The States of "Theory"

As David Carroll puts it in his introduction to the published volume, The States of Theory: History, Art and Critical Discourse, upon completion of its previous project, the Critical Theory group “decided to devote the next three years to the problem of the transformation of the notion of the sign in contemporary criticism and theory and to how that transformation had affected the various disciplines of the humanities, the social sciences, and the university institution as a whole. In particular, the group decided to examine how the questioning and even the rejection of the ‘natural origin’ of or model for the sign had disrupted and transformed research in the various fields.”

To this end it planned various lectures and colloquia under the title “Nature, Sign and Institutions in the Domain of Discourse,” and formulated the following accompanying statement: “By this we mean those ideas, ideologies, or discourses which claim to have their basis in nature, and to examine the extent to which they have been shaped by institutional pressures. The traditional distinction between natural and arbitrary-conventional signs is one — but hardly the only — way of conceiving this examination as it cuts across the human sciences from art and literary theory to social theory.”

During the period in which the Critical Theory group, then a Focused Research Program, was christened as the Critical Theory Institute (1987), the topic, too, transformed, re-named “The States of Theory: Theory at its Boundaries,” and later with its publication title. David Carroll's explanation is instructive: “As can already be seen from the title given to this collection, the problem of the sign, the loss of its ‘natural origin,’ and the institutional effect of this transformation of the role and function of discourse — though still evident in all of the essays and the principal focus of some — was itself transformed in the course of the conferences, seminars, and discussions devoted to it.” Ultimately, “by the middle of the second year it had become clear that two areas of concentration had emerged ‘on their own’: the historical and the aesthetic. … The question of the nonnatural origin of the sign had thus become ‘The States of “Theory,”’ with a special emphasis given to the place of theories of discourse and language in the current rethinking of art and history.”

Related Lectures and Colloquia:
April 24-25, 1987 States of Theory Colloquium:
Jean-François Lyotard (Emeritus, Université de Paris/Vincennes-St. Denis, French, UCI)
“Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event.”

J. Hillis Miller (English & Comparative Literature, UC Irvine)
“Face to Face: Plato’s Protagoras as a Model for Collective Research in the Humanities.”

Murray Krieger (English & Comparative Literature, UC Irvine)
“A Meditation on a Critical Theory Institute”

Carolyn Porter (English, UC, Berkeley)
“Are We Being Historical Yet?”

Jaques Derrida (Directeur d’Etudes, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales)
“Some Statements and Truisms About Neo-Logisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and Other Small Seismisms.”

Frederic Jameson (Comparative Literature, Duke U)
“Spatial Equivalents: Postmodern Architecture and the World System.”
May, 1987

Jean-Luc Nancy (Philosophy, Université de Strasbourg, and Visiting Prof. UC, Berkeley)
“Finite History”

Claude Lefort (Directeur d’Etudes, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales)
“Machiavelli: History, Politics, Discourse.”
(1988)