Back-paddling towards your goal

In Robert Schole's book Textual Power, he asserts that a fate should be avoided. "Since the nineteen-sixties we have been losing our congregations, and we are scared to death that our temples will be converted into movie theaters or video parlors and we will end our days doing intellectual janitorial or custodial work." In this statement, he is talking about losing students, and professors in some cases, since the inception (roughly the 1960's) of what is now called 'literary theory'. He goes on to state, “What went wrong with the idea of literature as secular scripture can be described simply as the loss of faith in the universality of human nature and a corresponding loss of faith in the universal wisdom of the authors of literary texts." Isn't this what literary theory espouses? That the author doesn't know what he or she is writing and the meaning can be ambiguous?


To me, he is saying that we want literary theory to continue, albeit revised, but since we have been teaching it, it is pushing away students. He then goes on to show that a 'universal wisdom of the authors' is in declining faith among students. Yet, the non-wisdom of authors is exactly what is promulgated by the very teachers that want to increase their attendances. This is extremely evident in the classes that we are taking here at ECU. Even Professor Grasso made the statement relating to 'nonauthorial ownership'. I further believe that the deconstructionist approach Schole's and many more take, adds to the problem of losing students.