Jonathan D. Culler > Quotes

“. . . literature is not frivolous pseudo-statements but takes its place among the acts of language that transform the world, bringing into being the things that they name.”
― Jonathan Culler

“La teoría intimida. Una de las características más descorazonadoras de la teoría actual es que no tiene fin. No es algo que se pueda llegar a dominar, no es un grupo cerrado de textos que se puedan aprender para "saber teoría". Es un muestrario inconexo de escritos que crece sin cesar, pues tanto los recién llegados como los veteranos critican las directrices anteriores defendiendo las contribuciones teóricas de nuevos autores o redescubriendo autores anteriores que en su momento habían quedado al margen. En este escenario intimidador, el protagonismo pasa sin cesar a mano de nuevos autores: "¿Cómo? ¡No has leído a Lacan! ¿Y cómo pretendes hablar de poesía sin tener en cuenta el estadio del espejo en la constitución del sujeto?", o bien, "¿Cómo puedes escribir sobre la novela victoriana sin recurrir a la explicación foucaultiana del despliegue de la sexualidad y la histerización del cuerpo de la mujer sin olvidar la demostración que hizo Gayatri Spivak de cómo afecta el colonialismo a la construcción del sujeto de la metrópolis?". Actualmente, la teoría es como una sentencia diabólica que condena a leer obras difíciles de campos no familiares, en la que el completar una tarea no supone un respiro sino una nueva asignatura pendiente: "¿Spivak? Claro, pero... ¿has leído la crítica que le hizo Benita Parry, y la respuesta posterior de Spivak?"
La imposibilidad de dominarla es una de las causas más importantes de la resistencia a la teoría. No importa cuánto creas saber; nunca sabrás con certeza si "tienes que leer" a Jean Baudrillard, Mijail Bajtin, Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, C. L. R. James, Melanie Klein o Julia Kristeva o bien si puedes olvidarlos "sin peligro". (Dependerá, claro, de quién seas tú y de quién quieras ser.) Gran parte de la hostilidad contra la teoría proviene sin duda de que admitir su importancia es comprometerse sin término límite a quedar en una posición en la que siempre habrá cosas importantes que no sepamos. Pero eso es señal de que estamos vivos.”
― Jonathan Culler

“Perhaps literature is like weed.”
― Jonathan D. Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“Theory is driven by the impossible desire to step outside your own thought, both to place it and to understand it, and also by a desire for change – this is a possible desire – both in the world your thought engages and in the ways of your own thought, which always could be sharper, more knowledgeable and capacious, more self-reflecting.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“You can be involved with theory; you can teach or study theory; you can hate theory or be afraid of it. None of this, though, helps much to understand what theory is.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“Communication depends on the basic convention that participants are cooperating with one another and that, therefore, what one person says to the other is likely to be relevant.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“The idea of literary competence focuses attention on the implicit knowledge that readers (and writers) bring to their encounters with texts: what sort of procedures do readers follow in responding to works as they do? What sort of assumptions must be in place to account for their reactions and interpretations? Thinking about readers and the way they make sense of literature has led to what has been called ‘reader-response criticism’, which claims that the meaning of the text is the experience of the reader (an experience that includes hesitations, conjectures, and self-corrections). If a literary work is conceived as a succession of actions upon the understanding of a reader, then an interpretation of the work can be a story of that encounter, with its ups and downs: various conventions or expectations are brought into play, connections are posited, and expectations defeated or confirmed. To interpret a work is to tell a story of reading.”
― Jonathan D. Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“But is it a coincidence that just when women, blacks, Chicanos, gays, lesbians, and members of other groups marginalized in American and Western European societies began to assert an identity, to present themselves as subjects, white male theory argues that there is no subject, or rather that the subject is a discursive effect and product of a misrecognition? Having denigrated other races for years, whites realize--just when other races are developing racial identity and racial pride--that race is a delusive trope, a dangerous fiction. [....] It may also be true, however, that reflection on the imperfect constructedness of identity does not so much counter the claim to identity by historically oppressed groups as encourage the postulation of identities by emphasizing that the identities hitherto foisted on groups were not natural and inevitable. If so, then the critique of identity may be less a ploy of domination than a contribution to the politicization of identity and a contribution also to possibilities of resistance to the identities leaders construct for those they would lead.”
― Jonathan Culler

“The linguistic code is a theory of the world. Different”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“This view of literature as an aesthetic object that could make us ‘better people’ is linked to a certain idea of the subject, to what theorists have come to call ‘the liberal subject’, the individual defined not by a social situation and interests but by an individual subjectivity (rationality and morality) conceived as essentially free of social determinants.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“وقتی مطالعات فرهنگی بر ادبیات انگِ نخبه‌گرایی می‌زند، متمایز کردنِ آن از بی‌فرهنگیِ بورژوایی که سنت دیرپای ملی است دشوار می‌شود. در ایالات متحد، دوری جستن از فرهنگ سطح بالا و مطالعه‌ی فرهنگ عامه بیش از آنکه حرکتی از نظر سیاسی رادیکال یا نشانه‌ی مقاومت باشد، آکادمیک کردن فرهنگ توده است. در مطالعات فرهنگی در آمریکا از آن پیوند با جنبشهای سیاسی که به مطالعات فرهنگی در بریتانیا نیرو می‌بخشیده است چندان اثری نمی‌یابیم، و می‌توان آن را عمدتاً بررسیِ غنی و میان رشته‌ای اما کماکان آکادمیکِ رویه‌های فرهنگی و بازنمود فرهنگی دانست. مطالعات فرهنگی «قرار است» رادیکال باشد، اما تصور وجودِ تقابل بین مطالعات فرهنگی‌ای فعال و مطالعات ادبی‌ای انفعالی شاید خوش‌خیالی باشد.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“History functions as the opposite of nature. Cultures try to pass off as natural features of the human condition arrangements and practices that are in fact historical, the result of historical forces and interests.”
― Jonathan Culler