What's So Funny 'bout Literary Theory?

The next time I try to explain, apologize for, defend, rationalize, criticize, or otherwise talk about literary theory (that often misunderstood boogie man of academia) with someone less familiar with its goals, I plan on repeating more or less word-for-word Louis Menand's introduction to his piece on Paul de Man. At any rate, it's better than mumbling something along the lines of:  "Derrida ... class struggle ... subaltern ... objet petit a! Anyway, it's something we should all care about."

"The idea that there is literature, and then there is something that professors do with literature called “theory,” is a little strange. To think about literature is to think theoretically. If you believe that literature is different from other kinds of writing (like philosophy and self-help books), if you have ideas about what’s relevant and what isn’t for understanding it (which class had ownership of the means of production, whether it gives you goose bumps, what color the author painted his toenails), and if you have standards for judging whether it’s great or not so great (a pleasing style or a displeasing politics), then you have a theory of literature. You can’t make much sense of it without one.

It’s the job of people in literature departments to think about these questions, to debate them, and to disseminate their views. This is not arid academicism. It affects the way students will respond to literature for the rest of their lives. But it’s also part of an inquiry into the role of art in human life, the effort to figure out why we make this stuff, what it means, and why we care so much about it. If this is not the most important thing in the world to understand, it is certainly not the least."