Thoughts on Lit Theory

Contemporary Literary Theory is not a single thing but a collectionof theoretical approaches which are marked by a number of premises,although not all of the theoretical approaches share or agree on allof the them.1. Meaning is assumed to be created by difference, notby "presence," (that is, identity with the object of meaning). Asthe revisionist Freudian Jacques Lacan remarks, a sign signals theabsence of that which it signifies. Signs do not directly representthe reality to which they refer, but (following the linguistics ofFerdinand de Saussure) mean by difference from other words in aconcept set. All meaning is only meaning in reference to, and indistinction from, other meanings; there is no meaning in any stableor absolute sense. Meanings are multiple, changing, contextual.2. There is no foundational 'truth' or reality in the universe (asfar as we can know)--no absolutes, no eternalities, no solid groundof truth beneath the shifting sands of history. There are only localand contingent truths generated by human groups through theircultural systems in response to their needs for power, survival andesteem. Consequently, values and identity are cultural constructs,not stable entities. Even the unconscious is a cultural construct,as Kaja Silverman points out in The Subject of Semiotics, in thatthe unconscious is constructed through repression, the forces ofrepression are cultural, and what is taboo is culturally formulated.3. Language is a much more complex, elusive phenomenon than weordinarily suspect, and what we take normally to be our meanings areonly the surface of a much more substantial theatre of linguistic,psychic and cultural operations, of which operations we are not befully aware. Contemporary theory attempts to explore theimplications (i.e., the inter-foldings, from 'plier', to fold) oflevels of meaning in language.4. Language itself always has excessive signification, that is, italways means more than it may be taken to mean in any one context;signification is always 'spilling over', especially in texts whichare designed to release signifying power, as texts which wecall 'literature' are. This excessive signification is created inpart by the rhetorical, or tropic, characteristics of language (atrope is a way of saying something by saying something else, as in ametaphor, a metonym, or irony), and the case is made by Paul de Manthat there is an inherent opposition (or undecidability, or aporia)between the grammatical and the rhetorical operations of language.5. It is language itself, not some essential humanness or timelesstruth, that is central to culture and meaning. Humans 'are' theirsymbol systems, they are constituted through them, and those systemsand their meanings are contingent, relational, dynamic.6. The meaning that appears as normal in our social life masks,through various means such as omission, displacement, difference,misspeaking and bad faith, the meaning that is: the world of meaningwe think we occupy is not the world we do in fact occupy. The worldwe do occupy is a construction of ideology, an imagination of theway the world is that shapes our world, including our 'selves', forour use.7. A text is, as the etymology of the word "text" proclaims, atissue, a woven thing (L. texere, to weave); it is a tissue woven offormer texts, echoes of which it continually evokes (filiations,these echoes are sometimes called), woven of historical referencesand practices, and woven of the play of language. A text is not, andcannot be, 'only itself', nor can it properly be reified, said tobe 'a thing'; a text is a process of engagements. Literary Theoryadvocates pushing against the depth, complexity and indeterminancyof this tissue until not only the full implications of themultiplicities but the contradictions inevitably inherent in thembecome more apparent.8. The borders of literature are challenged by the ideasa) that all texts share common traits, for instance that they allare constructed of rhetorical, tropic, linguistic and narrativeelements, andb) that all experience can be viewed as a text: experience insofaras it is knowable is consequently symbolically configured, and humanactivity and even perception is both constructed and known throughthe conventions of social practice; hence as a constructed symbolicfield experience is textual.While on the one hand this blurring of differentiationbetween 'literature' and other texts may seem to make literatureless privileged, on the other hand it opens those non-literary (butnot non-imaginative, and only problematically non-fictional) texts,including 'social texts', the grammars and vocabularies of socialaction and cultural practice, up to the kind of complex analysisthat literature has been opened to.9. So the nature of language and meaning is seen as more intricate,potentially more subversive, more deeply embedded in psychic,linguistic and cultural processes, more areas of experience are seenas textual, and texts are seen as more deeply embedded in andconstitutive of social processes.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------None of these ideas shared by contemporary theories are new to theintellectual traditions of our culture. It appears to many, however,that Literary Theory attacks the fundamental values of literatureand literary study: that it attacks the customary belief thatliterature draws on and creates meanings that reflect and affirm ourcentral (essential, human, lasting) values; that it attacks theprivileged meaningfulness of 'literature'; that it attacks the ideathat a text is authored, that is, that the authority for itsmeaningfulness rests on the activity of an individual; that itattacks the trust that the text that is read can be identified inits intentions and meanings with the text that was written; andultimately that it attacks the very existence of value and meaningitself, the ground of meaningfulness, rooted in the belief in thosetranscendent human values on which humane learning is based.On the other hand, 'theory people' point out that theory does is noterase literature but expands the concept of the literary and renewsthe way texts in all areas of intellectual disciplines are or can beread; that it explores the full power of meaning and the fullembeddedness of meanings in their historical placement; that itcalls for a more critical, more flexible reading.It is the case that Literary Theory challenges many fundamentalassumptions, that it is often skeptical in its disposition, and thatit can look in practice either destructive of any value or merelycleverly playful. The issue is whether theory has good reasons forthe questioning of the assumptions, and whether it can lead topractice that is in fact productive