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Theory Does Not Exist: Comparative Ancient and Modern Explorations in Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, and Rhetoric is a collection of essays that makes a strong case for a comparative approach to what we term “theory” today. It argues that our disciplinary boundaries create artificial divisions between philosophy, rhetoric, and literature, which historically would not have been recognized and which have come to function as conceptual straitjackets. These essays contend that a concerted engagement with the crucial texts in these debates over the last 2500 years not only offers a better understanding of the issues involved but also provides the necessary political, ethical, and existential tools for fashioning a better and more inclusive life. Theory Does Not Exist offers a full-throated defense of the humanities and crucial counterarguments against the reduction of education to the vocational and the operational.
‘A rich and distinctive collection of related essays by an erudite comparatist who moves with ease between classics and contemporaries. Miller is in a far better position than most to elucidate and critique modern theoretical, critical, and philological engagements of (mainly) the powerful French theorists from the 1960s to today with the likes of Plato and Cicero. With acuity, verve, and wit, Miller explores the precarious boundaries of philosophy, literature, and rhetoric in and through what got to be called theory. The performance of Miller’s text is a compelling, embodied argument of and for the impertinence of such boundaries.’ —Ian Balfour, Professor Emeritus of English and Social & Political Thought, York University, Canada.
Acknowledgments; Theory Does Not Exist: An Introduction; Chapter 1 Debits and Credits or Accounting for My Life: A Defense of Reading and Humanistic Education; Chapter 2 The Trouble with Theory: A Comparatist Manifesto; Chapter 3 Placing the Self in the Field of Truth: Irony and Self-Fashioning in Ancient and Postmodern Rhetorical Theory; Chapter 4 Rhetoric and Deconstruction: Plato, the Sophists, and Philosophy; Chapter 5 The Platonic Remainder: Derrida’s Khôra and the Corpus Platonicum; Chapter 6 Cicero Reads Derrida Reading Cicero: A Politics and a Friendship to Come; Chapter 7 On Borders, Race, and Infinite Hospitality: Foucault, Derrida, and Camus; Chapter 8 Sartre, Politics, and Psychoanalysis: It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Aint Got Das Ding; Chapter 9 Enjoyment beyond the Pleasure Principle: Antigone, Julian of Norwich, and the Use of Pleasures; Chapter 10 Lacan le con: Luce Tells Jacques Off; Chapter 11 The Repeatable and the Unrepeatable: Žižek and the Future of the Humanities, or Assessing Socrates; Chapter 12 Theory Does Not Exist; Index