WHEN IT COMES TO THEORY, my own reading habits might encompass something as specific as “literary theory,” or “critical theory,” or, perhaps, to make things awkward through excessive specificity, “French theory,” but usually I just say (and think) I like to read theory. “I’m reading theory.” I also think: I am reading this for pleasure and in order to attempt to understand the world. I’m reading this to have better ideas, to be more alert, to—and this part is key—comprehend the invisible machinations of the system—a paranoid thought, but one which I’m not too proud to admit I’ve, more than once, had.

[...] there was a clear demarcation, a dividing line. There was the time before theory, and there was the time after it. In high school, I had read Hannah Arendt; now I read all the names: the two D’s, the two L’s, gentle B, obtuse K, worrisome A, their predecessors H and N, and, above all, F—F with his masterful sentences. Indeed, these names were like swear words, like drugs, like magnetized tokens in a game played by mildly sadistic immortals. This had nothing to do with literature (which I studied). This was where all of the secrets concerning human culture lay. Once I began to read I couldn’t stop, for the simple reason that I had to find out—by which I mean, what had happened.

[...] for Robinson, the humanities are good, but something she refers to as “higher twaddle” or “post-deconstructionism” (another name for the contemporary era, I think) is bad. High-twaddling post-deconstructionism is particularly bad, as Robinson contends, because “we have grave public issues to debate.” I think I almost stood up and cheered with sardonic glee when I first read this.

Robinson is, of course, far from the first to use these late mid-century trends in continental theory to explain why American undergraduates aren’t getting the inexpensive pragmatic educations in the humanities they deserve. Indeed, she’s pretty late to this party. But it is telling to see this notion arise again here, around the question of what is due to an undergraduate who wants to study art rather than, as Sokal wisely framed it, what is due in a peer-reviewed journal. It suggests someone deeply out of touch with the state of contemporary discourse in general and upsettingly in the humanities particularly, in that she has no idea where theory currently makes its living—which is hardly in undergraduate curricula.

To test that theory out, I decided to ask my students at the private college (some seniors) if they knew who Jacques Derrida was.

They, to a person, did not.

The thoughts that have accrued here, about the joys and strangeness of theory, are, therefore, dedicated to them. For they are, as students have always been, the ones who will determine whether academic institutions can contribute anything to the public conversation. This has nothing to do with whether students are “well educated,” meeting standards, or acing tests (or whether they know anything about Derrida, for that matter). Rather, it is about whether they have the tools and material support they need to see connections between their studies and the world, a cliché but not less true for that. Theory clearly continues to play a role in various political and intellectual networks outside the university; perhaps it’s useful for undergrads, too. While I remain a bit agnostic on the “Theory, Ruining Everything or Not?” issue, there are two points on which I am clear: 1., it is a mistake to think that you can replace theory’s strong descriptions of colonialism and late capitalism with vague allusions to said descriptions; and 2., the cost of a B.A. is more distracting and enervating to the citizenry than any form of relativism, narrative or otherwise.