Jonathan Culler Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

… One of the most dismaying features of theory today is that it is endless. It is not something that you could ever master, not a particular group of texts you could learn so as to “know theory”. It is an unbounded corpus of writings which is always being augmented as the young and the restless, in critiques of the guiding conceptions of their elders, promote the contributions to theory of new thinkers and rediscover the work of older, neglected ones. Theory is thus a source of intimidation, a resource for constant upstagings: “What? you haven’t read Lacan! How can you talk about the lyric without addressing the specular constitution of the speaking subject?” Or “how can you write about the Victorian novel without using Foucault’s account of the deployment of sexuality and the hysterization of women’s bodies and Gayatri Spivak’s demonstration of the role of colonialism in the construction of the metropolitan subject?” At times, theory presents itself as a diabolical sentence condemning you to hard reading in unfamiliar fields, where even the completion of one task will bring not respite but further difficult assignments. (”Spivak? Yes, but have you read Benita Parry’s critique of Spivak and her response?”)…

……如今的理论有一点最让人失望，就是它永无止境。它不是那种你能够掌握的东西，不是一组专门的文章，你只要读懂了，便“明白了理论”。它是一套包罗万象的文集大全，总是不停地争论着，因为年轻而又不安分的学者总是在批评他们的长辈们的指导思想，促进新的思想家对理论做出新的贡献，并且重新评价老的、被忽略了的作者的成果。因此，理论就成了一种令人惊恐不安的源头，一种不断推陈出新的资源：“什么，你没读过拉康！你怎么能谈论抒情诗而不提及这个说话主体的反射性建构呢？”或者说“要是不用福柯关于如何利用性征和女性身体的歇斯底里化的阐述，还有加亚特里·斯皮瓦克对殖民主义在建构都市主体中所起的作用的论证，你怎么能写得出关于维多利亚时期小说的文章呢？”理论常常会像一项残忍的判决，逼着你去阅读你不熟悉的领域中的那些十分难懂的文章。在那些领域里，攻克一部著作带给你的不是短暂的喘息，而是更多的、更艰难的阅读。（“斯皮瓦克？你读过了，可你读过贝尼塔·派瑞对斯皮瓦克的批评，以及她的答复吗？”）……

（P16，《文学理论入门》，译林出版社，2008。李平译。）

（完）