CLT?

[Terrance Flaherty]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> I'm reminded of something Lord Keynes once said--to the effect that people
> who say they are NOT basing their practice on theory usually
> mean merely that they are basing it on last year's theory.
> 
>                 P.
> 
> On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> > The term Critical Literary Theory used to be used in contrast to
> > critical literary practice but it doesn't seem to be used that much
> > anymore, which is strange since literary theory is still a mildly hot
> > topic in some places. I guess theory is just assumed nowadays--as in
> > Lit-Crit.
> >
> >                       p.
> >
> >

Just thinking this out, but doesn't theory always seeks to,
in Nietzsche's terms,  "create the world in its own image"? 
Kinda like philosophy, maybe?  Its tyranny is to transform
all discussions into discussions of knowledge, even among
those wishing to defend the autonomy and sovereignty of
say,  politics (in Pynchon or elsewhere), which means that
even list members  in search of the political, the
religious, the poetic, in P's art may be seduced into a
discussion of the foundations on which the criteria by which
these topics are known is based. TRP is the turf of theory, 
where the political critic, the religious critic and the
p-lister  cannot but acquiesce to its mode of theory's
argumentation,
if not its actual substantive arguments. No, not right, I
don't want
to say that, but well I'm  still learning this stuff so....

Education, as Adams said goes on and on and
although Lord Keynes might not agree, it  is the only
investment immuned to the law of diminishing return.