ABSTRACT
This essay explores some of the differences between the way theory has been assimilated into the field of modern Chinese literary studies in North America since the early 1990s and the way theory emerged elsewhere in North American literary studies. Drawing on the work of both Samuel Weber and Marc Redfield, the author shows that as early as the 1970s theory provoked a sustained analysis of the institution of modern criticism in the post-war university, an analysis largely absent in the field's sixty year history. In taking up the question of the field's account of its ongoing isolation from much of the rest of the literary academy, this essay argues that the specific ways theory has been mobilized in the field are largely a function of their separation from two specific problematics that were central to theory's emergence, namely romanticism and aesthetic discourse. Following Redfield's recent study of the “discourse of theory” in the North American university, the author asks the question as to why the divisions and theoretical polemics that have characterized the relationship between literary studies and cultural studies since the 1990s never appeared in the field. Finally, this essay shows via Weber that what in North America is called theory should be examined in relation to the transformation in the regime of knowledge in the sciences that began in the late 19th century, suggesting that attention to the affinities between contemporary theory and what Gaston Bachelard termed the “new scientific spirit” may help us better appreciate how figures such as Lu Xun in the early 20th century confronted many of the complex issues and problems that theory continues to pose for us today.
