Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > English

Why theory?

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Gopa B. Caesar:
You may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is only one thing for it then… to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it. 
   --T.H.White, The Once and Future King


The main reason for studying theory at the same time as literature is that it forces you to deal consciously with the problem of ideologies...There are many truths and the one you will find depends partly on the ideology you start with. [Studying theory] means you can take your own part in the struggles for power between different ideologies. It helps you to discover elements of your own ideology, and understand why you hold certain values unconsciously. It means no authority can impose a truth on you in a dogmatic way--and if some authority does try, you can challenge that truth in a powerful way, by asking what ideology it is based on... Theory is subversive because it puts authority in question. 
    --Bonnycastle, In Search of Authority, p. 34

Gopa B. Caesar:
The term ideology describes the beliefs, attitudes, and habits of feeling which a society inculcates in order to generate an automatic reproduction of its structuring premises. Ideology is what preserves social power in the absence of direct coercion.      (Ryan)

“Until lions tell their stories, tales of hunting will glorify the hunter.”
--African proverb
            truth told by the ones in power

Gopa B. Caesar:
Literary theory can handle Bob Dylan just as well as John Milton.
      -Terry Eagleton

Paradigm shift

in the Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962), Thomas Kuhn demonstrated how all knowledge produced within communities condition the questions which might be posed. This framework of knowledge is termed as paradigm.
Radical reconstitution of facts occur within a community
Copernican shift

Gopa B. Caesar:
The Name Game

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. Genesis 2:19-20.

Gopa B. Caesar:
Structuralist Philosophy

Language and history precede the self. We are born into a world where language is already there and history has already decided how language will be used. 
Before Saussaure, the study of language (philology) was essentially historical, tracing change and development in phonology and semantics within and between languages or groups of languages.
Diachronic linguistics or historical linguistics: Language, seen thus, is a word-heap gradually accumulated over time and its primary function is to refer to things in the world.
In other words, words are mere symbols that correspond to referents.
The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure raised the following two questions that helped the development of structuralism:
--What is the object of linguistic investigation?
--What is the relationship between words and things?

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