ABSTRACT
Theory is needed to block the reproduction of banality, and thereby, hopefully, open new possibilities for thinking and doing. The ambiguities of the word ‘offence’, caught between high and low, threat and annoyance, chime with the vacillating status of ‘Theory’ itself in the eyes of critics – both dangerous and useless; a joke and a menace; harmless and terrifying. There are many differences among the theories and theorists that collect under the singularity of ‘Theory’. Despite the declarative syntax of the foregoing paragraphs, definition is problematic, if not downright disreputable, as far as postfoundational theories are concerned. The impossibility of defining theories, and knowing the precise difference between one and another, is not therefore a fatal error but an unavoidable issue. Policy makers and practitioners are put off by Theory’s tendency to complicate, its vaunted uncertainty, and its fraught entanglement with the ‘practice’ that it is supposed either to explain or to serve.
