« The History Of Nighttime | Main | Eyes On The Prize? »
June 27, 2005
More Good Stuff On Literary Theory
Mark Bauerlein writing at butterfliesandwheels.com has a must-read review of a new anthology of literary and cultural theory: Theory’s Empire, edited by Daphne Patai and Will Corral and published by Columbia University Press.
I'll write more on this soon, but here's a quote that is very nearly an exact copy of a gripe I have made many times:
[the race/gender/sexuality/anti-imperialism/anti-bourgeois resentments...raise] another discrepancy between Theory’s intellectual content and its institutional standing. Theory in its political versions claimed to be subversive, egalitarian, anti-hegemonic, and ruthlessly self-critical, but in their actual working conditions theorists presided over one of the most hierarchical, prestige-ridden, and complacent professional spaces in our society.
Emphasis is mine. I'm not an academic, but I'm very close to several. The viciousness of the back-biting and ladder climbing can approach Enron-like proportions.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thebernoullieffect.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/214
