I deleted my earlier message because after discussing with some colleagues I realized that my words greatly exceeded my intention and it seemed hostile to a part of academic studies which I don't yet quite understand. I think Camille has put it in much better words than I did, and I want to apologize to anyone whom I might have offended with my first post. As Andy so brilliantly shows, I messed up, and I want to move on.

I feel like Camille in the fact that I find it hard to identify with theoretical traditions. I've read a wide range of philosophical works, and it seems that I understand philosophy and theory in a contextual way, which has little bearing on how I act in everyday life. That said, I do realize that theories in all their different ways influence how I do my work, however it happens in an unconscious, organic way almost. It's like thinking about how suffragettes did not need feminist theory to understand the concept of patriarchy, for example. Theory for me is never a conscious, deliberate approach. I get an idea from a close reading, and I find a theory that helps to frame it. My work is determined by close readings and ideas that appear spontaneously as I read, not by a specific theory which I want to apply to a text. This is why I suppose I find using theory as a starting point is limiting somewhat. But again, that's just me, and some great work has been done using theory as a starting point, and I acknowledge the importance of these works.

I've been reflecting on my own earlier writing and realizing that I didn't quite examine it as I should have, and this is an answer to this examination which has kept me from sleeping for the last two nights. I'm currently taking a translation theory class (I'm not hostile to theory at all, as a concept), and what's interesting is that we're looking at these theories as they influence a translation practice. Translation theories are rooted in the act of translation, and the problems that this act entails. Each theoretical paradigm takes on a specific problem and tries to systematize an aspect of translation practice. They are rooted both in action and in text, and that makes it really easy to see their usefulness. The way I'd like to start thinking about literary theory is how they help frame the act of interpretation of literature, in a similar way as translation theory does with translation. I think I would be able to relate more easily to theory if it was presented as a way to understand the act of literary interpretation, which is our professional act just as translation is the act of the translator.

In my experience theory comes off as this highly abstract thing that tries to explain everything, but that is ultimately difficult to link to any physical, practical, material action. It may be that this premise is wrong, and I would love to be shown differently. But if I start thinking about theory as a framework through which many different acts of reading may be explained or systematized, then it makes a lot more sense. I just wish that it were made more accessible, and less "necessary" in the sense that Camille explains. If my work doesn't fit in the fashionable theoretical paradigm of the day, does it make it worthless? If I'm not using marxism or feminism or another -ism as my "lineage", can I still be a good literary scholar? Is good scholarship dependent on its fitting in these theoretical categories?

These are genuine questions that I am asking myself right now, and if they are necessary then I have to shift how I conceive my work. But if it is not, then why do I feel such pressure to do it anyway?