Item
The Race for Theory
title
The Race for Theory
viaf
publisher
University of Minnesota Press
publication year
1987
description
Barbara Christian's "The Race for Theory" was published in 1987 in the academic journal Cultural Critique. The essay gave a state-of-the-field of literary criticism and argued that literary theory was becoming increasingly abstract, disconnected, and expressed in mystifying language. Christian tied this phenomenon directly to a rise in critics being trained solely as academics, without any experience as creative writers.[5] She stated that this method of producing theory helped exclude peoples of color, black women, Latin Americans, and Africans from the category of theorists.[6] It also discounted the many variations in language, style, and genre that comprise theory.[7] Christian wrote against the idea that literary theory should be generalizable or universal, instead calling for specific approaches for every text: "So my 'method,' to use a new 'lit. crit' word, is not fixed but relates to what I read and to the historical context of the writers I read and to the many critical activities in which I am engaged, which may or may not involve writing." [8]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Christian#:~:text=Barbara%20Christian's%20%22The%20Race%20for,and%20expressed%20in%20mystifying%20language.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Christian#:~:text=Barbara%20Christian's%20%22The%20Race%20for,and%20expressed%20in%20mystifying%20language.
education level
temporal
reviewer
Katie Arthur
was created by
Christian, Barbara