The Inquisition Begins

I begin today my inquisition of the world of literary theory--and theory's place in the world outside of itself. I feel as though I have not yet much to say because I am still behind the glass looking into a world of concepts and jargon still seemingly unaccessible.

This speaks somewhat of a lack of confidence on my part because the image of theory as residing high up on a pedestal, away from the grittiness of a practical and political world, is at least in part illusory. Although the language of theory can be difficult and at times inaccessibly abstract, it does deal either directly or indirectly with political conditions and consequences as well as issues of common sense. Theory's insistence upon examining, questioning, and when appropriate, proving wrong commonly held beliefs in the areas of literature and cultural studies can be unsettling to some, especially at first exposure. However, I think it is just this unsettling practice which is the doorway of accessibility to the study of theory because common sense is common to most people, and is therefore available as a starting point for discussion.

Theory's willingness to consider cultural and historical context (as compared to the text-only close reading of liberal humanism which dominated English studies prior to the 1960s), as well as its distrust of liberal humanism's selection of worthy texts makes it in some ways significantly more democratic than the more exclusive, tradition-trumps-innovation practices of liberal humanism (such as Arnold's touchstone theory, judging the worth of texts based on a rubric consisting of a few works previously judged to be great). An assessment of theory as democratic sounds somewhat ironic because it is often theory which is considered to be elitist because of its use of jargon and frequent complexity of ideas and writing.

Additionally, I think many people consider the study of theory to be useless outside of quibbling over literature in the halls of academe because it has often been exiled to the realm of inaccessibility. I anticipate to discover that theory is indeed applicable to multiple realms of life because unlike its predecessor, liberal humanism, theory incorporates politics, culture, philosophy, and other disciplines, allowing for an application to human beings, rather than being obsessed with the construction of a rigid, confining view of a ruling human nature.