others).

In addition to its now somewhat more standard-fare work in these areas, of which prime examples are readily available, it has also made some exciting inroads into the natural sciences (for example, biology, physics, the earth sciences, and the space sciences) and the formal sciences (especially mathematics, computer science, and systems science).¹

To be sure, more disciplines from across the academy have integrated theory into their practice than at any other time in history—and, in many ways, theory today is the id of the disciplines and the engine of interdisciplinary studies.

Moreover, the academic community that engages, supports, and uses theory in the twenty-first century is not only much larger in number than it ever was in the twentieth-century, for many the presumed “heyday of theory,” it is also, in part as a consequence of its multi- and inter-disciplinary reach, more diverse with respect to the objects and subjects of its attention.

In addition to traditional objects of theoretical engagement such as literary, philosophical, and artistic texts, many others are now becoming commonplace such as new media, the environment, and even the university itself.

But theory has also extended the range of subjects of its attention. In addition to more commonplace ones such as narrative, identity, translation, and rhetoric, subjects such as affect, globalization, biopolitics, political economy, and institutions have emerged as major concerns for theory.

The popularity and strength of theory today is directly related to the fearlessness it engenders in individuals and communities to question the precepts and extend the boundaries of individual disciplines as well as to draw the disciplines into dialogue with each other. In addition, theory’s willingness to turn its critical powers upon itself proves to be still another point of attraction. This is why there seems to be nary a subject or object that has not been engaged in some way or another by theory today. To be sure, most everything is fair game for theory.

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Still, while more academics than ever before use theory today in their critical practices, only a small percentage of them self-affiliate as “theorists.” As such, on the face of it, the theory community itself is a small one that is getting smaller, particularly as the older generation of theorists change tense.² Without the influx of a new generation of theorists, theory appears on the brink of demise. But all here is not as it appears.

Part of the explanation of this apparent decline is that theory is undergoing a sort of identity crisis. The kind of theory that dominates the new century is very different from the kind of theory presented in the textbooks of the previous one.

Late twentieth century literary and cultural theory charted its identity and progress through a series of schools and movements designated by “—isms”: formalism, structuralism, new criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, post-structuralism, linguistic criticism, Marxism, feminism, cultural materialism, new historicism, new pragmatism, reader-response criticism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, and so on.

The adjectives “new” and “post” added to these “-isms” were major points of discussion and disagreement. So too were whether any of these “-isms” could be reduced to a method or system. Progress and development in theory was denoted by the “invention” of new “-isms,” the appending of these two adjectives to outdated “-isms,” and the success of efforts...