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Times of Theory: On Writing the History of French Theory
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 71, Number 3, July 2010
- pp. 339-361
- 10.1353/jhi.0.0082
- Article
- Additional Information
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"French Theory" is a hard case for historians. Through a discussion of recent historical work, this essay explores the challenge of identifying the contexts, institutional settings and lines of affiliation that produced figures like Barthes, Derrida, Kristeva, Deleuze, and Foucault. Basic to the historicizing effort is the question of our own temporal relationship to Theory. While many treatments of theory are governed by the rhetoric of the "end" of Theory, which would consign it to the past, the essay concludes by examining contrasting images of Theory's "future" through readings of works by Terry Eagleton, Jean-Michel Rabaté, and Slavoj Žižek.