Abstract

Said recently observed that theory travels “[l]ike people and schools of criticism ” from person to person, from situation to situation, from one period to another.” The following is a story of traveling theory. First it describes how a ‘new pragmatism,’ revitalized primarily by Rorty's efforts, traveled to the land of deconstruction and found the climate so hospitable that it decided to stay. Second it describes how recent developments in literary theory have emigrated to law schools, and in their new environment flourished in sometimes beautiful, but odd and unexpected forms. At the center of all this stands Stanley Fish