Explain the concept of ' Resistance to theory

The concept of ' Resistance to theory 

 Ans . In 1982 , Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michael published an essay entitled , " Against Theory " in the Critical inquiry . Seven responses to that essay as well as a rejoinder from Knapp and Michael appeared in the Junc 1983 issue of the journal . These latter , along with two new essays by Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish and a final reply from the two original authors were published in book form . However , for the time being , it is easy to see at some stage at least the falsity of the opposition . What existed as theory from times immemorial can be better understood as " criticism " / " history " / " philosophy " / as an antithesis to " creation " as it is to be found in many of the " apologies for poetry " . Even Wordsworth , writing his Preface , calls criticism a secondary and much less significant engagement of a poet in comparison to his preoccupation with poetry . Arnold in that sense was more of " theorist " , and among the earliest apologists for criticism , though Eliot called him a propagandist for criticism ( rather than a critic ) . Just as there was always some kind of theory or the other , there also was some form of resistance however feeble to such theorising about literature . We shall see Paul de Man taking this issue up in his essay . Before the nineteen sixties , he says , the predominant trends in north American literary criticism were " certainly not averse to theory , if by theory one understands the rooting of literary exegents and of critical evaluation in a system of some conceptual generality " . He points out how even the most low - key practitioners of literary criticism used concepts like tone , organic form , allusion , tradition , historical situation and the like . In some other cases critics showed an interest in theory by giving their works names that announced their theoretical preoccupation : Understanding Poetry ( Brooks and warren ) , Theory of Literature ( Wellck and Warren ) , The Mirror and the Lamp ( Abrams ) . Yet very few of them would have accepted the title f the form of a theoretician in the post- sixties sense of the term . The best way to historicise " Resistance " would be to look at some of the contemporary documents . If you e If do that , actions on related the " objections are related the " difficulties " associated notice how some of the chief Opponents in the I with these theories . of thenry generally feel ill at case when confronted with theoretical jargon . In trying to defend theory , some critics have also tried to syst tried to systematise the objections . Take the example of Geoffrey H. Hartman's " How Creative should Literary Criticism Be ? " The essay begins with the same kind of bewilderment one notices in same of the essays in the 920 , of Eliot and Richards in particular . After making the preliminary observations , Hartman goes on to give a few instances of critics who had trained their guns on the newest of the new : " One critic , Gerald Graff , has taken on the so - called Yale school no fewer than four times ( Twice by courtesy of The American Scholar ) ; an Australian critic emblazons his essay in The London Review of Books with the title . " The Deconstruction Gang " ; Alfred Kazin , lamenting the state of American writing in the recent issue of The New Republic , deplores " the triumph deconstructionism " and " the fictitious superiority of ' creative ' critics over the poems they discuss " ; while William Pritchard , in Hudson Review , talks of a hermeneutical mafia " that contaminates good English prose with philosophy and particularly with " the abominable Hegel . " In England , Hartman pointed out , literary theory has become the focus of heated public debate . " Structuralism and Dry Rot " was the headline of an attack in The Observer charging literary critics with cruelly reducing human nature to pseudo mathematical formulas . " The spark that ignited such outbursts this past February , when not only the Times Literary Supplement but also daily papers carried articles on the subject , was a controversial decision by the appointments committee of Cambridge University to deny tenure to an avant - garde critic . Resistance to theory has come from different quarters , depending on which individual or group of critics have felt threatened or whose position is being undermined . For example , traditionally most critics have attached " values " of some kind or the other to literature which they thought were transcendental , applicable to all times and climes . Hence Amold's " touchstones " . Now , manyof the theories , such as Marxism , deconstruction , reader - response , and some others have seriously questioned the validity of such claims . They either maintain that values are relative , or deny the presence of immanent values . Yet other traditional critics have assumed that literary texts hold meanings in them , and are subject to interpretation . Many theories as we have seen deny this kind of immanence . The other allegation that the anti - theory brigade has leveled from time to time is that " theory " is full of jargon , and is deliberately confusing . Theory often is metacriticism , and takes us away from literature proper , and takes enjoyment away from literature . Some of these objections are not serious enough , nor critical enough , and can be ignored . However , more considered and acute attacks have been raised , and need to be answered and have been answered with a good deal of intellectual seriousness . Initial patterns to literature were based on certain assumptions , other than that of transcendental values , such as those of strict categories of gender , individual fixed seifhood , etc. Many of these we used to regard as the basic " givens " of our experience . Theorists of diverse persuasions have made us aware that these are fluid , unstable categories , rather than fixed and reliable essences . For example , in the case of gender , and in Simone de Beauvoir's famous phrasing : One is not born a woman , one becomes one . At the same time many feminists , particularly the Anglo - American school , refuse to use theory on the ground that in academic institutions it is dominated by men ; it is presented by interest in traditional them as being hard and intellectual . They still maintain an interest in tradi critical concepts like theme , motif , and characterisation . They seem to accept conventions of realism , and treat literature as a series of representations of " reality " . Contemporary theory also holds that language itself conditions , limits and constructed through language , predetermines what we see . Thus , all reality so that nothing is simply " there ' in an unproblematic way . Everything is a linguistic / textual construct . Language does not record reality , it shapes and creates it , so that our whole universe is textual . Further , for the theorist , meaning is jointly constructed by both reader and writer . It is not just ' there ' and waiting before we get to the text but requires the reader's contribution to bring it into being .