The origins of the unconscious

Preface to the second edition

Since the 1999 publication of Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, criti‑ cal theory has continued to grow in at least two ways: some critical theorists that students would have encountered only at the graduate level of literary studies have begun to appear in the undergraduate classroom, and some critical theories that students would have encountered primarily in other disciplines are becom‑ ing frequently used frameworks in literary studies. For these reasons, you will find in the second edition of Critical Theory Today a good deal of new material. A section on Lacanian psychoanalysis has been added to the chapter on psycho‑ analytic criticism. The chapter on feminist criticism now contains sections on gender studies and French feminism, the latter including discussions of both the very useful French materialist feminism and the more familiar psychoanalytic school of French feminism. And perhaps the biggest change of all, the chapter on postcolonial and African American criticism has been rewritten as two separate chapters. This last change allowed me to add to the chapter on African Ameri‑ can criticism a section on critical race theory and an African American reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), which remains the novel used for the sample literary application in every chapter. Finally, the bibliographies for further reading that close each chapter have been expanded and updated. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the purpose of this book. It is still an introduction to critical theory written by a teacher of critical theory and lit‑ erature. And it is still intended for teachers and college‑level students who want to learn about critical theory and its usefulness in helping us to achieve a bet‑ ter understanding of literature. Because I am a teacher writing for teachers and students, the second edition of Critical Theory Today also contains clarifications wherever my own students have had repeated difficulty, over the years, in under‑ standing a particular concept addressed in the book. Thus you’ll find, to cite just a few representative examples, an expanded explanation of rugged individualism in the chapter on Marxist criticism; a clarification of the concept of mimicry in the chapter on postcolonial criticism; and, in the chapter on African American criticism, an added example of the encoding of certain racial themes by African American writers. Indeed, my own copy of the first edition, which I’ve used in my classes, contains innumerable little page markers where a clarification, word

change, or concrete example was deemed helpful, and all of those small changes also have been made. A better understanding of the world in which we live, it seems to me, automati‑ cally comes along for the ride when we study literature, and the study of critical theory makes that enterprise even more productive. I believed that proposition when I wrote the first edition of the book you now hold in your hands, and I come to believe it more with every critical theory class I teach. I hope that your experience of the second edition of Critical Theory Today also leads you to find that small truth to be self‑evident.

Preface for instructors

The writing of this textbook was the product of a sense of pedagogical frustra‑ tion that I suspect many of you may share. In the last decade, critical theory has become a dominant force in higher education. It is now considered an essen‑ tial part of graduate education, and it plays an increasingly visible role in the undergraduate classroom as well. Yet many college students at all levels, as well as some of their professors, remain confused by much of this jargon‑ridden dis‑ cipline, which seems to defy their understanding. As one colleague said to his students, “Critical theory is a bus, and you’re not going to get on it.” Anthologies of essays often used in critical theory courses—which generally include pieces by such frequently arcane theorists as Lacan, Derrida, Spivak, Benjamin, and the like—and books that offer high‑tech summaries of these the‑ orists’ views don’t help the majority of students who are unfamiliar with the basic principles one must understand in order to understand these texts. Conversely, the very few theory textbooks that are written in accessible language are much too limited in scope to offer an adequate introduction to this complex field. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide attempts to fill this gap by offering an accessible, unusually thorough introduction to this difficult field that will (1) enable readers to grasp heretofore obscure theoretical concepts by relating them to our everyday experience; (2) show them how to apply theoretical perspectives to literary works; and (3) reveal the relationships among theories—their differ‑ ences, similarities, strengths, and weaknesses—by applying them all to a single literary work: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). I’ve chosen The Great Gatsby for this purpose for several reasons. In addition to lending itself readily to the eleven theoretical readings I offer, the novel is fairly short, quite readable, and familiar, both in terms of its treatment of common American themes and in terms of readers’ prior exposure to the work. In fact, many of my colleagues who teach critical theory have indicated that they would prefer a textbook that uses The Great Gatsby for its literary applications because of their own familiarity with the novel. Aimed primarily at newcomers to the field, each chapter explains the basic prin‑ ciples of the theory it addresses, including the basic principles of literary applica‑ tion, in order to enable students to write their own theoretical interpretations of literature and read with insight what the theorists themselves have written. Thus,