Full Description
This book demonstrates that theory in literary and cultural studies has moved beyond overarching master theories towards a greater awareness of particularity and contingency - including its own. What is the place of literary and cultural theory after the Age of Theory has ended?
Grouping its chapters into rubrics of metatheory, cultural theory, critical theory and textual theory, the collection demonstrates that the practice of "doing theory" has neither lost its vitality nor can it be in any way dispensable. Current directions covered include the renewed interest in phenomenology, the increased acknowledgement of the importance of media history for all cultural practices and formations, complexity studies, new narratology, literary ethics, cultural ecology, and an intensified interest in textual as well as cultural matter.
Contents
Acknowledgements.- List of Contributors.- Introduction: The Place of Theory Today; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- PART I: METATHEORY.- 1. Comes the Revolution; J. Hillis Miller.- 2. Literary Theory in Reverse: The Literariness of Theory; Gerold Sedlmayr.- 3. Misreading Shelley, Misreading Theory: Deconstruction, Media, and Materiality; Christian Huck.- 4. 'I am, yet what I am': Theory, Being and Dis-appearance; Julian Wolfreys.- 5. Matter Against Materialism: Bruno Latour and the Turn to Objects; Benjamin Noys.- 6. Avoiding Post-Structuralism at Its Root: Toward a New Theory; Dino Galetti.- Interlude I: The Cultures of Reflexivity; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- PART II: CULTURAL THEORY.- 7. The University: A Matter of Theoretical Importance; Thomas Docherty.- 8. When Theory Is Not Enough: A Material Turn in Gender Studies; Ingrid Hotz-Davies.- 9. Luhmann in da Contact Zone: Towards a Postcolonial Critique of Sociological Systems Theory; Lars Eckstein and Christoph Reinfandt.- 10. Passive Voice: Democratic Indifference and the Vibrant Matter of Literature; Dirk Wiemann.- 11. Managing Complexity: The "Literary Turn" in Organization Studies; Nicola Glaubitz.- Interlude II: Ideologies of Habitus; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- PART III: CRITICAL THEORY.- 12. Ecological Transformations of Critical Theory; Hubert Zapf.- 13. The Literary Work as Ethical Event; Derek Attridge.- 14. Ethics and Agency: The Limits and Necessity of Ethical Criticism; Sebastian Domsch.- 15. The Art of Compearance: Ethics, (Reading) Literature, and the Coming Community; Martin Middeke.- 16. Narrative Theory at the Limit; Richard Walsh.- Interlude III: On Interpretation; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- PART IV: TEXTUAL THEORY.- 17. The Fate of Texts under Changing Theory; Herbert Grabes.- 18. Latour & Literature; David J. Alworth.- 19. Reading Textures; Christoph Reinfandt.- 20. Plato or Aristotle? Form and Textuality; Sukanta Chaudhuri.- Coda: Theory Matters; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- Index.-
