Theory on Theory

Taking its cue from Jonathan Kramnick’s Criticism and Truth, ‘Theory on Theory’ this year examines some of the core practices that mark literary criticism and theory. In Section 1, Kramnick’s work, which focuses on criticism as a distinct writing practice, is reviewed, along with a brief consideration of teaching in the form of Fredric Jameson’s Mimesis, Expression, Construction. Section 2 takes Eric L. Santner’s Untying Things Together as a representative example of various writing practices characteristic of Theory, and considers (following Kramnick) how these practices may affect the sorts of content or truth that theory can claim. In Section 3, Caroline Levine’s The Activist Humanist provides the occasion for considering another characteristic practice, namely the method of homology, and its use in facilitating the sorts of claims that are commonly made for the utility of literary studies. Finally, in Section 4, Christopher Rovee’s New Critical Nostalgia and Robert T. Tally’s The Critical Situation highlight the connection between our understanding of methods or practices and the wider situation of a discipline that often draws on senses of crisis and (implicit) nostalgia for its self-understanding.