The Future of Theory [Paperback]

In this controversial manifesto, Jean-Michel Rabaté addresses current anxieties about the future of literary and cultural theory and proposes that it still has a crucial role to play.Introduction.

1. Geneaology 1: Hegel's Plague.

2. Genealogy 2: The Avant-Garde at Theory's High Tide.

3. Theory, Science, Technology.

4. Theory not of Literature but as Literature.

Conclusion.

Notes.

Index.

As with other books in this publisher's series, the intent is to engage the general educated public in a discussion of meaningful concepts, and Rabate succeeds excellently. For all public and academic collections. Library Journal

This clearly written, well-documented study will serve graduate students, faculty and researchers. Choice

Jean-Michel Rabaté is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published books on Beckett, Bernhard, Pound, Joyce, Lacan, psychoanalysis, and literary theory. His recent books include The Ghosts of Modernity (1996), Joyce and the Politics of Egoism (2001), and Jacques Lacan and Literature (2001). He has also edited several collections of essays, including Writing the Image after Roland Barthes (1997), Jacques Lacan in America (2000), and The Cambridge Companion to Jacques Lacan (2002).Is Theory dead? Is it, as skeptics suggest, too distant from anything “real” to be useful, too sweeping in its referral of all texts to grand theses? Or is it a mask for fashion and self-promotion in academia? In this controversial manifesto, Jean-Michel Rabaté addresses current anxieties about Theory and claims that it still has a crucial role to l3%