Literary Theory: An Introduction to Concepts and Genres

Literary Theory: A Short Introduction

Letteratura Inglese
Università degli Studi di Siena (UNISI)
34 pag.
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Downloaded by: katherine2000 (katherine.storace@gmail.com)LITERARY THEORY - riassunto

Chapter 1: What is a Theory?

Theory has changed the nature of literary studies. It doesn't mean the systemic account of the nature of
literature and the methods for analysing it. It is the discussion of non-literary matters, too much debate about
general questions whose relation to literature is scarcely evident. Theory is a bunch if names: Derrida,
Foucaukt, Lacan, Spivak ...

The Term Theory

Speculation, offer an explanation. But generally, to count as a theory, not only must an explanantion not be
obvious, it should involve a certain complexity and be more than a hypothesis: it can't be obvious; it
involves complex relations of a systematic kind among a number of factors; and it is not easily confirmed or
disproved.

Theory as Genre

Theory in literary studies is not an account of the nature of literature or methods for its study. It's a body of
thinking and writing whose limits are exceedingly hard to define. Richard Rorty, philosopher, speaks of a
new, mixed genre, which began in the 19th century. It is neither the evaluation of the relative merits of
literary productions, nor intellectual history, nor moral philosophy, nor social prophecy, but all of these
mingled together in a new genre. So THEORY designates works that succeed in challenging and reorienting
thinking in fields other than those to which they apparently belong. Works regarded as theory have effects
beyond their original field.

1960s: writings from outside the field of literary studies have been taken up by people in literary studies
because their analyses of language, or mind, or history, or culture, offer new and persuasive accounts of
textual and cultural matters. Theory isn't a set of methods for literary study but an unbounded group of
writings about everything. The genre of 'theory' includes works of anthropology, art history, film studies,
gender studies, linguistics, philosophy ... Works become 'theory' because their visions or arguments have
been suggestive or productive for people who are not studying those disciplines.

Theory's Effect

If theory is defined by its practical effects, as what changes people's views, makes them think differently
about their objects of study and their activities of studying them, what sort of effects are these?

The main effect is the disputing of common sense. Theory is often a pugnacious critique of common-sense
notions, and further, an attempt to show that what we take for granted as 'common sense' is in fact a
historical construction. Theory involves a questioning of the most basic premisses or assumptions of literary
study, the unsettling of anything that might have been taken for granted.

Foucault on Sex

The History of Sexuality by the intellectual historian Michel Foucault considers what he calls 'the repressive
hypothesis': the common idea that sex is something that earlier periods have repressed and that moderns
have fought to liberate. 'Sex' is a complex idea produced by a range of social practices, investigations, talk,
and writing - 'discourses' or 'discursive practices' for short - that come together in the nineteenth century.
All the sorts of talk - by doctors, clergy, novelists, psychologists ... that we link with the idea of the
repression of sexuality were in fact ways of bringing into being the thing we call 'sex'. 'The notion of "sex"
made it possible to group together: anatomical elements, biological functions, conducts, sensations ... it
enabled one to make use of this fictitious unity as a causal principle, an omnipresent meaning, a secret to be
discovered everywhere. The nineteenth century found new ways of grouping together under a single category
('sex') a range of things that are potentially quite different: acts, biological distinctions, parts of bodies,
social meanings. Then, by a crucial reversal, this thing called 'sex' was seen as the cause of the variety of
phenomena that had been grouped together to create the idea, making sexuality the secret of the individual's
nature.

Document shared on https://www.docsity.com/it/literary-theory-a-very-short-introduction/4184677/
Downloaded by: katherine2000 (katherine.storace@gmail.com)One illustration of the way sex was made the secret of the individual's being, a key source of the individual's
identity, is the creation in the nineteenth century of 'the homosexual' as a type, almost a 'species'. In
Foucault's account, 'sex' is constructed by the discourses linked with various social practices and
institutions: the way in which doctors, clergy, public officials, social workers, and even novelists treat
phenomena they identify as sexual. Sex appears as something to the discourses themselves. Moderns accused
these discurses and social practices of trying to control and repress sex as they are constructing. Foucault's
analysis treats sex as an effect rather than a cause, the product of discurses which attemot to analyse,
describe and regulate human activities.

Foucault's analysis is an example of an argument from the field of history that has become 'theory' because
it has inspired and been taken up by people in other fields. It claims to be an analysis of a particular historical
development, but it clearly has broader implications. It encourages you to be suspicious of what is identified
as natural, as a given.

Theory's Moves

A characteristic of thinking that becomes theory is that it offers striking 'moves' that people can use in
thinking about other topics. One such move is Foucault's suggestion that the supposed opposition between a
natural sexuality and the social forces ('power') that repress it might be, rather, a relationship of complicity:
social forces bring into being the thing ('sex') they apparently work to control. A further move - a bonus, if
you will - is to ask what is achieved by the concealment of this complicity between power and the sex it is
said to repress. What is achieved when this interdependency is seen as an opposition rather than
interdependency? This masks the pervasiveness of power. In so far as thing called sex appears to lie outside
power. Power looks limited. In fact, power is pervasive, it is everywhere.

Power is knowledge. What we think we know of the world exercises a great power. Power/knowledge has
produced the situation where you are defined by your sex. The idea that sex lies outside and in opposition to
power conceals the reach of power/knowledge.

Theory in Foucault is analytical, the analysis of a concept, it is speculative there is no evidence you could
cite to show that this is the correct hypothesis about sexuality. It is a 'genealogical' critique: an exposure of
how supposedly basic categories, such as 'sex', are produced by discursive practices, it seeks to show how
the notion has been created. Literature is one of the places where this idea is constructed. Foucault's account
has been important for people studying the novel as well as for those working in gay and lesbian studies and
in gender studies in general. His works treat sex as historical constructions and thus encourage us to look at
how the discursive practices of a period, including literature, may have shaped things we take for granted.

Derrida on Writing

We see a discussion by Jacques Derrida of writing and experience in the Confessionis of Rousseau. Western
philosophy distinguished reality from appearance, things from representations, thought from signs.
Representations are a way to get at reality, they should be as transparent as possible, should not affect or
infect the thought or truth they represent. Speech has seemed the immediate manifestation or presence of
thought, while writing has been treated as an artificial and derivative representation of speech, a potentially
misleading sign of a sign.

Rousseau follows this tradition, which has passed into common sense. Derrida intervenes, asking 'what is a
supplement?' supplement as 'something that completes or makes an addition'. For Rousseau writing is a
mere addition, an inessential extra. Writing consists of signs that introduce the possibility of
misunderstanding since they are read in the absence of the speaker, who is not there to explain or correct. His
works in fact treat it as what completes or makes up for something lacking in speech: writing is repeatedly
brought in to compensate for the flaws in speech, such as the possibility of misunderstanding. In
Confessionis he inaugurates the notion of the self as an inner reality unknown to society. His 'true' inner self
is different from the self that appears in conversations with others, and he needs writing to supplement the
misleading signs of his speech. Writing turns out to be essential because speech has qualities previously
attributed to writing: like writing, it consists of signs that are not transparent, do not automatically convey
the meaning intended by the speaker, but are open to interpretation.

Document shared on https://www.docsity.com/it/literary-theory-a-very-short-introduction/4184677/
Downloaded by: katherine2000 (katherine.storace@gmail.com)Writing is a supplement to speech, but speech is already a supplement, says Rousseau. In a move
characteristic of theory, Derrida treats this particular case as an instance of a common structure or a logic.
This logic is a structure where the thing supplemented (speech) turns out to need supplementation because it
proves to have the same qualities originally thought to characterize only the supplement (writing).

Rousseau needs writing because speech gets misinterpreted. He needs signs because things themselves don't
satisfy. (Passage where Rousseau describes his love for Maman): different objects function in her absence as
supplements or substitutes for her presence. But it turns out that even in her presence the same structure, the
same need for supplements, persists. Her absence, when he has to make do with substitutes or signs that
recall her to him, is first contrasted with her presence. But it turns out that her presence is not a moment of
fulfilment, of immediate access to the thing itself, without supplements or signs; in her presence too the
structure, the need for supplements is the same.

Impression of the thing itself, of immediate presence, or originary perception. Immediacy is derived.
Everything begins with the intermediary.' The more these texts want to tell us of the importance of the
presence of the thing itself, the more they show the necessity of intermediaries. What we learn is the idea of
the original is created by the copies, and that the original is always deferred - never to be grasped. The
conclusion is that our common-sense notion of reality as something present proves untenable: experience is
always mediated by signs and the original is produced as an effect of signs, of supplements.

For Derrida, Rousseau's texts, like many others, propose that instead of thinking of life as something to
which signs and texts are added to represent it, we should conceive of life itself as suffused with signs, made
what it is by processes of signification. Writings may claim that reality is prior to signification, but in fact
they show that 'There is no outside-oftext': when you think you are getting outside signs and text, to 'reality
itself', what you find is more text, more signs, chains of supplements.

It's that her presence turns out to be a particular kind of absence, still requiring mediations and supplements.

What the Examples Show

Derrida's offers a reading or interpretation of texts, identifying a logic at work in a text. Foucault's claim is
not based on texts but offers a general framework for thinking about texts and discourses in general. Derrida
shows the extent to which literary works themselves: they offer explicit speculative arguments about writing,
desire, and substitution or supplementation, and they guide thinking about these topics. Foucault proposes to
show us not how insightful or wise texts are but how far the discourses of doctors, scientists, novelists, and
others create the things they claim only to analyse. Derrida shows how theoretical the literary works are,
Foucault how creatively productive the discourses of knowledge are.

There is also a difference in what they are claiming and what questions arise. Derrida is claiming to tell us
what Rousseau's texts say or show, so the question that arises is whether what Rousseau's texts say is true.
Foucault claims to analyse a particular historical moment, so the question that arises is whether his large
generalizations hold for other times and places. Both examples illustrate that theory involves speculative
practice. They incite you to rethink the categories with which you may be reflecting on literature.

What is Theory? Four Main Points

1. Theory is interdisciplinary - discourse with effects outside an original discipline.
2. Theory is analytical and speculative - an attempt to work out what is involved in what we call sex or
   language or writing or meaning or the subject.
3. Theory is a critique of common sense, of concepts taken as natural.
4. Theory is reflexive, thinking about thinking, enquiry into the categories we use in making sense of things,
   in literature and in other discursive practices.

As a result, theory is intimidating and endless. It is not something that you could ever master. It is an
unbounded corpus of writings which is always being augmented as the young and the restless, in critiques of
the guiding conceptions of their elders, promote the contributions to theory of new thinkers and rediscover
the work of older, neglected ones. Theory presents itself as a diabolical sentence condemning you to reading
in unfamiliar fields. The unmasterability of theory is a major cause of resistance to it.

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