Problems without solutions : teaching theory and the politics of hope

ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“[J]ust as all social life is theoreticalââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢, says Terry Eagleton, ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“so all theory is a real social practiceââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ (Eagleton, 1990, p. 24). The practice that interests me here is the teaching of theory to undergraduates. In particular, I will be discussing how different ways of organizing the curriculum or of ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“doing theoryââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ can have impacts of both an intellectual and an affective nature. My focus is on the interplay of two contextsââ"šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Âone intellectual, the other institutional and practical. These are the rise of transdisciplinarity and the current troubled state of Australian universities. I will be considering how their interrelationship influences the way we approach and structure the teaching of theory to undergraduates. In particular, Iââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢m raising the question of pluralism and its discontents. It is the inseparability of the intellectual and the affective that especially interests me, and so I will be discussing the impact of our teaching strategies and curriculum structure not only on intellectual rigour but also, more idiosyncratically, on hope and joy. Hope and joy are, I feel, potentially an embarrassment to Cultural Studies. I havenââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t been able to find much on them within the Cultural Studies canonââ"šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Âfear, yes; desire, certainly; jouissance, mais ouiââ"šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Âbut joy or hope, no. Hope does make an occasional appearance (for example in Henry Girouxââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s work on critical pedagogies) but it is more at home in the philosophy of education, or in psychology, religious studies, or the self-help shelves.2 Hope has, however, been an ongoing if unscholarly preoccupation of mine for some time, and this post-electoral climate seems as appropriate a time as any other to try to clarify my own thinking about hope and, for that matter, despair. Indeed, what I will be euphemistically referring to as the ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“current university climateââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ is the insistent backdrop to these ruminationsââ"šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Âfor it is this context that structures the kinds of theory we can do, and that is obliging us, both productively and unproductively, to keep reconsidering our teaching strategies. My paper is, then, an exploration of some of the problems (practical, intellectual, political and ethical) of teaching theory to undergraduates.