The Attractions of Theory

Abstract

I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about the change in the status and context of the academia over the last fifteen years and what this has done to the teaching of literary theory. The change is from a culture of resistance to a culture of compliance. Fifteen years ago a student stood up in a critical theory seminar I was leading and ripped the module handbook in two after a session on deconstruction. Now, our students offer a resigned ‘we’ll do it if it will get us a 2:1’. In my undergraduate days in the mid-1980s, theory was a radical and marginal enterprise, and its institutional reputation, as something intellectually demanding and politically subversive, was its allure. As I write today, a principal lecturer who has taught literary theory throughout her career in higher education, I find that ‘Theory’ follows only ‘Introduction to English’ courses in terms of its broad institutional adoption (Halcrow Group 2003). This means the attractions (or repulsions) of theory are really quite different.