The Death of Theory

There used to be meme pages dedicated to Bataille.

Do you remember when people wouldn’t shut up about Mark Fisher, Nick Land, and Accelerationism? Do you remember Reza Negarestani? There used to be meme pages dedicated to Bataille. It’s all embarrassing now, but this period of discourse was foundational. It must have hit its peak during the early pandemic, because I remember what I did every day: I would awake at noon or past noon, I would roll a joint, I would walk down to the riverside where I could smoke, I would write stream-of-consciousness poetry about birds and trees (everyone must write their “bird poems” eventually) while sitting on a log. I would return and do my readings for uni as the sun set.

At one point my 7-person flat was in isolation. We could access the kitchen, and so could access the balcony (which was just our 3^rd floor window opening up onto the quad, where we could see people come and go and sit down to smoke and we could yell conversations back and forth from up and down below), and every midnight, so as not to bother my flatmates, I would roll a joint in my room, take it to the balcony, listen to a new album (The Holy Bible – Manic Street Preachers, Crazy Rhythms – The Feelies, Low – David Bowie), and read Nietzsche and Philosophy, The Accursed Share, Diary of an English Opium-Eater (my drug binges began in earnest with Borges, right at the start of the pandemic, and Borges rightly admired De Quincey), and I experienced raptures I had never felt, so much so that I mistook these highs for the effects of the drugs, and I continued to abuse my body for many years, thinking I was only paying a fair price for these intense delights.

Nowadays, theory is unfashionable. Thank God. You should know this: whenever someone expresses disdain for something, it’s because they were doing that same thing two years ago. Trends come and go, and reading certain books, reading at all, can be a trend. Intellectual desires blossom as specificities of the season. We’re afflicted with them, fertilised by the general state of the discourse, and a deeper sort of discursive necessity, if we imagine that history has its needs as we have our occasional cravings, and these must be satisfied one way or another for the day to go on. A year or so back, I got into plant phenomenology, lichen studies, “the animal turn”. I read a great deal of interesting stuff and produced an article or two before my interest waned. And my interest did wane: I realised it was a bit silly, that this was another attempt by academics to grab at something relevant while meaning dried up, and, as enthusiastic, listless graduates do, I continued to peruse the phonebook of outdated trends, in order to make them my own. I got into Kabbalah for a while, and Renaissance alchemy, many years ago I was a pataphysician, which was before I was a surrealist. When craving particular knowledge it is important that you imbibe as much as you can while the desire remains, since in doing so you accumulate a wealth of layers, like soil piled on soil, producing over time fossilized nuggets, which you can draw up and use whenever. The theory trend was such an intellectual trend writ large, the behemoth that gave birth to the paltry micro-trends of today: “thought girl”, “tpot”, “Hegelian e-girls”, etc. Some people, perhaps, got something out of it.

The Years of Theory

From around 2016 to perhaps two years ago, the left was preoccupied with theory, and this became a cultural touchstone. Capitalism, at this time, was Late Stage, which it no longer is. “Read theory” was the imperative of the day. The object of this imperative became increasingly abstruse, since everyone likes to distinguish themselves. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism might have had relevant political insights. I’m not quite sure what Bataille’s L’Anus Solaire had to do with anything. This period ended with the intrusion of real geopolitical crises: Ukraine and Palestine. These crises coincided with the defeat of the progressive resurgence of the 2010s. It is blasé to order your compatriots to “read theory” now, because the socialists lost any and all domestic struggles, and war and genocide turn abstraction into a pathetic sort of thing.

I take things like this seriously. Movements and trends stamp themselves on my soul. I did a Classics degree because of a “Start with the Greeks” chart. So, naturally, I founded a Socialist Reading Group. There was a real appeal to theory and to being a well-read Marxist. What did I get out of it? It was a fun way to meet with people who shared my ideas. It also offered an escape from the stifling university canon. I spent three years reading Analytic “Philosophy”, I deserved a side hustle. As a bonus, Paulo Freire, Frantz Fanon, Walter Benjamin, and Henri Lefebvre intersected nicely with what I was actually meant to be studying. My readings on the side deepened my understanding of the ancient world. My eccentric interpretations of Greek literature, which are now firmly entrenched and dear to me, came only from reading the Oresteia at the same time as On the Concept of History, Lykophron’s Alexandra at the same time as Kojève. What theory offers, which academic philosophy rarely does, is a plug-and-play approach with whatever else you are doing. It provides tools for self-narrativizing, for approaching texts, and for analysing why your friends hate you. I do not agree with those who decry the predominance of theory over the original text in interpretation. This is not the 1950s. No one is trying to take your cold chicken dinner Shakespeare interpretation from you. When philosophy, literature, and experience come together, a mysterious chemical reaction occurs. I don’t think we understand this process well. We are drawn into revelation, the topology of our life collapses, the layers are ecstatically drawn together, the bubble of knowledge and life (one is inside, one is film) is ever slightly expanded.

Cheval blanc monté, Étienne-Jules Marey