Lakhasly

Why should we bother to learn about critical theories?In fact, "the death of the author" is a simple concept, but unless someone explains it to you the phrase makes little sense. In the early decades of the twentieth century, students of literature were taught that the author was our primary concern in reading a literary work: our task was to examine the author's life in order to discover what the author meant to communicate--his or her message, theme, or moral--which is called authorial intention. Our focus has changed over the years to the point that, now, among many contemporary critical theorists at least, the author is no longer considered a meaningful object of analysis. We focus, instead, on the reader; on the ideological, rhetorical, or aesthetic structure of the text; or on the culture in which the text was produced, usually without reference to the author. So, for all intents and purposes, the author is "dead."In other words, becauseknowledge of critical theory has become, over the last decade or so, a mark of status, an educational "property" for which students and professors compete, it has also become a costly commodity that is difficult to acquire and to maintain at the state of the art. Indeed, I think the anxiety that most of us bring to our study of critical theory is due largely to our initial encounters with theoretical jargon or, more accurately, with people who use theoretical jargon to inflate their own status. To cite just one example, a student recently asked me what "the death of the author" means.And because such writing doesn't seem to connect with our love of literature, let alone with the everyday world we live in, it seems that theory's purpose must be to take us into some abstract, intellectual realm in which we try to impress one another by using the latest theoretical jargon (which we hope our peers haven't heard yet) and dropping the names of obscure theorists (whom we hope our peers haven't read yet).With notable exceptions, most theoretical writing--by the big names in the field and by those who attempt to explain their ideas to novices--is filled with technical terms and theoretical concepts that assume a level of familiarity newcomers simply don't have.These questions, or ones like them, are probably the questions most frequently asked by new students of critical theory, regardless of their age or educational status, and such questions reveal the two-fold nature of our reluctance to study theory: (1) fear of failure and (2) fear of losing the intimate, exciting, magical connection with literature that is our reason for reading it in the first place.Is it really worth the trouble?Won't all those abstract concepts (if I can even understand any of them) interfere with my natural, personal interpretations of literature?Because the meaning of the phrase wasn't evident in the context in which he'd heard it used, the student felt that it must be a complex concept.Because those who used the phrase acted as though they belonged to an elite club, at the same time as they pretended that everyone knewwhat it meant, he felt stupid for not knowing the term and, therefore, afraid to ask about it, afraid to reveal his stupidity."The death of the author" merely refers to the change in attitude toward the role of the author in our interpretation of literary works.It's a simple idea, really, yet, like many ideas that belong to a particular academic discipline, it can be used to exclude people rather than to communicate with them.Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask He'd heard the phrase bandied about, but no one explained it to him, so he felt excluded from the conversation.I think both these fears are well founded.

Why should we bother to learn about critical theories? Is it really worth the trouble?Won’t all those abstract concepts (if I can even understand any of them) interfere with my natural, personal interpretations of literature? These questions, or ones like them, are probably the questions most frequently asked by new students of critical theory, regardless of their age or educational status, and such questions reveal the two-fold nature of our reluctance to study theory: (1) fear of failure and (2) fear of losing the intimate, exciting, magical connection with literature that is our reason for reading it in the first place. I think both these fears are well founded.

With notable exceptions, most theoretical writing—by the big names in the field and by those who attempt to explain their ideas to novices—is filled with technical terms and theoretical concepts that assume a level of familiarity newcomers simply don’t have. And because such writing doesn’t seem to connect with our love of literature, let alone with the everyday world we live in, it seems that theory’s purpose must be to take us into some abstract, intellectual realm in which we try to impress one another by using the latest theoretical jargon (which we hope our peers haven’t heard yet) and dropping the names of obscure theorists (whom we hope our peers haven’t read yet). In other words, becauseknowledge of critical theory has become, over the last decade or so, a mark of status, an educational “property” for which students and professors compete, it has also become a costly commodity that is difficult to acquire and to maintain at the state of the art.
Indeed, I think the anxiety that most of us bring to our study of critical theory is due largely to our initial encounters with theoretical jargon or, more accurately, with people who use theoretical jargon to inflate their own status. To cite just one example, a student recently asked me what “the death of the author” means. Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask He’d heard the phrase bandied about, but no one explained it to him, so he felt excluded from the conversation. Because the meaning of the phrase wasn’t evident in the context in which he’d heard it used, the student felt that it must be a complex concept. Because those who used the phrase acted as though they belonged to an elite club, at the same time as they pretended that everyone knewwhat it meant, he felt stupid for not knowing the term and, therefore, afraid to ask about it, afraid to reveal his stupidity. In fact, “the death of the author” is a simple concept, but unless someone explains it to you the phrase makes little sense. “The death of the author” merely refers to the change in attitude toward the role of the author in our interpretation of literary works. In the early decades of the twentieth century, students of literature were taught that the author was our primary concern in reading a literary work: our task was to examine the author’s life in order to discover what the author meant to communicate—his or her message, theme, or moral—which is called authorial intention. Our focus has changed over the years to the point that, now, among many contemporary
critical theorists at least, the author is no longer considered a meaningful object of analysis. We focus, instead, on the reader; on the ideological, rhetorical, or aesthetic structure of the text; or on the culture in which the text was produced, usually without reference to the author. So, for all intents and purposes, the author is “dead.” It’s a simple idea, really, yet, like many ideas that belong to a particular academic discipline, it can be used to exclude people rather than to communicate with them. This situation is especially objectionable because it results in the exclusion of those of us who might stand to benefit from critical theory in the most concrete ways: current and future teachers at the elementary and secondary levels; faculty and students at community colleges; and facultyand students in all departments at the thousands of liberal arts colleges responsible for the bulk of American education but whose members may not be on the “fast track” to academic stardom.
What are the concrete ways in which we can benefit from an understanding of critical theory? As I hope the following chapters will illustrate, theory can help us learn to see ourselves and our world in valuable new ways, ways that can influence how we educate our children, both as parents and teachers; how we view television, from the nightly news to situation comedies; how we behave as voters and consumers; how we react to others with whom we do not agree on social, religious, and political issues; and how we recognize and deal with our own motives, fears, and desires. And if we believe that human productions—not just literature but also, for example, film, music, art, science, technology, and architecture—are outgrowths of human experience and therefore reflect human desire, conflict, and potential, then we can learn to interpret those productions in order to learn something important about ourselves as a species. Critical theory, I think you will find, provides excellent tools for that endeavor, tools that Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask not only can show us our world and ourselves through new and valuable lenses but also can strengthen our ability to think logically, creatively, and with a good deal of insight.
To that end, each chapter will explain the basic principles of the theory it addresses in order to enable you to read what the theorists themselves have written. Each chapter will focus on a critical theory that has had a significant impact on the practice of literary criticism today and will attempt to show the world through the lens of that theory. Think of each theory as a new pair of eyeglasses through which certain elements of our world are brought into focus while others, of course, fade into the background. Did that last idea give you pause, I hope? Why should some ideas have to fade into the background in order to focus on others? Doesn’t this suggest that each theory can offer only an incomplete
picture of the world?
It seems unavoidable, and part of the paradox of seeing and learning is that in order to understand some things clearly, we must restrict our focus in a way that highlights certain elements and ignores others, just as the close-up camera crystallizes whatever it frames and renders the rest a blurred background. Perhaps this is why, for example
science and religion often seem so at odds, not just because they often offer conflicting explanations of the same phenomena but because they focus our vision on different dimensions of our own experience. This is why it seems to me so important that we study a number of theories in succession, not just to remind ourselves that multiple viewpoints are important if we are to see the whole picture but to grasp the very process of understanding that underlies human experience and to thereby increase our ability to see both the value and the limitations of every method of viewing the world. In fact, one of the most important things theory can show us is that methodologies are ways of seeing theworld, whether we’re talking about physics or sociology, literature, or medicine.
Indeed, because they are ways of seeing the world, critical theories compete with one another for dominance in educational and cultural communities. Each theory offers itself as the most (or the only) accurate means of understanding human experience. Thus, competition among theories has always had a strong political dimension in at least two senses of the word political: (1) different theories offer very different interpretations of history and of current events, including interpretations of government policies, and (2) advocates of the most popular theories of the day usually receive the best jobs and the most funding for their projects.
Even within the ranks of any given critical theory there are countless disagreementsamong practitioners that result in the emergence of different schools of thought within a single theory. In fact, the history of every critical theory is, in Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask effect, the history of an ongoing debate among its own advocates as well as an ongoing debate with the advocates of other theories. However, before you can understand an argument, you have to understand the language or languages in which the opponents express their ideas. By familiarizing you with the language each theory speaks—that is, with the key concepts on which each theory is grounded—this book will prepare you to understand the ongoing debates bothwithin and among critical theories. Learning to use the different languages of theory offered here will also accustom you to “thinking theoretically,” that is, to seeing the assumptions, whether stated or not, that underlie every viewpoint.
For example, as you read the following chapters, I hope it will become clear to you that even our “personal,” “natural” interpretations of literature and of the world we live in—interpretations “unsullied” by theory—are based on assumptions, on ways of seeing the world, that are themselves theoretical and that we don’t realize we’ve internalized. In other words, there is no such thing as a nontheoretical interpretation. We may not be aware of the theoretical assumptions that guide our thinking, but those assumptions are there nevertheless. For example, why do we assume that the proper way to interpret a story for an English class is to show how images and metaphors convey ideas and feelingsor how the story illustrates a theme or reflects some aspect of history or communicatesthe author’s viewpoint? Why isn’t the proper response, instead, to do volunteer work at a shelter for the homeless, sculpt a statue, or throw a party? In other words, the