After Theory

This book proposes the necessity of a new critical attitude appropriate to a post-enlightenment social and political condition. Theory - the intellectual and his or her knowledge - has been institutionalised and tamed; the critic interested in praxis must find a new means of establishing an effective intellection. After Theory argues the demand for a post-theoretical or ana-theoretical attitude which will recondition and regenerate critique under the aegis of a philosophical and austere postmarxism. The 'waking' of theory advanced here ranges eclectically over twentieth-century practice in philosophy, literature, painting, music, dance, architecture, film and photography, breaking theory from its institutionalised bonds.