Theory only liberates when deliberately directed toward that end
Evidence
Theory is not inherently healing, liberatory, or revolutionary. It fulfills this function only when we ask that it do so and direct our theorizing towards this end. When I was a child, I certainly did not describe the processes of thought and critique I engaged in as “theorizing.” Yet, as I suggested in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, the possession of a term does not bring a process or practice into being; concurrently one may practice theorizing without ever knowing/possessing the term, just as we can live and act in feminist resistance without ever using the word “feminism.” — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 134
Categorization
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: hooks insists terms don’t create practices — a claim that bears directly on whether academic naming (e.g., ‘Critical Theory,’ ‘liberation theology’) itself does recentering work, which she seems to deny here.
- XREF: connects to: Theory is needed to break through deceptive appearances but cannot dictate action; Theory is valuable only when one must struggle against it — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 242; Theory use stays healthy only when ready to jettison it — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2423 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Critical theory must intentionally break from its own immediate conditions to be critical
#expands(0.85) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 250 - Theory is needed to break through deceptive appearances but cannot dictate action
#qualifies(0.78) - Ideas gain force only when paired with practical execution and political will
#expands(0.76) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 422 - Theory use stays healthy only when ready to jettison it
#qualifies(0.74) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2423 - Theory is valuable only when one must struggle against it
#complicates(0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 242