Abstract

What is it that guarantees the truth of literary theory? And what is it that testifies to its survival into the future? This paper, intended primarily as a tribute to the work of Malcolm Bowie, examines some of the implications of Bowie's view that literary theory, rigorously applied, as in the case of psychoanalysis, was inseparable from its status as creative, productive, futural, perhaps even fictional performance. The paper considers these questions further in the context of that shared commitment to the neuter or the undecidable that is a striking feature of the writing on literature of Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, and which is also a way of thinking the futural possibilities and possible futures of theory.