Theory on Theory

This chapter assesses three areas of theoretical work: metatheory, via Jason Demers’ The American Politics of French Theory: Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault in Translation and Galin Tihanov’s The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond; three studies that theorize on the history of theory, John E. Drabinski’s Glissant and the Middle Passage: Philosophy, Beginning, Abyss, John Frow’s On Interpretive Conflict, and Anne Anlin Cheng’s Ornamentalism; and five texts indicative of a surge of interest in the linguisticity of ‘death’, David Wills’ Killing Times: The Temporal Technology of the Death Penalty, Michael Rothberg’s The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, David Simpson’s States of Terror: History, Theory, Literature, and Marc Crépon’s Murderous Consent: On the Accommodation of Violent Death and The Vocation of Writing: Literature, Philosophy, and the Test of Violence.