Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 15:11:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Psycho-lit



On Wed, 3 Sep 1997, Louis F Caton wrote:

>   That is, Lacan's efforts to
> "textualize" Freud remains intriguing, useful, and intelligent.  The rub,
> though, is that his approach tends to move away from the political
> interpretations of gender, race, class, and economic issues.  And these
> latter concerns generate cultural studies, which is the preeminent
> lit-crit approach these days.  In fact, deconstructive textuality is
> beginning to widely lose much of its influence (from reports I've heard,
> it has already died in France).

Speaking as a cultural studies "insider", I fear that what is really
happening in this country is that Lacan and Derrida have been partially
assimilated, domesticated, and transformed into more traditional modes
of literary criticism, though these might now  be directed at different
objects than formerly, e.g. popular culture rather than High Culture.

John Guillory gave an interesting talk at GMU last spring on the
move in U.S. criticism from High theory (poststructuralism) to
low theory, which I am afraid much cultural studies is or is becoming.
Low theory is still dependent upon High theory for its terminology and in 
part the construction of its objects, and it still lives off the
distinction between High and low culture, but is rather unaware of these
dependencies, if I understand Guillory correctly.  The refusal of low
theorists to totalize seems in fact a return to older,
empiricist/positivist modes of criticism which have generally prevailed
in U.S. and British universities.  

hh