Procedures of Resistance

This volume explores the state of literary theory today, decades after the repeatedly proclaimed end of theory. It builds on the idea that theory is historically constituted as it is always becoming something else as Leslie Fiedler claimed in the 1950s, arguing that the historical constitution of theory relies on theorys procedural nature. In order to assess theorys procedural challenge to the fundamental notions that all the disciplines within an episteme have brought to the fore, it addresses these questions: What are the procedures theory has relied on? Are they a secret to its resistance, or is resistance its primary procedure? And if so, a resistance to what? Secondly, if resistance were theorys principal vehicle, at which point does resistance, conceptualized only procedurally (as resisting something, questioning anything, criticizing whatever), display hallmarks of a disciplinary closure that must call for new resistances, and perhapsfor a fundamentally another kind? The book turns to what theory does in order to avoid a partial answer to what theory is.