Jonathan Culler: theory, literature and posibility of critique

Abstract

The present paper examines the way in which Jonathan Culler approaches the problem of the possibility of critique as well as the role of literature in fulfilling this possibility in the postmodern context of questioning of truth. Special attention will be paid to the trilogy composed by Literary Theory. A Very Short Introduction (1997), The Literary in Theory (2007), and Theory of the Lyric (2015). In these works, Culler proposes a return to the literary whilst keeping in touch with the contributions of theory. Culler argues for literature’s ability of staying away from the determinants of ideology. In so doing, Culler mobilizes the heritage of aesthetics—the notion of imagination as free play of the determinants of material circumstances and the idea of reconciliation of the particular and the universal—, as well as the legacy of the linguistic turn. The scope of the possibility of critique will be analyzed by comparing the general Derridean textuality subscribed by Culler with the idea of “idéalinguisterie”, a neologism coined by Alain Badiou to refer to the reduction of any reality into discourse. Finally, we will argue that the lack of a strong theory of truth prevents Culler from going beyond the possibility of escaping from ideology.