Term paper free writing

When I think about it, I find the number of theoretical approaches to literary and cultural studies bewildering. The task of familiarizing oneself with theory is daunting, and, unlike a discipline such as chemistry, for example, no one is functioning as a “gatekeeper” to ensure I’m developing specific intellectual proficiencies; no quizzes, no tests. Sure, there are entrance examinations and admissions committees, but when is someone really going to probe my understanding of Derrida? During a job interview? Perhaps. Another question: out of the dazzling constellation of theoretical work that one could study, what decisions are best? What competencies should one develop?

I’m also increasingly interested in the role of theory in my work and toward what end, what purpose, I take up the work of reading and interpreting cultural texts. By theory, I mean an interpretative and/or analytical framework that in some sense mediates our hermeneutic engagement with a text. Theory helps us frame certain questions, to read texts (broadly defined) in specific ways, for specific critical purposes. When I encounter people who are “theory-averse,” I often think about how we always approach a text – in whatever medium, perhaps – with a set of interpretative “keys” through which we “decode,” to use a cryptographic metaphor, textual content for meaning. I think this holds true even when we're barely conscious in front of a television screen!

Theory seems to ask us to foreground, to bring to the surface, the interpretative keys through which we decode texts in order to make meaning out of them. The cryptographic metaphor seems additionally useful when it suggests that the type of message we arrive at is in some way constituted or determined by the key itself. In other words, a psychoanalytic or Marxist analysis will yield different interpretative results; the development of theory seems to want to offer us ever-more-refined and sophisticated interpretative keys through which to interact with cultural artifacts. Whether we use theoretical decoding mechanisms, or literally employ algorithmic decoding mechanisms (via “distant reading” techniques), bodies of texts become almost a form of “standing-reserve” that we can manipulate to produce knowledge demanded by institutional, disciplinary, and commercial imperatives.

I acknowledge that this is perhaps a naïve formulation, but I want to try to understand better my own complex “positionality” as a literary and cultural critic. A question becomes, in what relation do I stand to cultural artifacts that I take as the subject of my analysis? What are the latent ideological or discursive parameters (I use the terms mainly to connote specific arrangements of knowledge) that allow me make statements about texts? Do I hold the pretense, and is it a pretense, that my work has some kind of bearing on specific, verifiable social, political, or ecological situations?

Perhaps one circuit through which I could travel (to use a posthuman image) in order to answer this question is to ground my relationship with theory in what excites me, what I’m interested in as a developing cultural and literary critic. This is what I’ve tried to do, but it seems as if these questions demand further consideration… especially as I decide upon an appropriate theoretical framework for my term paper.