Traveling Theories, Traveling Theorists.

Description

Theory, by definition, is more than a local act. While it isenmeshed in specific traditions and locales, and while it is marked bythe site and condition of its production, its purview is extensive,generalizing, comparative. If theories no longer totalize, they do travel.Indeed, in their diverse rootings and uprootings, theories are constantlytranslated, appropriated, contested, grafted. Theory travels; so dotheorists. In the late twentieth century the producers and audiences oftheory can no longer be situated in a more-or-less stable map of "FirstWorld" and "Third World" places. This very mobility and movementgives rise to unresolved questions, in need of systematic examination.How can we conceive of the complex predicaments of theories andtheorists both in terms of location (in travel and interculturaltranslation) and in terms of the accountability and self-positioning ofthe theorist? What conditions govern the export and import of theoriesin changing post- and neo-colonial situations? What are the crucialinequalities of power and experience? How do theorists("cosmopolitan,""postcolonial,""postmodern,""engaged," etc.) negotiatethe assymetries, discrepancies in their travel among different audiences,languages, histories? What counts as "theory" in specific traditions?What are its "proper" idioms? Who counts as a "theorist?"These are some of the questions that inspired a conference,"Predicaments of Theory" (February 11-12, 1989) organized by theGroup for the Critical Study of Colonial Discourse and the Center forCultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The paperscollected here originated in that gathering.