This volume explores the state of literary theory today, decades after the repeatedly proclaimed end of theory. It builds on the idea that theory is historically constituted as it is “always becoming something else” as Leslie Fiedler claimed in the 1950s, arguing that the historical constitution of theory relies on theory’s procedural nature. In order to assess theory’s procedural challenge to the fundamental notions that all the disciplines within an episteme have brought to the fore, it addresses these questions: What (...) are the procedures theory has relied on? Are they a secret to its resistance, or is resistance its primary procedure? And if so, a resistance to what? Secondly, if resistance were theory’s principal vehicle, at which point does resistance, conceptualized only procedurally (as resisting something, questioning anything, criticizing whatever), display hallmarks of a disciplinary closure that must call for new resistances, and perhaps for a fundamentally another kind? The book turns to what theory does in order to avoid a partial answer to what theory is. (shrink)

Ovaj rad razmatra jedan problematičan i osporavan, ali ključan psihoanalitički pojam, pojam Realnog poretka i njegov odnos prema Simboličkome poretku. Nakon pregleda dviju načelnih perspektiva iz kojih se pristupa Realnome , analizira se utjecaj strukturalizma na kasniju Lacanovu fazu, koju dalje razrađuje Žižek. Razmatrajući operativnost pojma Realnog u Žižekovim radovima te njegov političkoetički potencijal, poredak Realnog razumijeva se kao praznina.This paper discusses a highly debatable and problematic, yet a key psychoanalytic concept, the Real, and its relation to the Symbolic order. (...) After examing principally two major approaches to the Real , the influence of structuralism on Lacan’s later work is being analysed. Lacan’s later work is taken up by Žižek, who introduces an operative dimension of the Real and its political and ethical potential. The Real is finally taken as an empty void. (shrink)