Learning to Learn Theory

The group I watched Examined Life with agreed that most of the clips presented interesting ideas that we could further engage with or use. To be honest, though, we were more interested in the somewhat distracting elements of the film’s production (whose idea was it put a philosopher in a rowboat? how do the clips’ settings reflect/undermine the philosopher’s message? What questions does Astra Taylor prompt her interviewees with?) than we were in the actual content of the philosopher’s interviews. I guess we were watching it like a movie, reading the whole text, and not engaging exclusively with its ideas. I guess we shouldn’t ask why it was a film, and not a radio production, or a play, because that demonstrates a failure to engage with the text in a big picture way. So, the film was neat, and fine, and I guess it must matter, but resulted in no great sea change of thought or profound reorganization of my thinking about theory. This response should not be confused for apathy or disengagement. I was actually really interested in Zizek‘s point about embracing catastrophe: I found his argument—we as humans ultimately benefit from catastrophes—profound and to my experiences truthful. Which is great, until you try to apply it. For example, I attended the Friday night screening of Zacharias Kunuk’s newest film Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change. Can you imagine going north and telling the Inuit inhabitants of villages where, because of the permafrost melt, the ground is liquefying below them, where the landscape from which their culture has arisen is completely changing, to embrace the catastrophe of climate change? You could similarly go to France and tell the Sarkozy government to embrace rather than resist France’s burgeoning Islamic population, a demographic shift this government interprets as a catastrophe for traditional French culture. From these examples I could deconstruct Zizek’s model about dinosaurs and petroleum by arguing that today’s catastrophes are man-made and reflect the unbalanced power relations that French theory has so well analyzed but still failed to eliminate; that today’s catastrophes result in the homogenization of cultural variety and reduction of traditional knowledge available on this planet, things we deem valuable. But this response, too, is a failure, for simply deconstructing. I’m not being glib, but I am finding it very hard to adjust my reading strategies. Still, I think my ability to recognize this tendency in my work is a step in the right direction.

I am scared by the seemingly required use/deferral to theory: what can be original about the use of theory? Is it not a limiting system? Does theory persist to be a viable academic pursuit because we have new texts to apply it to, or does theory actually allow its user to create something new? It’s funny: we have been asked to consider what theory means to us and how it influences our studies/the world in the same class where we have been incited to stop using our deconstructive reading habits because they don’t offer anything new or exciting, and limit rather than deepen our discussion.

Cusset’s questioning of the role of theory in society, away from academia, made me wonder whether French theory has activist aims. If so, haven’t they been realized? One potential reason why not is that French theory benefits very little from any kind of intellectual trickledown effect, pooling by virtue of its inaccessibility in academia and circles of higher leaning, and has little impact on the other 98% of the population. This very inaccessibility undercuts the theory’s Marxist or egalitarian aims: how can we deconstruct the power structures that persist in today’s world when the texts that teach us how to do so must be interpreted to populations by academics? If, that is, this interpretation occurs at all. Historically there have been great concerns about populations having access to religious texts in their own language: such access would change how individuals thought about the world and their role in it. This is not the case for French theory, as it may as well be Latin.

If my response seems uneducated, it is because it is. For myself, theory is not a tradition, or an intellectual inheritance, but a technique, like any number of techniques I use, which is more or less effective. It is also a technique I am poorly skilled in, which is probably why I can recognize my use of theory’s tactics but am still unable to think beyond them. I understand every act of reading to simultaneously be an act of interpretation, and that in this sense every act of reading is also an act of theorization. But some readings/ theorizations are better or more useful than others, so we privilege them in academia. I struggle greatly just trying to understand theoretical texts, and for the most part I can’t forgive them their inaccessibility. This said, I recognize my need to reconcile with theory if I am to go on in academia, not only because I doubt there has been a dissertation submitted to any North American English Department in the last 10 years that does not reference Foucault, or Derrida, or Deleuze etc, but also because I suspect there is some intellectual amplification afforded to those who genuinely engage with theory. To this end, I would be deeply grateful if someone, professor or student, would help me learn how to learn theory.