theory as thinking

Something I never thought I would see/ hear, but I have lately, is people expressing the view that critical theory is something evil and destructive. They say that its agenda is to undermine western or Judeo-Christian values. Marxist literary theory is especially pernicious, but so is post-colonial theory, post-modernism, all of the French theory - Foucault, Barthes, Derrida. 

In this argument, critical theory is linked with certain ideologies and ideological constructs which are regarded by the people making the argument as harmful, toxic and doing actual damage to society. I don't want to name or discuss those ideologies because I don't want to engage in an ideological debate or argue one way or another about ideology. 

To me, critical theory has always been about understanding literature. Critical theory - at least the kind that I am interested in - is primarily concerned with literature, and not with ideology, although I can see how it could be applied to ideology, and there probably are critical theory texts that have more ideological implications. 

For me, as a student of English/ Literature, that subject is what critical theory is about and that's why it interests me. It was very liberating when, in my first year of my degree majoring in English, I was taught about all the different theoretical approaches to literature. It was like an overview of the whole field of literary theory. We had a week or two of lectures about each different approach....structuralism and semiotics, post-structuralism, post colonial theory, and yes - Marxism, Russian Formalism, etc. But it was the ideas that were fascinating. There was nothing ideological about it (at least as far as I could tell). 

Why I say that it was liberating was because, in high school, they teach you a certain way of approaching and understanding literature, and they give you the idea that that's it - that's how you analyse literature. And, for me, it's a boring approach...you identify certain key aspects, like the plot, characters, tone, style, etc. So, when I learnt that there are lots of different ways of understanding literature and that there are some really interesting and insightful approaches, it was exciting because I realised that I could develop my own approach. Studying English was about engaging with the scholarship of others, and engaging with literature yourself, and, over time, developing your own approach - your own theory. I've been, formally and informally, doing that ever since.