Theory: Thinking with Literature

Abstract

In the preceding chapter we have been on the trail of the muse of critique, discovering how resilient it is, how desired and pursued even by thinkers of the present who reject any hermeneutics of the subject but still seem to be receptive to critique’s gentle indocility. In the process, a theme has emerged that now requires proper attention, and that is the contact between literature and philosophy. The keyword for this chapter, “Theory” is a name for the shaping force of that contact. “Theory” with a capital letter is understood as a stage in literary criticism delimited in time, while “theory” with lower case letter, is understood as an approach to texts that, as Raymond Williams advised in Chapter 1 of this book, moves beyond their governamentality. The chapter traces the degree to which critique depends on the question of the contact between literature and philosophy through the example of Fredric Jameson, a pioneer of that transformation of criticism that in American academia gave rise to the new discourse of “theory.” The chapter approaches Jameson through the resources of Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg, and Carla Lonzi.