Reading After Theory 1st Edition by Valentine Cunningham (PDF)

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Valentine Cunningham’s controversial manifesto asks what will and should happen to reading in the post-theory era.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Library Journal For the well-educated contemporary reader, the issue of approaching a text no matter how casually is shadowed by the influences cast on its apprehension by multiple literary theories that have become embedded in our shared intellectual landscape. We may not agree with this or that theory or even be conscious of its prevalence in our literary lives, yet our reading is done in a world where theory comes first and the texts we now take up come after them. This publisher’s “Manifestos” series seeks to offer educated but general readers chewy presentations of contemporary ideas, and Cunningham (English language and literature, Oxford) is stellar in his honing to that theme. He traces modern English-language literary criticism back to Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (1783) and then goes as far afield as Roland Barthes’s explication of mapping, that 20th-century French theorist having “discovered” his symbolic surroundings in Japan. How does one read after Freud? Was Freud doing anything, really, except offering literary theory as a means of disclosing himself? This book is fun, involving, and inviting as both a social book-discussion subject and an important text that graduate students and literary specialists need to consider. Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review “This publisher’s ‘Manifestos’ series seeks to offer educated but general readers chewy presentations of contemporary ideas, and Cunningham (English language and literature, Oxford) is stellar in his honing to that theme. This book is fun, involving, and inviting as both a social book-discussion subject and an important text that graduate students and literary specialists need to consider. Library Journal “Valentine Cunningham’s sharp, amusing critical polemic” Times Literary Supplement “In the process of developing his argument and attempting to refocus critical attention on the text – both the literary and the critical text – and what it says, Cunningham displays an intimate knowledge of the major works of contemporary literary theory.” Choice Book Description Controversial account looks at what should be happening to reading in the “post-theory” era. From the Inside Flap Valentine Cunningham’s controversial manifesto asks what will and should happen to reading in the post-theory era. His account examines the spread of literary theory from the 1960s, when it was considered highly contentious, to the present time, when theoretical approaches are taken for granted across a range of disciplines. Whilst acknowledging the necessity of theory for reading and recognising the good it has done, he strongly criticises it for encouraging bad reading, and for diminishing the richness, scope and human connection of texts. Cunningham argues that theory has made texts secondary to questions of ideology, oppressions and resistance (important though they are) and proposes that what is needed in order to rescue literary studies is a return to close and “tactful” reading. His manifesto insists on the primacy of texts over all theorising about them, and on the restoration of the human to literary studies. From the Back Cover Valentine Cunningham’s controversial manifesto asks what will and should happen to reading in the post-theory era. His account examines the spread of literary theory from the 1960s, when it was considered highly contentious, to the present time, when theoretical approaches are taken for granted across a range of disciplines. Whilst acknowledging the necessity of theory for reading and recognising the good it has done, he strongly criticises it for encouraging bad reading, and for diminishing the richness, scope and human connection of texts. Cunningham argues that theory has made texts secondary to questions of ideology, oppressions and resistance (important though they are) and proposes that what is needed in order to rescue literary studies is a return to close and “tactful” reading. His manifesto insists on the primacy of texts over all theorising about them, and on the restoration of the human to literary studies. About the Author Valentine Cunningham is Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is also Permanent Visiting Professor at the University of Konstanz in Germany. His previous publications include British Writers of the Thirties (1988), Everywhere Spoken Against: Dissent in the Victorian Novel (1975) and In the Reading Gaol: Postmodernity, Texts and History (Blackwell, 1993). He is the editor of The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Blackwell, 2000). Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐A keen look at the critical developments in literary theory from the 1960s (postmodernism and deconstruction figuring heavily), and a cogent argument that all our anxiety about theoretical questions (ideology and resistance, oppression and liberation) subordinates texts to the theories that reduce and simplify them, encourages poor reading and evacuates texts of their richness and (most importantly) their vital human connection.Reading After Theory shares Cunningham’s view of tactful and good reading; he’s answering the question, what does it mean to read well, to be a good reader? This, as opposed to the methodology of Theory which locates questions of literary value in contexts of political oppression and resistance (New Historicism, Marxism, Feminism, Postcolonialism, Queer Studies, and so on). It’s “the unforgiving exclusionist politics of Theory” that Cunningham deftly explodes:”Read as we say, or don’t read at all. But what if I am not so simply defined as one of theory’s allowed readers–a disempowered one, a Woman, a Black, and so on? What if I’m a WEM, a white European male, theory’s Public Enemy Number 2 (Number 1 is the Dead WEM)? What if, as I believe to be more commonly the case, I’m a funny melange of Theory’s approved and disapproved, moving in and out of desired and undesirable categories or ‘communities’, as they say–as I do: a male, a father, a Christian, a don in elitist Oxford, but also a socialist, a republican, a holder of an Irish passport? …I don’t think Theory’s exclusionist visions allow very well for my personal paradoxes and striated allegiances.”Indeed they don’t. Reading After Theory reminded me of Mark Bauerlein’s excellent work entitled Literary Criticism: An Autopsy. Both go quite far in exposing what some are calling the decline of literary studies in the West. As Bauerlein has it,”Criticism claims inquiry status, but bases its claim on a routine set of rhetorical-political gestures, not on rules of evidence and inference. No longer do terms certify their wielders’ intellectual skills. No longer do they serve to establish evidence, to advance arguments, to discriminate amongst forms, to establish disciplinary identities. Instead, the usage of critical terms takes the form of a political induction.”With so few pages, Reading After Theory is not intended as a comprehensive course on reading matters. For that, you will need to read the poststructuralists, the feminists, the queer theorists who are cited in this book. Afterwards (or in the meantime), read Cunningham’s “manifesto.” Less a denunciation and more a disclosure of how and why Theory goes spastic and exclusionist: Reading After Theory is a must read for the banner waving, pointy finger crowd (your politically agitated graduate teaching assistant, for example).Other helpful texts to read in concert: Theory’s Empire (where Cunningham has a chapter), In the Reading Gaol: postmodernity, texts, and history (Cunningham’s book from 1994), and After Theory (by Terry Eagleton).

⭐What does Cunningham do well here? – A written style that I have not seen even nearly matched in all my (modest) reading of scholarly texts. His prose is massively exciting, and constantly evasive of closure: not for him is the soundbite. VC also seems to possess sufficient humility to provide references to the works he responds to; this may sound like ludicrous praise, but compare Eagleton’s _After Theory_, where it is hard to see who is being fought against, if anyone. The conclusions he draws are reasonable – not in opposition to “theory,” I believe, as a previous reviewer suggested – and do not over-reach themselves.What not so good? – I’m not sure. Not perfect; who is.

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