Ten Lessons in Theory

Acknowledgments Preface: "Something worth reading": Theory and/as the Art of the Sentence Introductory Matters: What Theory Does, Why Theory Lives Lesson 1: "The world must be made to mean"-or, in(tro)ducing the subject of human reality Lesson 2: "Meaning is the polite word for pleasure"-or, how the beast in the nursery learns to read Lesson 3: "Language is by nature fictional"-or, why the word for moonlight can't be moonlight Lesson 4: "Desire must be taken literally"-a few words on death, sex, and interpretation Lesson 5: "You are not yourself"-or, I (think, therefore I) is an other Lesson 6: "This restlessness is us"-or, the least that can be said about Hegel Lesson 7: "There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism"-or, the fates of literary formalism Lesson 8: "The unconscious is structured like a language"-or, invasions of the signifier Lesson 9: "There is nothing outside the text"-or, fear of the proliferation of meaning Lesson 10: "One is not born a woman"-on making the world queerer than ever In the End: Theory is (not-) Forever Reference Matters Index

Calvin Thomas is Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies in English at Georgia State University in Atlanta, USA. He is the author of Masculinity, Psychoanalysis, Straight Queer Theory: Essays on Abjection in Literature, Mass Culture, and Film (2008) and Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line (1996). He is the editor of Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality (2000).

This beautifully written and imaginatively conceived introduction to critical theory is effectively structured around the 'ten lessons' of the title. It offers something genuinely new by focussing in detail on the legacies of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, whose insights, while foundational to much critical theory, are all too often passed over in cursory fashion in other guides. -- Lisa Downing, Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality, University of Birmingham, UK, and author of The Cambridge Introduction to Foucault Ten Lessons in Theory will make you fall in love with theory. And if you already are, it will make you congratulate yourself for having such a splendid beloved. No ordinary introduction to theory, Calvin Thomas's treatise is a dazzling, articulate, impassioned, and wholly convincing argument for why theory matters and should continue to matter. Through a close explication of some of theory's most famous statements, Thomas brings theoretical reasoning to life in ways that keep the reader - even the expert reader - riveted. Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud get the special attention they deserve, and Lacan animates the text the way only Lacan - when well explained - can. The next time a student complains about the 'uselessness' or 'difficulty' of theory, I'll hand them Ten Lessons in Theory. -- Mari Ruti, Professor of Critical Theory, University of Toronto, Canada, and author of The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within Gorgeously written and compellingly argued, Calvin Thomas's Ten Lessons in Theory provides students of all levels with a sparklingly insightful initiation into the full intellectual sweep of what is known as 'theory' in today's humanities. But, in addition to this, Thomas offers even the most seasoned scholars a plethora of creative new perspectives on the past two centuries running from post-Kantian German idealism to the aftermath of 'postmodernism.' Ten Lessons in Theory accomplishes nothing less than a radical