Social movements provoke theoretical advances, yet theory demands a necessary detour from immediacy.

Evidence

I want to hold to the notion, implicit in both these examples, that movements provoke theoretical moments. And historical conjunctures insist on theories: they are real moments in the evolution of theory. But here I have to stop and retrace my steps. Because I think you could hear, once again, in what I’m saying a kind of invocation of a simple-minded anti-theoretical populism, which does not respect and acknowledge the crucial importance, at each point in the moves I’m trying to renarrativize, of what I would call the necessary delay or detour through theory. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 251

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘necessary detour through theory’ concept—Hall’s insistence that movements don’t bypass theory.
• DEEPTHINKING: The double move—movements provoke theory, but theory requires a detour from the movement’s immediacy—is a genuinely dense dialectical claim worth sitting with.
• XREF: connects to: Political engagement creates an irresolvable tension for leftist intellectuals seeking critical distance. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 73; Critical positions must inhabit liberal individualism without full hope of teleological change. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1266