이론의 탈정치화와 문학연구의 가능성

The De-politicization of Theory and the Possibility of the Literary Studies

  This paper aims to examine the contemporary situation of theory and suggest the possibility of literary studies as an alternative to the situation. Today, the nature of theory seems to be radically changed in that a new relationship is being shaped among the institutional and ideological fields of theory, such as the university, the nation-state, and the capital. Two important phenomena has appeared in relation with the change of theory. First, theory tends to be de-politicized as the field of theory is rapidly incorporated into the cultural logic of global capitalism in which the capital tends to get out of the boundary of the nation-state and take transnational aspects. In modern capitalism, the capital has traditionally collaborated with the nation-state in the work of nation-building and the making of national culture. So the nation-state has given priority to the literary studies for constructing an ideological framework of national culture under the auspices of the capital. In the 1960s, ‘theory’ arose as radical intellectuals" challenge to the nationally privileged conception of the literary studies. So theory took on political and critical meanin gs. But now the nature of theory is newly shaped by the formation of the new relationship between the nation-state and the capital. Second, theory has tendency to be more practical and instrumentalist rather than critical. This tendency is not unrelated with the change of the universities in global capitalism. The universities seems to become the ‘enterprise universities’ dominated by the logic of excellence and efficiency. Even the humanities in them is forced to follow the logic of the capital. The turn of literary into cultural studies partly reflects this situation. In it, theory tends to become more efficient and instrumental. By critically examining this situation of theory, this paper tries to find an alternative thinking for coping with the present of theory in the new possibility of the literary studies.