Literary value after the Theory: Derrida, Agamben and the writers of the No

Abstract

The rise of Theory in the second half of the 20th Century was understood, by a significant part of the academy, as a threat to the traditional values of literature and literary studies. Produced in the stifling and degraded environment of the modern university, Theory presumably paved the way to the development of irrational discourses devoted to the weakening of common sense, of textual intelligibility and objectivity. It was responsible, in part, not only for the decline of literature and culture, but also for the degradation of morality, of habits and customs, and of humanism. This essay considers the possibility of thinking Theory beyond the limitations of a purely negative perspective in the direction of an alternative proposal of literary value in exemplary discourses of Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben and the writers or the No.