Theory fails worst when it celebrates its own capitulation to immediacy

Evidence

Theory must not guilelessly reproduce and reify what is immediately given; it must beguilingly bring into thinkability and perceptibility that which is not given. It is one thing for the dominant culture of a moment to fail the bar of immanent critique, reveling rather than revelatory—but it hits worse when theory also fails, and worst of all when that failure is celebrated. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 327

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the reader’s planned fight with the Antitheory chapter: this is her diagnosis of why theory’s self-negation is the gravest failure, not merely a fashion. — connects to: Critical theory reads ironic humor as pseudo-rebellion that masks conventionality. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 665
• SEED: An essay angle: what it means for theory to fail ‘worst of all when that failure is celebrated’ — tracing theory’s self-negation as trend.