Contemporary Literature and Contemporary Theory: A Preface

Abstract

Having commissioned an issue on the relationships between contemporary literature and contemporary theory, we find that we have set in motion a series of meditations on the kinds of knowing, remembering, and believing that are or are not available through current literary and theoretical discourses. The essays gathered here attempt to assess the value of particular forms of contemporary theory when they are deployed in relation to contemporary literature. Each of the essayists is preoccupied with the question of what kinds of knowledge, if any, contemporary theoretical writing can afford about contemporary literature and, in turn, what relations obtain between any literary text and knowledge. Without specific intent, the contributors have begun a dialogue with us, with one another on the possibilities and limits of knowing through the word. They worry about the critic's drive for theoretical mastery of the text: Is a conceptual grasp of the text possible, or desirable, or necessary? Is it somehow a violation when it is obtained? Where is the self when a critic is attempting to know a text? in the text or outside it? producing the critical discourse or being produced by it? What is the role of memory in one's attempts to know a text? And, finally, is belief any longer a believable category, as we pursue our talk about the literature being written by our contemporaries?