The Resistance to Theory

"The Resistance to Theory" is an essay by Paul de Man (1919–1983), a renowned literary critic and theorist belonging to the Yale School of Deconstruction, which appeared in Yale French Studies 63 (1982) and was widely anthologized. The essay later became part of the book by the same name. The essay remains a key statement in poststructuralist approaches to literary studies.

Committee on the Research Activities

In the essay's introduction Paul de Man explains that “The Resistance to Theory” was written at the request of the Committee on the Research Activities of the Modern Language Association as a contribution to a collective volume entitled Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures. The MLA, however, rejected it. As de Man admits, his claim that "the main theoretical interest of literary theory consists in the impossibility of its definition" explains in large part the reasons for its rejection. Although de Man does not date the essay in his description of the original commission, it would appear to have been written in 1980.

Content

But keeping in view with the proposal, the essay discusses the rise of literary theory in America in the twentieth century and the challenges it faces. De Man points out that, "literary theory can be said to come into being when the approach to literary texts is no longer based on non-linguistic, that is to say historical and aesthetic considerations." This introduction of linguistic and semiotic terminology into literary studies, according to de Man, gives the language, "considerable freedom from referential restraint" and makes it "epistemologically highly suspect and volatile." Drawing on the ideas of Saussure and Nietzsche, de Man points out that the rhetorical and tropological dimension of language makes it an unreliable medium for the communication of truths. Literary language is predominantly rhetorical and figurative.