Introduction [Style in theory : between literature and philosophy]

Abstract

How should an Introduction to a volume on "style in theory" be framed? Inevitably, its frame, its framing, cannot serve containment. The essays it prefaces will neither capture style, which is famously indefinable and elusive, nor settle theory into any comfort zone, whether between literature and philosophy or elsewhere. The matter is not helped by theory being a discourse and a discipline about which the jury is out, busy debating whether theory is-some would say "was" -a distinct discourse or discipline in the first place. It is uncertain whether the credibility lies with those bystanders testifying that theory is dead or, instead, with those witnesses affirming that it is still very much alive, though perhaps leading a different existence. Not, then, an auspicious start. Let us make it worse, by contending that literary theory has never tended to bother much with style anyway.