response to Williams

In his essay, Jeffrey Williams laments the fact that theory in relation to practical criticism is “no longer subordinate to practice but a significant if not the foremost activity, in and of itself” (282). He sees the wave of theory anthologies published in the late 80’s as having “polemical significance and legitimates a certain line of criticism and a particular direction of doing work” (282). The number of new texts formalizes for Williams the movement in literary studies from scholarship to criticism to theory.
For Williams, the formalization of theory is also the death of theory in a way. Being accepted into the academic classroom changes the nature of theory from a critical perspective outside a culture and its power structure to a sort of consumer product, closely related to “institution structures: the university and its exigencies—which includes professional concerns and pedagogical imperatives; the economics of publishing; the confluence of historical factors, such as the shift in the demands for legitimacy in a post-1960’s environment” (285).
Theory has become associated so closely with the theorist who had the principle hand in its development that a sort of personality worship has replaced the active principles involved in the theory. Williams argues that these histories are misleading in another way: they tend to make all theory appear to be the same in relation to importance or sphere of influence.
To compensate for the foreshortening effect, Williams recommends that theory be taught in to “institutional-professional narratives” as well as “historical narratives” in order to construct a temporal and spacial context in which to give more dimension to the theory narrative.