The Timeline of Literary Theory...

Literary Theory is the varying ways to read and make meaning of a text. New Criticism is the, well relatively new way of criticism, as in it was the way of interpreting texts from the 1920's to the 1950's. New Criticism was a way of seeking out contradictions in a text and figuring out how those contradictions unified the text and created meaning. Then, in the 1960's we had a cultural revolution in America, England, and in France. A lot of the criticism was carried from Europe to America. From this international wave, we got new ways of looking at texts such as the way of Freud. Freud dealt heavily with psycholanalysis and the unconscious. This way would direct our thoughts and actions. There was an intense move to attempt to understand dreams and the inner-workings of the mind. When we go to a psychoanalysis, they are essentially "reading" us. Why not apply this to BOOKS?

From this, we created the psychoanalytic theory, which gave way to feminism writing. The movement for women's rights and equality began in the 50's and carried on heavily through the 60's and 70's. Where you read texts to discover hidden or not hidden meanings about female desire, empowerment, equality, sexuality, gender politics, and most importantly POWER and SUBJECTIVITY. What makes a woman a woman and a man a man. These all create theorhetical ways to read! This marked the beginning of the academy as a political space. Nothing is at state socially or culturally here.

So, what can literature show us about equality? Subjectivity? Power? Many people take great offense in studying these factors. Then a prominent question arises: "WHO CARES WHAT THE AUTHOR THOUGHT?!" We now begin reading texts looking for certain bits; we are less concerned with what the author was thinking. This also holds true for the critical race theory. The same information can all be applied to race. Texts begin to have a larger cultural meaning.

Now, with all these new theories, we begin to question what a TEXT is. Texts now are poems, novels, plays, films, tv shows, movies, digital images, art, painting, cd's, music, graffiti, clothes, merchandising, advertising. Now, texts are ANYTHING THAT ONE CAN INTERPRET IN SOME WAY.

Then, of course, there's Queer Theory. This deals with gender issues, power, gender depictions, heteronormative ways of thinking. How is queer identity constructed in a text? It deals with power, identity, subjectivity, political significance, cultural significance, and types of representation. Literary theory thus is frequently attacked because it can politically divide a classroom.

The Deconstruction deals with French philosophy of Jacques Derrida from the 1970's onward.

Logocentric is when we privilege the faculty of reason over all else. In the history of the West, reason has been used to judge what makes a human, human.

In literature or philosophy or political reports, or expeditions to far away lands, non-white peoples are judged to be without reason and therefore are not fully human. During British Imperialism, slave trade between England and its plantations all over the world. The deconstruction, then, is to question meaning, to question stable notions of identity, to question stable notions of what a person is and so on. So, how do we make meaning? Is a text just a text?
What is art? What is a poem? We are challenging fundamental assumptions of Western culture.

There is a lot of academic "talk" in On Beauty. It is quite politicized, and it is discussing that in the academic realhm. It is discussing the culture wars.