BDSL-Klassifikation: 03.00.00 Literaturwissenschaft > 03.06.00 Literaturtheorie
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In recent years, the interest in theory which has once been a moving force of academic research in the field of literary studies appears to have decreased. The status of theory, its relevance and appropriateness for the understanding of literature have been put into doubt. Faced with this observation, some critics have even suggested that we have now entered into a new era of research which can retrospectively be identified as the era "after theory". Against the background of such pronouncements and to a certain extent in opposition to them, the investigations proposed here wish to uphold the idea of the utility and indeed the need for theoretical approaches to literature. To appreciate the status of theory and its possible contribution to a deepened understanding of literature, it is useful not to focus exclusively on the distinction or supposed divide between literature and theory. Instead we should pay attention to what links and unites them. This common ground or common denominator of literature and theory consists in the dimension of language. Furnishing, so to speak, the intellectual material from which both domains of articulation are formed, language constitutes at once the key element of literature and a principal concern of theory.
It may indeed seem that while the late 1970s and early 1980s were the period when theory was successfully established in western academic discourse, we have now entered an era "after theory" in which not only 'cultural theory' has come to an end but also a specific culture of theory has vanished from our seminars, departments, and universities: a culture of reflection, abstraction, and self-referentiality that had been at the heart of the humanities from the very beginning. And yet, theory is not so easily abolished but rather stored and maintained within each individual reading of a literary text in spite of empirical trends such as DH or pessimistic manifestos. Therefore, in what follows, Nicolas Pethes is interested in an additional aspect of the textual resistance of theory against the institutional resistance to theory: the relation between theory and practice, that is: the question whether acting is also one of the many languages of theory.
"The golden age of cultural theory is long past" - with this statement, Terry Eagleton begins his puzzling reflections on the era "After Theory" - that's the title of his book, first published in 2001. If the invasion of literary and cultural theory has come to an end, as Eagleton suggests, theory will probably become a simple object of the history of ideas. But what theoretical implications accompany the discourse of a possible and even probable end of theory? In this so-called era after theory, literary criticism quickly decided to take new steps: the Anglo-American tradition of "Cultural Studies" attempted to replace the theoretical impact of French theory with a more empirical approach to literary texts. At the same time, good old philology raised its hand to oppose the topographical turn of cultural studies as well as the deconstructive turn against all forms of presence. [...] For Foucault, philology is nothing more than a part of the historical discourse of the nineteenth century, an old-fashioned term that lacks any impact on contemporary problems. For this and other reasons, Foucault showed little interest in more recent models of philology. But maybe instead of subscribing too easily to the notion that we live in an era after theory, where problems of literary theory are replaced by concepts of discourse and culture that no longer pay any attention to literature, what is called for is an investigation of the impact of philological understanding in the humanities.