About the Book
Theory Does Not Exist: Comparative Ancient and Modern Explorations in Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, and Rhetoric is a collection of essays that makes a strong case for a comparative approach to what we term “theory” today. It argues that our disciplinary boundaries create artificial divisions between philosophy, rhetoric, and literature, which historically would not have been recognized and which have come to function as conceptual straitjackets. These essays contend that a concerted engagement with the crucial texts in these debates over the last 2500 years not only offers a better understanding of the issues involved but also provides the necessary political, ethical, and existential tools for fashioning a better and more inclusive life. Theory Does Not Exist offers a full-throated defense of the humanities and crucial counterarguments against the reduction of education to the vocational and the operational.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments; Theory Does Not Exist: An Introduction; Chapter 1 Debits and Credits or Accounting for My Life: A Defense of Reading and Humanistic Education; Chapter 2 The Trouble with Theory: A Comparatist Manifesto; Chapter 3 Placing the Self in the Field of Truth: Irony and Self-Fashioning in Ancient and Postmodern Rhetorical Theory; Chapter 4 Rhetoric and Deconstruction: Plato, the Sophists, and Philosophy; Chapter 5 The Platonic Remainder: Derrida’s Khôra and the Corpus Platonicum; Chapter 6 Cicero Reads Derrida Reading Cicero: A Politics and a Friendship to Come; Chapter 7 On Borders, Race, and Infinite Hospitality: Foucault, Derrida, and Camus; Chapter 8 Sartre, Politics, and Psychoanalysis: It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Aint Got Das Ding; Chapter 9 Enjoyment beyond the Pleasure Principle: Antigone, Julian of Norwich, and the Use of Pleasures; Chapter 10 Lacan le con: Luce Tells Jacques Off; Chapter 11 The Repeatable and the Unrepeatable: Žižek and the Future of the Humanities, or Assessing Socrates; Chapter 12 Theory Does Not Exist; Index
About the Author :
Paul Allen Miller is Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina and Distinguished Guest Professor at Ewha Womans University. He has authored 10 books and numerous articles.
Review :
‘A rich and distinctive collection of related essays by an erudite comparatist who moves with ease between classics and contemporaries. Miller is in a far better position than most to elucidate and critique modern theoretical, critical, and philological engagements of (mainly) the powerful French theorists from the 1960s to today with the likes of Plato and Cicero. With acuity, verve, and wit, Miller explores the precarious boundaries of philosophy, literature, and rhetoric in and through what got to be called theory. The performance of Miller’s text is a compelling, embodied argument of and for the impertinence of such boundaries.’ —Ian Balfour, Professor Emeritus of English and Social & Political Thought, York University, Canada.
‘Paul Allen Miller has changed the humanities by unconventionally bringing together antiquity and modernity, by illustrating not only the deep engagement of postmodern thinkers with the classical past but also how ancient philosophy and poetry preview and enact before our eyes the concerns and ideas of postmodernism. What he has accomplished in his career is prodigious. In the essays gathered here, both rigorous and magnificently adventurous, he integrates the philosophical and the literary in surprising ways, brilliantly demonstrating the political power of critical theoretical thinking in our times.’ —Mario Telò, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, USA.
‘In twelve essays of dazzling erudition, intellectual sophistication, and argumentative panache, Paul Allen Miller makes a timely defense of the humanities as fields of study that investigate the possibility of meaning and the meaning of truth. Theory does not exist as a bounded space of reflection, but as open-ended dialogues between historically and culturally nuanced discourses that shape both our self-awareness and a truly democratic ethos.’ —Zina Giannopoulou, Associate Professor, Classics | European Languages and Studies | Religious Studies, University of California, Irvine, USA.
‘Paul Allen Miller has long been a leading scholar on the relation between literature and theory. Theory Does Not Exist: Comparative Ancient and Modern Explorations in Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, and Rhetoric brings together some of the key questions impacting the humanities today. Whereas a current wing of the humanities is keen on blaming “Theory” for the demise of literary studies (killing the love of literature, instrumentalizing the aesthetic for political reason, and so on), Miller asks us to pause and think, meticulously unpacking the meaning(s) of theory, and putting it in critical dialogue with ancient voices. From Plato to Derrida, theory persists and there is no better scholar than Miller to articulate its afterlives.’ —Zahi Zalloua, Whitman University, USA.
‘Paul Allen Miller argues that the instabilities of language are crucial to the very possibility of meaning. Postmodern thinkers did not produce static “theories,” but were engaged in a dialogue “that constitutes the movement of truth in time.” His essays brilliantly evoke and reaffirm the dynamism of the humanities.’—David Konstan, Professor of Classics, New York University, USA.
‘Like the ghost of Patroclus that appears to Achilles in the Iliad, Miller’s brilliant and compassionate book shows theory’s paradoxical ability to move us beyond the present, however discouraging and grief-ridden it may seem, and to send us forth into the world to come.’ —Charles Platter, Professor of Classics, University of Georgia, USA.
‘Theory Does Not Exist proves that, in ancient and modern worlds, the rhetoric of theory is ever-present. Rather than treating theory as an object or tool of recent or long-standing influence, this illuminating book analyzes and thinks through theory’s shaping, lively power. As such, Paul Allen Miller clarifies how the interpretive practices of the humanities pervades psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and rhetorical studies. Theory Does Not Exist thereby refreshes and expands the idea of the human dimension connecting ancient thinking and contemporary studies. In its light, we can envision a truly liberated world culture of human thought and free expression to come. This book puts the lie to the triumphalism of AI, with a warm smile on its face.’—Daniel O’Hara, Temple University, USA.
‘In Theory Does Not Exist, one of our most eminent theorists, Paul Allen Miller, tells us that theory does not exist. Theory does not exist because it is never an isolated or positive entity. Instead, it is always an intimate other to discourses that have been central to the history of Western thought, whether these are termed philosophy, rhetoric, or science. In insisting on the dimension of rhetoric within any truth claim, while still affirming the importance of truth, Miller articulates a future for the humanities, one in which the quantitative must always be complicated and enriched by the qualitative.’ —Christopher Breu, College of Arts & Sciences, Illinois State University, Illinois State, USA.
