stop making sense

The other day I stumbled on an charged (and hence, interesting) writing sample topic. I was reading Jonathan Culler's newest volume of essays, The Literary in Theory, and I was struck by an insight he outlined in a piece about the resistance to theory. After noting that this resistance may come in all shapes and forms, Culler posits a particularly cutting insight: that the resistance to theory is often no more than a resistance to theory's reputation as an 'insurmountable' discipline. The argument goes: to do theory is to admit its un-doability, not only on the conceptual level, but also on the material one...since there is simply an overwhelming proliferation of texts today, theoretical ideas, etc., etc., that one couldn't possibly be expected to engulf and digest.

Regardless of whether or not this is true, Culler distinguishes it from the traditional English canon. A half-century ago, being a competent English professor was about knowing a/the English canon (having knowledge), of, say, Shakespeare, Milton, etc. But the English canon had (and has) other assets: it remains precisely that which sets the guidelines or limitations to English as such, and it could therefore be appropriated by English professors to distinguish and define their occupation and (more importantly) competence. Today, however, with the incorporation of many discursive disciplines previously outside of the English department (viz., postcolonial theory, feminism, marxism, psychoanalysis, etc.), the situation complicates itself. Not only do these areas of study snatch the emphasis away from the English canon (what theoretical student has time to read the classics today?) but they also question the canon's departmental authority and conceptual stability. Why emphasize the 'classics' today, over anything else written 'in' or about English or literature?

Not only this, but these questions collide with force of controversy because they touch on a phenomenon exploding within English departments the world over. How to reconcile a former system of professorial competence (knowing the canon), with a new one (a background in contemporary theory)? Is, or should their be, some new concept of English professorial competence? What to do with the many professors of the New Critical era, who, in ways, have archives of knowledge unavailable and overlooked by 'theory' professors, but who themselves are ignorant to many contemporary theoretical concerns? And finally, how does this disputable gap ultimately effect the well-being and performance of the student, who no doubt is neither simply neutral nor bias to this departmental conflict?

My plan is to allegorize these themes in a work of literature, maybe even two, and to play out interpretative consequences. Alas, I am currently waiting for my own professorial confirmation. I can't foresee what he will say to me about all of this. But hopefully it will be dashing, and daring--because truly, what is the point of all otherwise?

Ultimately, the interesting thing is that there is a more than good chance some professors reading this paper will be in the very position(s) my essay seeks to analyze/scrutinize(?). This spells out to either my permanent disbanding from academia, or maybe, if I've tapped into something, future possibilities.