At lunch with Roberto today, I found myself formulating for the first time why I find most theory boring, if taken apart from any primary texts to which it could be applied. I don’t have a very good handle on it yet, but as a start, the sort of theory that I’m talking about is verbose and usually has schools. It frustrates me when theory is presented not as a lens, a filter, a secondary through which to view what’s Really Important (a text, a piece of music, a work of visual art), but as an end in itself. That’s what I find boring. I also noted that there’s a lot more theory flying around in the field [1] of literature than there is in, say, art or music. Those, the “applied arts,” have more history and less theory.
But historians have their own theoretical approaches to explaining the past, don’t they? So where does history end and theory begin?
[1] For the record, I do find that the academic separation among form[at]s of artistic expression is artificial and mostly nonsensical.
“[1] For the record, I do find that the academic separation among form[at]s of artistic expression is artificial and mostly nonsensical.”
Agreed.
I like convergence in many shapes and forms.
Not that I know how it’s handled academically, but Eh.