I'm going to go over the berlin wall!!

Admittedly, this is another re-posting from a class blog, but I thought it was general enough to land here as well:


Why are some many in cultural studies worried that Theory might eat up cultural studies? Why does Angela McRobbie say, “Cultural Studies itself can thus be deconstructed to show how postructuralist work has occupied a position of authority as ‘theory’. . .?” Why does she need to justify her call back to experience through the authority of two of the most densely post-structural feminists?

I just want to suggest a few reasons for the enticement of theory in the academia. Please, don’t read this as an anti-theoretical rant. I certainly don’t believe any work is unmediated by theory whether explicated or not. I just want to suggest some reasons a theoretical orientation might have a comparative advantage in valorization among intellectuals versus other methods.

1. Theory is relatively safe from political persecution. I agree that theory might do important political work (given the right sort of conjuncture), but as of now theory is one of the safest ways to claim radicalism without institutional backlash. Even if it is political, it is generally so hard to for anyone without immersion in it to comprehend that it is not seen as a threat. Butler and Spivak, for instance, did not make David Horowitz’s list of 100 Most Dangerous Professors despite their fame. (This of course could also be a strategic advantage of working theoretically in oppressive times).

2. Theory promises the ultimate intellectual capital. To the extent that everything meaningful happening in the world is reduced to a structural or post-structural process (it really doesn’t matter whether or not signifiers slip, all that matters is whether you recognize the process of that slippage), significations or articulations may change but it’s the derivative of that change that underlies everything. The intellectuals who have accumulated the most knowledge of those processes are best positioned to understand the world. Structuralism/Post-structuralism is the string theory of the humanities. Once semiotic processes are all that really matters, knowing the nature of semiotics process relieves one from having to deal with the messy world of actual historical contingencies and experiences.

3. Theoretical writing is hard to understand, thus it enchants us with its mystery. I feel this all the time myself. Having an understanding of writing is usually a pre-requisite to being able to evaluate it, criticize it and see its limits. When you can’t understand what Derrida or Lacan is saying, and yet you have invested faith in the institutions/communities that seem to affirm the dire importance of what they are saying, their writings offer an almost religious mystique. The bible, Torah, the Vedas, etc. are all enigmatic, not just by coincidence. (However, this is not to say the only value of difficult writing is its mystery- the cryptic is valued in the first place because at times it can indeed lead to profound epistemic breakthroughs)

4. Theory insulates the intellectual from all criticism from outside the academy. Theory forms a specialized knowledge that can only be critiqued by specialized knowledge of the same kind. Once the “political claims” made by a theorist are all staked on the sophistication of their semiotic analysis, the intellectual is safe from challenges by others based on their experiences or memories (which are of course thought to be constituted by these very semiotic rules that they can’t recognize them). For instance, when a theorist talks about battles of signification over words like “queer” from a purely semiotic standpoint, the experiences and testimonies of “everyday people” (i.e. people who do not articulate their experience through the grid of poststructural analysis) have no way to enter the debate. Thus the rigor of theory is channeled and managed by making it accountable only to peers who have been similarly trained. Only 6 people in the room of a hundred can begin to challenge Homi Bhabha, the rest better keep quiet.