Ten Lessons in Theory

A New Introduction to Theoretical Writing

Calvin Thomas

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781501383946
• eBook ISBN: 9781501383960
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

A thoroughly updated edition of the witty and engaging exploration of the history, application, and tenets of literary theory. The first edition of Ten Lessons served as a "literary" introduction to theoretical writing, a strong set of pedagogical prose poems unpacking Lacanian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, Marxism, cultural studies, feminism, gender studies, and queer theory. Here Calvin Thomas returns to these ten "lessons, " each based on an axiomatic sentence selected from the canons of theory, each exploring the basic assumptions and motivations of theoretical writing. But while every lesson explains the working terms and core tenets of theory, each also attempts to exemplify theory as a "liberatory practice" (bell hooks), to liberate theory as a "practice of creativity" (Foucault) in and of itself. The revised, updated, and expanded second edition, featuring 25% new material, still argues for theoretical writing as a genre of creative writing, a way of engaging in the art of the sentence, the art of making sentences that make trouble, that desire to make radical changes in very fabrication of social reality. Features:
- Critical keywords bolded for easy reference
- Expanded footnotes with detailed discussion of key concepts
- Anti-racist overhaul of each lesson in the wake of Trumpism, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo
- Urgent emphasis on Afropessimism, critical race theory, and other developments in postcolonial Black cultural production
- Designed to cross-reference with:
Adventures in Theory: A Compact Anthology, edited by Calvin Thomas
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, edited by Jeffrey R. Di Leo
The Bloomsbury Handbook to 21st Century Feminist Theory, edited by Robin Truth Goodman

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Praise for the Second Edition
• Praise for the First Edition
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Prologue to the Second Edition: Bad Timing, Good Trouble
• Preface to the Second Edition: “Something (still) worth reading”: Theory and/as the Art of the Sentence
• Introductory Matters: What Theory Does, Why Theory Lives
• Part 1 Antiphysis: Five Lessons in Textual Anthropogenesis
• Lesson One: “The world must be made to mean”—or, in(tro)ducing the subject of human reality
• Lesson Two: “Meaning is the polite word for pleasure”—or, how the beast in the nursery learns to read
• Lesson Three: “Language is by nature fictional”—or, why the word for moonlight can’t be moonlight
• Lesson Four: “Desire must be taken literally”—a few words on death, sex, and interpretation
• Lesson Five: “You are not yourself”—or, I (think, therefore I) is an other
• Part 2 Extimacy: Five Lessons in the Utter Alterity of Absolute Proximity
• Lesson Six: “This restlessness is us”—or, the least that can be said about Hegel
• Lesson Seven: “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism”—or, the fates of literary formalism
• Lesson Eight: “The unconscious is structured like a language”—or, invasions of the signifier
• Lesson Nine: “There is nothing outside the text”—or, fear of the proliferation of meaning
• Lesson Ten: “One is not born a woman”—on making the world queerer than ever
• Reference Matters
• Index
• Copyright