Content area
Full Text
From his 1983 Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction to his editorship of the invaluable Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (to be released in a third edition in 2018), Vincent B. Leitch has reliably delivered the good news about literary theory. In the preface to this wide-ranging collection of essays and interviews, Leitch describes himself "as both an insider and a popularizer" (8), and as the subtitle Theory Renaissance indicates, Leitch is still optimistic about the future of theory.
This optimism will no doubt surprise many if not most readers. As Leitch points out, theory is no longer a "shocking and disruptive vanguard," and the "high energy excitement and energy revolving around theory" seems to have waned considerably in the twenty-first century with there being "very few jobs in the area" (vii). The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article in 2015 entitled "The New Modesty in Literary Criticism" describing a significant backlash against the Age of Theory, and we even hear anecdotal evidence that theories like deconstruction lead to increased levels of depression among scholars. It seems that we are either depressed about the decline of theory or depressed about its refusal to go away, but in either case, few seem to recognize that we are living in an era of a "theory renaissance."
For Leitch, our feelings about the decline—or persistence—of theory are in fact significant to our work in literary studies: he sees a vital space for scholars to discuss their emotions, what he terms "intimate critique." He explains that a certain point in his career, "My personal story felt more and more like an introduction to the politics and economics of the postwar era" (3). Leitch is emphatic that literary theory now means "cultural studies" (and has since the early 1990s), and in a sense, he sees all faculty members as embodying cultural critique in their own persons and histories. We might teach Jonathan Franzen's 2001 The Corrections as a critique of capitalism at the turn of the century; in the classroom, we might also draw...