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But if theory really is a thing of the past, its status as such could open it up for retrospective reconsideration. Insofar as a certain era or genre of theory feels like it’s “over,” perhaps its historical closure leaves it newly illuminated in ways which weren’t possible when it was pressingly present. For this reason, a new strand of scholarship appears to be emerging: one which treats theory less as an instrument than an object of study in its own right. François Cusset led the way with French Theory, a contextual account of the impact of Derrida, Deleuze, and company on American academia. More recently, Mark Currie has historicized the “invention of deconstruction,” while Judith Ryan has illustrated the influence of literary theory on postwar fiction. For these authors and others, theory, it seems, is still on the table — only now it’s seen from a shifted, reflexive perspective.
Embedded within the concept of theory is a discontinuous history of conceptual usage whose genealogy is as long as it is incomplete. Each time we evoke or invoke theory in the humanities, we lift the weight of this history on our backs, or more likely, we tread lightly upon it, as if to leave undisturbed the bones of our ancestors, unaware of how many geological layers lie beneath our feet.
Refreshingly then, Rodowick wishes to excavate the fossil record of theory, rather than adding another two cents to the increasingly tired arguments “for” or “against” it. Stepping back from such controversies, he stresses instead the more modest but important point that “theory has a history” — a history which the rhetorical fireworks of the theory wars have too often obscured. Regardless of whether we wish to preserve theory or resist it, “our picture of theory,” Rodowick argues, “is cloudy or unfocused because we have forgotten its history or become blinded to it.” Therefore, the aim of this “elegy” is to restore some much-needed precision to the way we conceive of theory as such: Rodowick is concerned not with contestation, but with conceptual clarification.
My attempts to understand the conceptual vicissitudes of theory have veered wildly in perspective, sometimes plunging into one or two texts in florid detail, making them carry the weight of an entire discursive formation on the space of a few pages, then retreating to the horizon to frame the most panoramic view possible.
Two such lines tend to recur throughout Rodowick’s labyrinthine account, combining and recombining in constant tension and entanglement. One of these threads connects theory to philosophy, through an “aesthetic discourse” shaped by the long shadow of Hegel. The other ties it to the rise of modern science, via various flavors of positivism and empiricism. In this sense, theory seems to hover “in an unstable space, as if held unsteadily” between twin poles or attractors. Rodowick shows how the push and pull of these forces has formed theory as we know it today. In the postwar period, for instance, aesthetic conceptions of theory give way to what Rodowick calls the “discourse of signification” — a “desire for formalization” which peaks in the structuralist project of systematizing the human sciences. Rodowick’s genealogy of structuralism takes in some intriguing twists and turns, traveling back through the French “filmology” movement to Russian formalism, and further. Yet these are not to be seen as steps in a causal progression; instead, they represent nodes in a network, “capillaries” branching out from “the beating heart of positivism.” Later the pendulum swings back again, when Derrida and the post-structuralists disrupt the “epistemological confidence” of their predecessors. But beneath these differing configurations, an underlying rhythm remains: theory is formed, deformed, and reformed in the shifting space between science and philosophy.
Every historical moment of theoretical awakening is, as it were, to some degree metacritical or metatheoretical. In key moments of discursive ramification or reformulation, an idea of theory suddenly becomes conscious of itself and its apparent history. [These are] moments of rupture, reconsideration, and retrojection where theory takes itself as its own object, examines and reconfigures its genealogy, conceptual structure, and terminology, and posits for itself a new identity and cultural standing.
Moreover, if theory moves forward by looking back, then Rodowick’s own work epitomizes the metacritical spirit it describes. In this essential respect, Elegy for Theory surpasses its humbly stated aim of “clarifying” the history of a concept. While it is true that readers of Rodowick’s book will discover new insights into the story of theory, the exhilaration aroused by those “steep turns […] and surprising vistas” stems as much from the structure and form of the story’s telling: to follow Rodowick’s argument is, in a way, to witness the spiraling swerve of theory enveloping and comprehending itself. It remains to be seen where Rodowick’s next book will lead — he hints that it will relinquish high theory in favor of a new conception of philosophy. And yet his elegy’s very existence suggests, somehow, that whatever animates theory is alive and well. Toward the end of this book, Rodowick writes of the era of theory that “to feel one’s self at the end of something inspires reflection on its ends.” In itself, his inspired reflection revives the stream of ideas on which it reflects; if this is only an elegy, it’s one that instills its object with endless energy.
David Winters is a literary and cultural critic living in Cambridge, England.
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