Theory into practice

Abstract

In an article dated 1975 and entitled “Teachers against the wall”, Ana Cristina Cesar, aged 23, wanted to position herself in the “theory versus non-theory” controversy then raging, arguing that “taking sides in the debate” did not mean “embarking for hell or paradise, but in a leaky canoe”, and that “the libel against ‘theory’” should be considered “as a reaction to a form of imposition, to the use of certain terms and theories in the detriment of the student and of literature itself ”. This paper will start from this statement by the poet, and will try to reconstitute the elements of the diagnosis – in other words, to find out what caused the hole in the canoe, and to what extent the insurmountable opposition between “terms and theories”, on the one hand, and “student” and “literature”, on the other, is legitimate or not (or if, strictly speaking, “student” and “literature” are not also “terms and theories”).