Afterword

Abstract

Consider, for a moment, the title of this essay: Literary and Cultural Theory: The Contested Ground of Critical Language or, Terms, Concepts and Motifs. The first part appears straightforward enough, and I have no wish to complicate this here. ‘Literary and cultural theory’ names — if it names at all¹ — one particular, and particularly overdetermined,² field or area of study, albeit a field which is internally heterogeneous, not to say fraught,³ in what are called the humanities. More specifically, and to cite the words of Tom Cohen, I understand ‘theory’ to indicate ‘a philosophically inflected amalgam of programs interfacing linguistic concerns with the redefinition of “history” … human agency, meaning, impositions of power⁴ … [also displaying] a certain auto-reflexivity associated with its linguistic preoccupations’ (Cohen, 1998: 5). The language of this citation might be read by some as typical in a certain way of what is perceived as literary theory. It might be read by some — neither you nor me — as opaque, dense, resistant, obscurantist. A particularly antagonistic and negative response might suggest that its language is ‘cumbersome and verbose’, while even a more positive reading might call this ‘oblique and difficult’. It is a truism, if not exactly true, that literary theory is often characterized, if not caricatured, in such terms. The debates concerning the language of theory have always been carried on so, they have always been contested.

Language dresses up a thought which could receive another, more appropriate set of clothing … understanding would like a fixity and exactitude that is not found in existing language.

Jean Hyppolite (1997: 46)