On Theoreticians and the practice of theory

‘ Theoreticians have therefore inherited one of the privileges of the aristocracy, which is not to have to compromise themselves by dealing with the concrete, the ordinary, the vulgar.’

‘ To theorize is to define oneself implicitly as an aristocrat of the mind. It consists of placing oneself outside, on the exterior, of adopting an absolute, non-relativistic point of view from which the totality of the world can be contemplated, ordered, and understood. The posture of the theoretician is thus never a neutral attitude; it comes from a desire for domination in the intellectual sphere; its source lies in a need for power in the academic circles.’

‘ Concepts are chosen less because of their methodological pertinence than because of their stylishness, their prestige within the constantly shifting terrain of academic faddishness. They make up a system of recognition in a milieu that has lost its traditional points of reference. They create cabals and develop a common language that speaks only of itself and to itself. Above all, the vulgarization of theory allows a professor to set himself/herself apart from his/her rivals in a super-competitive milieu.’ 

On Literary Theory

‘ Through theory, literary material is transformed from its original concrete state to an abstract status; theory changes its mode of reception. To theorize a work of literature is thus to suppress its violence and its radicality. The text becomes inoffensive as it becomes excessively objectified. This movement of objectification also entails an appropriation of the original material. The primary violence of the original text is conquered; its polysemy becomes reduced to one-dimensionality. The literary text is calibrated according to the demands of theory.’

‘ The theoretical apparatus does not limit itself to neutralize a literary piece, it also deforms it, disfigures it, transforms it into an academic commodity. The artistic work becomes fragmented into elementary particles that the theoretician then reintroduces into a whole whose unity is that of the theory itself. We no longer read our authors; we decompose them so that they can nourish theoretical discourse.’

‘ The academic milieu sees to it that subversive discoveries are trivialized and sterilized, after which they can be safely theorized.’

‘ Productions of the mind now work according to the same principles as commodities; they have, in fact, become commodities.’

‘ Theory is not a collection of concepts; rather, it is a social relationship between professors and students that is mediated by concepts.’ 

On Jacques Derrida

‘This text has been written by an anonymous Stanford instructor in the department of English Literature. Its purpose is to celebrate Jacques Derrida’s second return to Stanford University on April 26 and 27, 2002. No one doubts that Master Jacques will be welcomed to our Alma Mater with the same enthusiastic and religious piety as Queen Victoria received when she visited her colonies in Africa or India during the XIXth Century.’

‘ This success has come from Derrida’s own belief (which is entirely metaphysical) and especially from that of his disciples, that they hold the key to knowledge, the explanation of the lack of being. Yet this medicine, this pharmakon, loses its effectiveness by constantly repeating itself.’

On Graduate Students

‘ I wished a text such as this to be accessible to all graduate and undergraduate students at Stanford. I hope I have not completely failed.’

‘ Graduate students are the passive spectators of this constant mystifying spectacle of theory performed by their "great" professors. They are great as long as they adopt the theoretical posture. Most of the time they follow the example of their mentors, listen to them respectfully, consciously suppressing all critical spirit. Above all, they are at the same time pretentious, ignorant and conformist. The real poverty of their life finds its immediate fantastic compensation in the opium of theory. Incapable of real passions, students seek titillation in the passionless polemics between academic celebrities and their rival theories whose function is to mask real problems by expatiating over false ones.’ 

On American Universities

‘ The University is going to be remade, not reconditioned. All its would-be renovators are powerless to stop this. If these experts do not understand me, so much the better; I certainly have no desire to understand them..’

‘ The whole life of those universities in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of theories. All that once was directly and concretely lived has become mere representation.’

On Doctor Pandarus himself

‘ As a Stanford instructor, I have been too often guilty of the crime of fetishism described in this essay. I am a pimp of the canon as well.’

‘ I for one refuse to play the game of theoretical imposture any longer. To make theory with a gun in hand is my dream. To be something like a robber-baron of the pen, a modern Ulrich von Hutten – that is my picture of a theoretician.’

‘‘ Pray let this text be my redemption.’