The Returns of Theory

Abstract

For the discipline of Arabic literature in the United States, “theory” is a double entendre: promise, danger. Until the mid-1990s, U.S. Arabic literary studies was landlocked in Near Eastern language departments, whose “anti-theoretical” bent Magda Al-Nowaihi imputes to dependence on U.S. government and Gulf state support. Theory is “dangerous” to such funders, Al-Nowaihi maintains, because it traffics in “the relations between knowledge and power. . . . The result is a situation where European departments produce the theory, we provide the raw material.” “Theory” is what Arabic literature needs—to become a site and an agent of aesthetic-political critique—yet lacks because powers of state insulate its energies within microtextual hermeneutics. Uniquely empowered to translate Arabic literature from particularist “ghetto” to universalist (Euro-dominant) “center” through the abstracting medium of “theory,” then, “European departments” control Arabic literature's legitimization. What emerges is a curious chiasmus: “theory” is at once a danger to state power and a desideratum for Arabic literature, on the one hand, and a seat of institutional power within the U.S. humanities and a danger to Arabic literature, on the other.