Avidly Reads Theory

Avidly Reads

by Jordan Alexander Stein

Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly--an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books--specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author's emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life. This is a story about the emotional lives of ideas.

As an avowed "theory head," Jordan Alexander Stein confronts a contradiction: that the abstract, and often frustrating rigors of theory also produced a sense of pride and identity for him and his friends: an idea of how to be and a way to live. Although Stein explains what theory is, this is not an introduction or a how-to. Organized around five ways that theory makes us feel--silly, stupid, sexy, seething and stuck--Stein travels back to the late nineties to tell a story of coming of age at a particular moment and to measure how that moment lives on now.

152 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2019

Reviews

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book immensely. At ~130 pages it’s fairly compact, and the dorky pop culture tie-ins—the Marxist Yo Momma joke, the equation of Lacan’s career to Mariah Carey’s “I don’t know her” meme, and throwback to Feminist Ryan Gosling—are super endearing. Then again, I’m exactly the type of person who’d paste Adorno quotes on cute cat pics and join a band called the “Heidegrrrls.” (Both are mentioned in the book). Reading this book was an excellent way to wade back into theory after college. Plus, love old internet memes

This is not Sparknotes survey of the major theorists of the 20th century, although Stein does occasionally, for example, summarize what a dialectic is or recapitulate Lacan’s méconnaissance in broad terms. This book is about being moved by theory, being stuck in it, being dependent on it, being failed by it. It can be quite touching—it’s colored by Stein’s personal experiences as a student, and a gay one at that. From his personal anecdotes you get the sense that studying theory is about giving oneself the language to imagine a better world so this better world can come true. This striving is always what attracted me to theory, especially that of Adorno, Butler, Foucault etc (all given considerable space in the book). Highly recommend!

P.S. Yes this review is extra, clown me if you must!

[Katy Wirth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I blindly chose this book at a used bookstore in the philosophy section. I think I chose a book for college/grad students studying theory. The book was really short but I had the advanced copy so it wasn’t the easiest read at times. However, I still enjoyed the modern approach of discussing how theory can make people feel. Some of the memes and jokes that were shown were a little outdated but it made me laugh tbh

[Tony D'agostino]

And what did I finally get in the mail this morning but Jordan Stein's THEORY, a "coffee talk" toned confessional about the pleasures of critical theory as it is read and lived and chatted about, rather than taught, engaged, or debated over, which has had me giggling and smiling and underlining between tissues from afternoon to evening as it belatedly articulates, twenty years after I fell in love with theory in Bella Brodsky's Intro to Literary Theory class, and maybe ten years after I began teaching and writing it myself, *finally* why I read or do theory at all: because theory isn't just funny and interesting itself; rather, when it does what it does, theory helps us to stay fun and interested in a not so fun world/adolescence/job/social situation/political regime/hell dimension. Thank you for this, Jordan. And long live theory.

[J Earl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Avidly Reads Theory by Jordan Alexander Stein is a view of what enjoying theory was for him and his select group of fellow students and ultimately colleagues. This certainly holds a fair amount of truth but is more about people like him than most people who love and do theory.

I was really getting into theory at about the same time as he was, so I saw some of what he describes when he reflects back. I am probably a slightly different case since by the time I started my undergraduate, well, the one that led to my humanities degrees, I was 31 and had real life experiences to tie to the theories. So everyone from Kant and Heidegger through Foucault, Butler, and Deleuze spoke to me both abstractly and concretely. In other words, I was grounded and saw (and still see) these theories as tools for change and understanding, not simply ego fodder like him.

I hope, when I used theory in teaching, I managed to instill something beyond just thinking for thinking sake. I value thinking for thinking sake but if that is all it is, then it is empty. I don't know, nor based on this book do I care, whether he ever actually outgrew his inflated thinking. I didn't see evidence of it here, no matter what he says. But that is a dynamic between a reader and a writer. What might be one reader's reliable writer is another's very unreliable writer. And I think I made my position known.

I would still recommend this to those interested in theory simply as a cautionary tale of how you look when you get an overblown sense of self-importance. And some of the anecdotes were humorous, though most only showed him, again, trying too hard to be what he isn't, engaging.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.

[Lavender · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who's studied literature and had theory as required reading, I loved reading this book. This is something I could've used in college to get me more interested in theory, especially with anecdotes that relate to the real world. I found the way it was structured to be quite ingenious. Before reading this, I'd only encountered theory in a purely academic context. This book goes beyond that.

But if you're not very familiar with theory, this might not be the place to start as it's not very accessible to all readers. It's not a book you can breeze through either, it requires and holds your full attention, making you think about the ideas presented in the book. I also liked that the theories presented are both numerous and diverse. It's not only introduced me to some works that I hadn't heard of before but also made me curious to read them.

[Brandon Desiderio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m bit of a theory n00b, in the sense that I’ve done much of what Stein outlines and calls out: reading out of order, so to speak, of the canons in chronology; this is made messier by my lack of formal training or education in theory, and therefore by my peripatetic journey by my own steering and misadventures.
ALL THAT SAID, this book’s purpose seems to speak to all of us, whether we’re theory-heads with post-postdoctoral acclaim to guide us, or if we’re just a haphazard queer who’s come of age in the post-9/11 necropolis and effortfully avoiding all the difficulty of modern love so painfully singled out by Lacan in that referenced remark towards the end of this book.
It’s an engagingly written read which would make some great but serious winter material to breeze through yet slowly think through (take notes, cuz they’re needed for future reflection!).
To poetry of the future.

[Colin Lavery · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't really think the chapters that were supposedly divided by the major emotions evoked by reading theory were terribly distinct. It felt like they all essentially boiled down to the same conclusion: that people are drawn to reading and studying theory as a way to understand themselves and their environment. Which isn't a terribly profound conclusion.

That said, the anecdotes shared along the way to illustrate this point and discussions of the emotional responses to particular authors and theories felt honest and insightful enough to make this book feel worthwhile.

[Emily Carlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Randomly picked this up bc of a blurb on the back from trusted writer Naomi Fry....I’ll continue to trust her blurbs bc this was a fun read !

A brief romp through Stein’s personal history w/ theory; how theory felt to learn and to use (or to try to learn and try to use) during their college/grad years in the nineties.

I want a book like this from every academic from every discipline...about the feelings and social realities that intersect and shape intellectual lives.

Though I suppose not all fields would lend themselves as easily as theory to such a pursuit...

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps because Stein and I both came of age at about the same moment in the context of critical theory, and perhaps because I am teaching that course now, the affects he delineates here are achingly familiar. While it’s a book about theory, it’s also a book about what it feels like to become an intellectual in a dizzying world that often seems to defy attempts to make any intellectual sense of it at all. Loved it.

[Dora Okeyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know that this much is true, I loved reading this book and wonder what it says about me for I have never been swayed by Kant, but quickly found myself drawn to reading "The History of Sexuality" by Michael Foucault.
It's refreshing how the author explores theory and in so doing delves into history and culture and how this in essence shapes our lives.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

[J.D. DeHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Theory? Fun? Yes affirms author Jordan Alexander Stein. Avidly Reads Theory approaches complex ideas in chewable (and understandable) pieces...and even manages to entertain in doing so. I would gladly add this book to the recommended/required reading list for any general theory course. Useful and informative.

[Travis Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This text gets so close to being a theory for the people manifesto, but I think it just gets too cozy with the traditions of academia to truly get there. Overall though, it has some enlightening moments, if you can get through some of the more unsettling and hardly appropriate points made from Stein's vantage point as a male and a white person.

[Megna Sivakumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this as a supplement to an english class on critical theory. a truly phenomenal work; it was emotionally grounded and made me feel so seen as i grappled with this course and some pretty nonsensical theory.

[crunching numbers · Rating 1 out of 5]

:/

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started strong, relatable, and interesting. Got a touch weird and superfluous

[Pepe · Rating 4 out of 5]

everyone hates Kant & misunderstands MacKinnon. An easy reading, but a very sharp commentary.