Theoretical Downsizing and the Lost Art of Listening

Abstract

What is the proper role for Theory in literary study? An aid to reading? Or source of insight into the world beyond the text? Half-heartedly apologizing for the political-theoretical excesses of the past two decades, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Jean-Michel Rabaté offer up more of the same, with Spivak in particular recycling the ideas of others so as to revive literature as a source of political "Othering." Noting the ways in which Theory silences the sounds of "Others," I argue Valentine Cunningham's placing of Theory permits both texts and others to speak, and in so doing, teaches us to listen.