Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-5kfdg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-26T21:34:09.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Theory, Democracy, and the Public Intellectual

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

R. Radhakrishnan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Hmm! A State-of-the-Art Essay About the Vvhereabouts of Theory Today? Should Such an Essay Be About Anything at all, considering the antirepresentational stance of radical theory? How does one write about theory, except self-reflexively (a question that Butler, Guillory, and Thomas raise)? If I did that, would I be guilty of professional narcissism, or would my rigorous self-reflexivity have a referent, whether the referent is called reality, the world, history, or experience? Would I be successful in combining the nuances and rigors of self-reflexive thinking with the mandate of having to say something about something?

Information

Type
The changing profession
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 785 - 794
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham UP, 2005. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith, Guillory, John, and Thomas, Kendall. Preface. What's Left of Theory? New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory. Ed. Butler, Guillory, and Thomas, . New York: Routledge, 2000. viii-xii. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eye of Its Pupils.” Diacritics 13.3 (1983): 3–20. Print.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Intellectuals and Power.” Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Trans. Bouchard, Donald F. and Simon, Sherry. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980. 205–17. Print.Google Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio. The Modern Prince and Other Writings. Trans. Marks, Louis. New York: Intl., 1959. Print.Google Scholar
Guha, Ranajit. History at the Limit of World-History. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Levinas, Emmanuel. “Ethics and Politics.” Trans. Jonathan Romney. The Levinas Reader. Ed. Hand, Seán. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. 289–97. Print.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Smith, Colin. London: Routledge, 1958. Print.Google Scholar
Radhakrishnan, R. Diasporic Mediations: Between Home and Location. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radhakrishnan, R. “Grievable Life, Accountable Theory.” Boundary 2 35.1 (2008): 67–84. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radhakrishnan, R. History, the Human, and the World Between. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Radhakrishnan, R. Theory in an Uneven World. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Said, Edward W. Humanism and Democratic Criticism. New York: Columbia UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271–313. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Raymond. The Politics of Modernism. London: Verso, 1989. Print.Google Scholar