{"id":1870,"date":"2026-09-06T07:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T07:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1870"},"modified":"2026-09-06T07:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T07:09:11","slug":"the-trouble-with-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1870","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Trouble\u2019 With Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

My old friend Jeremy Black, the dazzlingly prolific English historian, has an\u00a0excellent piece in this month\u2019s edition of The Critic <\/em>on the history profession\u2019s newfound infatuation with \u201ctheory.\u201d In some ways, as Black notes, the interest in theory is a sort of revival. \u201cTheory\u201d was all the rage in the 1980s and 1990s, not only in history but throughout the humanities.<\/p>\n

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As I have noted elsewhere, if there were a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Words, \u201ctheory\u201d would long ago have been granted protected status as an Abused Noun. Academics wishing to use the word would be required to apply for a special license, submit character references from three persons never convicted of exposure to graduate-school education, and contribute to a fund for other unfortunate words. The case of \u201ctheory\u201d is especially sad, because in it we have an example of serial abuse: first by the professors of literature, then the professors of history, \u201ccultural studies,\u201d and kindred interdisciplinary redoubts, and lately by art historians.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheory\u201d has a complicated history. It derives from a Greek word meaning \u201cto look at, behold.\u201d \u201cTheory\u201d in this sense implies a certain passivity on the part of the beholder: a theory gave us access not to something we made but to something we received when properly attentive. Today, however, we use \u201ctheory\u201d in a sense close to the opposite of this etymological meaning. A \u201ctheory\u201d nowadays is not so much what we see or behold as a mental scaffolding we imagine or project in order to account for what we see or behold. In short, theory, which once betokened an attunement or congruence with reality, now signifies a willful imposition.<\/p>\n

Still, in normal parlance, \u201ctheory\u201d remains a perfectly respectable word. It has plenty of legitimate colloquial uses: \u201cI have a theory about that,\u201d someone says, meaning that he has an idea about what happened and why. We also regularly distinguish between theory\u2014the way things are supposed to happen\u2014and practice\u2014the way they in fact do happen (the idea being that there is often a disjunction between the two). \u201cThat\u2019s all very well in theory,\u201d you say, meaning that in practice things are likely to turn out rather differently.<\/p>\n

We also use \u201ctheory\u201d in a more formal sense, meaning, as The American Heritage Dictionary<\/em> explains:<\/p>\n

Systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances, esp. a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheory\u201d in this sense is part of the drama of rational inquiry. A theory is not just idle speculation but a carefully formulated set of hypotheses offered as a possible explanation of something. A theory has a tentative or adventurous side\u2014it advances beyond the facts in its effort to explain them\u2014but its legitimacy is measured primarily by its honesty and allegiance to the truth.<\/p>\n

The truth? You can almost feel the shudder of horror cascading through the professoriate: imagine someone so na\u00efve as to speak of \u201cthe truth\u201d! They don\u2019t do truth in the fashionable precincts of the academy today. They do \u201ctheory.\u201d You even encounter people who use \u201ctheorize\u201d as a transitive verb: \u201cSo-and-so theorizes the idea of freedom\u201d (or art, nature, cookery, whatever), meaning that So-and-so embellishes whatever it is with a skein of owlish verbal irrelevancies. \u201cTruth\u201d is rarely spoken of, and then only in deprecatory scare quotes.<\/p>\n

Have you noticed how widespread the use of those instruments of epistemic deflation is? I have mentioned it in this column previously. The practice is positively epidemic. And why not? A simpler method of neutralizing or ironizing meaning can hardly be imagined. Never speak of virtue when you can say \u201cvirtue\u201d; a bit of reasoning is not logical, but only \u201clogical\u201d; the procedure in question is not sound, but merely \u201csound.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so on. It works with words of cognitive failure, too: don\u2019t say that an argument is refuted, only that it is \u201crefuted.\u201d To appreciate what is at stake, consider the difference between fresh fish and \u201cfresh\u201d fish: the difference is difficult to define, perhaps, but easy to smell. The marvelous thing about this use of scare quotes is that it allows you to insinuate doubt without positively asserting anything at all. You don\u2019t declare that \u201cX\u201d is not true, merely that \u201cX is \u2018true.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTheory\u201d in the fashionable new sense is scarcely imaginable without such weapons of semantic sabotage. And this was only to be expected. For theory as practiced in the academy today is primarily an instrument of politics, not inquiry. It is meant to insinuate a subplot of unacknowledged motives behind every declaration. When you hear\u2014as you are always hearing these days\u2014someone say that truth is \u201csocially constructed,\u201d that \u201cknowledge is a function of power,\u201d etc., it is a good bet that in the next sentence he is going to offer you a dollop of \u201ctheory\u201d to support his claim.<\/p>\n

What sort of theory? People who go in for this sort of thing are fond of asserting that \u201ceverything is political,\u201d meaning that the ideal of disinterested inquiry is little more than a charade. How could it be otherwise, they argue, since all our acts are by definition our acts, i.e., self-interested?<\/p>\n

Thinkers at least as far back as\u00a0Joseph Bishop Butler (1692\u20131752) have exposed the confusion that lies behind the \u201cstrange affection in many people of explaining away all particular affections and representing the whole of life as nothing but one continued exercise in self-love.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are three main sources feeding the confusion. The emotional or characterological source is programmatic cynicism. The notion that selfishness is universal and unremitting is as much a matter of temperament as conviction. The idea appeals especially to those clever people who view every ideal as a blind and every value as a rationalization of some interest.<\/p>\n

The second source of the confusion is a common but fatal logical solecism, namely the tendency to milk tautological premises for real-life conclusions. The Australian philosopher David Stove (1927\u20131994) drew on Butler\u2019s classic argument when he pointed out that the \u201ceverything-is-political, all-acts-are-self-interested\u201d attitude, though positively de rigueur among trendy academics today, rests on this fundamental logical mistake. As\u00a0Stove observes,<\/p>\n

It plainly does not follow from the tautology, \u201cNo man can act intentionally except from some interest which he has,\u201d that \u201cNo man can act intentionally except from motives of self-interest.\u201d That inference belongs to exactly the same class as the atrocious (though ever popular) inference from \u201cWhatever will be, will be,\u201d to \u201cAll human effort is ineffectual.\u201d . . . If you set out from a tautological premise you cannot validly infer from it any conclusion which is not itself tautological.<\/p>\n

The possible objects of a man\u2019s interests, motives, or desires, are inexhaustibly various. Among them may be, to wreck revenge on a particular man, to gain the love of a particular woman, to serve his country, to experience the love of God, to understand contemporary physics . . . the list is endless. But it can perfectly well happen, and often does happen, that a man pursues one or more of these \u201cparticular\u201d passions without regard to his own interests.<\/p>\n

As Butler himself put it, \u201cIt is not because we love ourselves that we find delight in such and such objects, but because we have particular affections towards them. . . . Everything is what it is, and not another thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third main source of the conviction that \u201ceverything is political\u201d and that truth is culpably underdressed unless it appears in deflationary scare quotes is that curiously popular form of epistemological gloominess that Stove calls \u201ccognitive Calvinism.\u201d \u201cCalvinists,\u201d\u00a0Stove observes,<\/p>\n

believe in the total depravity of human nature: if an impulse is one of ours, it is bad, because it is one of ours. The argument,<\/p>\n

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Our knowledge is our knowledge,<\/p>\n

So,<\/p>\n

It is not knowledge of real things,<\/p>\n

could seem valid only to someone who felt that any knowledge we have could not be the real thing, because we have it.<\/p>\n

Stove\u2019s criticisms of \u201ccognitive Calvinism\u201d and the arguments supporting it occur in an essay attacking idealism. But it is important to note that the arguments he attacks are by no means propounded only by idealists. Indeed, in one version or another, such reasoning, as Stove points out, \u201cis common to all the main varieties of cognophobe who now make up the staff of the faculties of arts in Western universities; and none of these is idealistic, even by implication.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an example, let me turn to Keith Moxey, for many years a professor of art history at Barnard College. As I noted when\u00a0I first wrote about Professor Moxey, he is only a minor star in the academic firmament. But he glows with a wholly characteristic\u2014not to say utterly predictable\u2014light. His books are a compendium of fashionable academic clich\u00e9s both in attitude (polysyllabic leftism) and in argument (off-the-rack items from the lexicon of deconstruction).<\/p>\n

In short, Professor Moxey is a sort of five-and-dime deconstructionist, recapitulating all the standard postmodernist arguments as a music box plays its repertoire of tunes: mechanically, with a distinct lack of sonority, but also with no wrong notes. Which is why his work provides such a good introduction to the temperament and the intellectual weather of contemporary art history: there are no surprises\u2014just pages and pages of received ideas, neatly arranged, undisturbed by anything resembling a doubt, scruple, or hesitation.<\/p>\n

Especially pertinent is Professor Moxey\u2019s book\u00a0The Practice of Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History\u00a0(1994). Professor Moxey has two basic contentions in this book. You can already guess what they are. Yes: one is that no \u201ccultural practice\u201d\u2014the writing of history, for example\u2014can be understood \u201cwithout reference to theory.\u201d And the second is that \u201cAll cultural practice is shaped by political considerations.\u201d It\u2019s not a matter of \u201cWhere have you heard that before?\u201d but \u201cWhere have you not?\u201d<\/p>\n

People who are new to this mode of argument might be tempted to ask, with respect to the first contention, precisely what theory is necessary to understand, say, Caesar\u2019s commentaries on the war in Gaul or Gibbon\u2019s\u00a0Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em>. Those are indubitably examples of \u201ccultural practice\u201d (let\u2019s cut to the chase and call it by its old name, \u201chistory\u201d). People have been reading and understanding Caesar and Gibbon (for example) for many, many years without even a soup\u00e7on of theory. Or have they? Perhaps people have been deluded from time immemorial and only now, fifteen minutes ago when the Age of Theory dawned, have they come to understand these (and all other) authors? What do you think?<\/p>\n

Professor Moxey\u2019s book raises other questions, too. For example, with respect to the second contention, one might ask exactly what \u201cpolitical considerations\u201d impinge upon the study of calculus, say, or the writing of lyric poetry, or, indeed, the painting or interpretation of pictures? Between us, Professor Moxey has no good answers to these embarrassing questions\u2014which is not surprising because there are no good answers to them. But even to ask such questions shows that you are insufficiently attuned to the theoretical\u00a0Weltanschauung<\/em> Professor Moxey recommends. Read on, and you will see how pointless it is to object. \u201cDerrida has shown\u201d\u2014doesn\u2019t your heart leap up at that phrase?\u2014<\/p>\n

Derrida has shown that language is incapable of conveying the type of meaning that is usually ascribed to historical narratives. According to Derrida, linguistic signs are arbitrary constructs whose significance is impermanent and unstable. Language functions to suggest an absent presence of meaning. That is, the meanings of linguistic representations are always illusory, since they depend on metaphysical claims that cannot be substantiated.<\/p>\n

It would make an instructive\u2014but also a very long\u2014parlor game to enumerate all the things that have gone wrong in these few sentences. One might begin by asking in what sense Derrida can be said to have \u201cshown\u201d anything about the subject at hand. \u201cArgued,\u201d possibly; \u201ccontended,\u201d no doubt. But \u201cshown\u201d? That word carries with it an implication of cognitive success. But has Derrida succeeded in demonstrating that \u201clanguage is incapable of conveying the type of meaning that is usually ascribed to historical narratives\u201d?<\/p>\n

Think about that. The \u201ctype of meaning . . . usually ascribed to historical narratives\u201d is contingent truth, as in the statement \u201cCaesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C.\u201d If Professor Moxey were right, then Derrida would have shown that such statements are \u201carbitrary constructs.\u201d But of course he showed no such thing, for the simple reason that such statements are not \u201carbitrary constructs\u201d but true or false depending upon the facts of the case. (Here\u2019s another \u201clinguistic sign\u201d: \u201cThis bottle contains aspirin.\u201d What if it contained arsenic instead? If Derrida had really shown that linguistic signs were \u201carbitrary constructs,\u201d he could have no grounds to complain about false advertising when he swallowed the contents.) How about the assertion that \u201cthe meanings of linguistic representations are always illusory\u201d? Either it is false, in which case we can have done with it, or it is true\u2014in which case it is, once again, false, because it contradicts itself. Oh dear.<\/p>\n

Professor Moxey believes that he can sidestep such difficulties (actually, they are refutations, but let that pass) by the clever expedient of giving up on truth.<\/p>\n

Only if it is possible to get it right, to find the \u201ctruth,\u201d can we have criteria by which to choose between alternative interpretations. If we claim there is no truth to be found, then we cannot be accused of not having a means of establishing what the truth might be.<\/p>\n

But you might, Professor, be open to other accusations. We\u2019ve already touched on the issue of self-contradiction. Take the claim \u201cthere is no truth to be found\u201d\u2014is that statement true? We\u2019ve seen what follows if it is. And you might also, Professor, be open to the accusation of disingenuousness, preening self-importance, and a settled unwillingness to be (in Hume\u2019s phrase) a \u201ccandid reasoner.\u201d For if you were right, there could be no reason to prefer your interpretation over anyone else\u2019s since\u00a0ex hypothesi<\/em>\u00a0there are no criteria \u201cby which to choose\u201d one interpretation over another. (It is also worth pointing out that criteria needn\u2019t be exhaustive to be useful: we often can discriminate between better and worse descriptions of something without necessarily having access to a perfect description.)<\/p>\n

Of course, Professor Moxey doesn\u2019t really believe that there are no criteria to which we can appeal in preferring one description to another. He clearly has his preferences, and he has easily enumerated reasons for his preferences. It\u2019s just that they are not intellectual or aesthetic reasons. Like his masters Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, Professor Moxey pretends that basic mental hygiene\u2014beginning with a respect for evidence and sound reasoning\u2014is unimportant. What matters is politics\u2014plus a measure of self-aggrandizement\u2014not truth. So his \u201ccriteria\u201d are simply political desiderata. \u201cThe abandonment of an epistemological foundation for art history,\u201d he writes, means that \u201chistorical arguments will be evaluated according to how well they coincide with our political convictions and cultural attitudes.\u201d How about his students\u2019 art history papers? Were they, too, \u201cevaluated according to how well they coincide\u201d with Professor Moxey\u2019s \u201cpolitical convictions and cultural attitudes\u201d? How could it be otherwise, if Professor Moxey is right? It\u2019s something that parents may wish to ponder as they make out their tuition checks.<\/p>\n

The bottom line: since we no longer care about truth (that\u2019s what Professor Moxey means by abandoning an \u201cepistemological foundation\u201d), we can accept or reject arguments solely on the basis of whether they accord with our political interests. It follows that art history\u2014like all forms of \u201ccultural practice\u201d\u2014is at its bottom \u201ca form of political intervention\u201d that takes part in \u201cthe processes of cultural transformation which characterize our society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now political intervention can be a good thing; it can be a bad thing. It depends, obviously, on the nature of the particular intervention. But is political intervention, be it ever so beneficent, something with which our professors of art history should concern themselves in their capacity as professors of art history, i.e., as teachers and scholars?<\/p>\n

It is also worth asking exactly what sort of politics Professor Moxey advocates. As it happens, it is in answering this\u2014or, rather, in assiduously failing to answer it\u2014that Professor Moxey for once demonstrates some moxie. For although he early and often indicates his distaste for \u201cconservatives,\u201d he is impishly evasive when it comes to spelling out what sort of \u201cpolitical intervention\u201d he favors. He calls for \u201ca politically committed form of art historical interpretation\u201d but says almost nothing about the nature of that commitment beyond \u201crecognizing that politics is concerned with issues of race, class, and gender.\u201d Since political fashions change quite rapidly, Professor Moxey\u2019s vagueness is prudent. Clearly he is \u201con the Left,\u201d hence the mantra about \u201crace, class, and gender.\u201d But that is hardly more than an empty shibboleth, a bit of ideological flag-waving. Professor Moxey\u2019s call for a \u201cpolitically committed\u201d art history that leaves the nature of the commitment unspecified and the very possibility of history in doubt may be intellectually fatuous, but it is politically cunning, for it enables him to absorb many minor adjustments in political orientation without ceasing to be \u201ccutting edge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keith Moxie is but a tiny blip on the radar screen of higher education in the more fashionable precincts of the academy today. But he, as I say, is a wholly characteristic one. Jeremy Black is to be congratulated for reminding us how widespread and intellectually damaging this revival of \u201cpostmodernist hash\u201d has been.<\/p>\n

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My old friend Jeremy Black, the dazzlingly prolific English historian, has an excellent piece in this month\u2019s edition of The Critic on the history profession\u2019s\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post-modernism"],"yoast_head":"\nThe \u2018Trouble\u2019 With Theory - Urban Economy news<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1870\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The \u2018Trouble\u2019 With Theory - Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My old friend Jeremy Black, the dazzlingly prolific English historian, has an excellent piece in this month\u2019s edition of The Critic on the history profession\u2019s\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1870\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-06T07:09:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"15 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1870#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1870\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/be7753cb687f443815cc81e8407f68ad\"},\"headline\":\"The \u2018Trouble\u2019 With Theory\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-06T07:09:11+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1870\"},\"wordCount\":3027,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1870#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/b0df083fddfdf8002660564a8328a23f-scaled.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Post-Modernism\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1870#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1870\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1870\",\"name\":\"The \u2018Trouble\u2019 With Theory - 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