In literary writing form and content are inextricably related. Part of what the story is about lies in how it is told. Literary theory, which offers a way to methodically think about this inextricable relation, is itself for the most part negligent about its own form. The form is given by academic standards: a sophisticated, measured, fully referenced prose whose only convolutions arise from the avoidance of unfounded statements. This tempered prose is a neutral container to be filled with the content of the work being studied: be it poetry, novels, or drama, the academic prose remains the same, just as a glass remains the same be it filled with water, juice, or milk.
However, sometimes a glass is not a glass. Champagne, for instance, is served in flutes. If the sparkling liquid can transform a tube of glass into a homophone of a musical instrument, is it not also possible that there are sparkling words, works of literature, that, if they are poured into academic prose, have the power to transform it into something musical? Something in which language expands and bursts? (Incidentally, both glass and flutes are blown.)
Or, would a literary theory that lives up to its own name (which seems to not merely promise a theory about literature but also a theory that is literary) begin by contemplating its own form? Paying attention to how the literary work that it takes for its content is formed by the theoretical text that it fills? Part of what the story is about would then lie in how it is read. But one could also conceive of a way of doing theory where the theoretical text does not give form to the literary material in the way that a container shapes the substance that fills it, but where form (theoretical text) and content (literary text) meet in something that is more than its parts. Not a form that is filled with content, but the fulfillment of both form and content at once.
But where does this leave the theorist? No longer interpreter, nor yet author, but someone who thinks with, or through, or against the creations of others. An unlimited generosity: to place one’s thought at the service of another. Or a limitless greed: to appropriate the thoughts of another for lack of innate genis. Those who can’t do theorise. In other words: would anyone who is capable of writing literarily choose to do literary theory?
Thoughts fallen by the wayside 