What’s Wrong with Antitheory?

Jeffrey R. Di Leo is Professor of English and Philosophy and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Houston-Victoria, USA. He is editor of the American Book Review, founding editor of the journal symploke, and executive director of the Society for Critical Exchange and its Winter Theory Institute.His previous publications include Dead Theory: Derrida, Death, and the Afterlife of Theory (2016), American Literature as World Literature (2017), and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory (2019).

• Notes on ContributorsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Antitheory and its DiscontentsJeffrey R. Di Leo, University of Houston-Victoria, USAPart 1 Antitheory as Theory1 Antitheory 2.0: The Case of Derrida and the Question of LiteratureJeffrey Nealon, Penn State University, USA2 Crisis Theory after CrisisPeter Hitchcock, CUNY Graduate Center and Baruch College of the City University of New York, USA3 Epic Fail: Prolegomenon to Failing Again, FinallyIrving Goh, National University of Singapore, Singapore4 Antitheory, Positivism, and Critical PedagogyKenneth J. Saltman, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA5 Down with Theory!: Reflections on the Ends of AntitheoryJeffrey R. Di LeoPart 2 Reading as Antitheory6 Critique UnlimitedRobert T. Tally Jr., Texas State University, USA7 How Not to be Governed Like That: Theory Steams OnRobin Truth Goodman, Florida State University, USA8 Antitheory in Postcolonial PerspectiveNicole Simek, Whitman College, USA9 Eaten Alive, or, Why the Death of Theory is not Antitheory Christian Haines, Pennsylvania State University, USA10 Theory as MeatgrinderHarold Aram Veeser, City College of New York (English Department) and the CUNY Graduate Center (Middle East and Middle-Eastern American Center), USAPart 3 Philosophy, Theory, and Antitheory11 Theory Does Not ExistPaul Allen Miller, University of South Carolina, USA12 (Anti)Theory’s ResistancesTom Eyers, Duquesne University, USA13 Forget LatourZahi Zalloua, Whitman College, USA14 After Anti-foundationalism: Ten Theses on the Limits of AntitheoryChristopher Breu, Illinois State University, USAIndex

In the introduction to this collection, Di Leo (English and philosophy, Univ. of Houston, Victoria) addresses the issues of theory in the 21st century. Most of the contributors of the 14 essays are drawn from the humanities, notably literature and philosophy. The essays approach theory through the perspective of "antitheory,” which began as a resistance to theory but inevitably broadened its reach. Di Leo organizes the collection in three sections: “Antitheory as Theory" (five essays), “Reading as Antitheory" (five essays), and "Philosophy, Theory, and Antitheory" (four essays). The collection is timely, as university structures succumb to neoliberal pressures to commodify the humanities. Over the past 50 years or so theory has been denigrated as the death knell for the humanities; the implicit argument of the present collection is that theory is a way to save the humanities. Addressing the contemporary state of the humanities from both historical and conceptual viewpoints, What’s Wrong with Antitheory opens a necessary discussion. Summing Up: Recommended.