Betwixt the Text and the World: Literary Theory Responses to Current Challenges from a Teaching Perspective

The paper offers a view of literary theory development as a kind of pendulum movement between text-centered and world-centered models. The reasons behind current theory’s gravitation towards world-centered approaches are discussed, including scholars’ dissatisfaction with New Critics’ concentration on texts’ formal characteristics taking no heed of broader socio-cultural context. Critical edge of present-day theory also presupposes closer attention to the interface between the text and the world. Posthumanism as a prominent trend in contemporary philosophy and cultural studies is considered in terms of its continuity with regards to traditional humanism and of its potential efficiency as an instrument for analyzing and interpreting literary phenomena, in particular, those engendered by early 21st c. cultural and psychological atmosphere. It is argued that, far from postulating “the death of the subject”, posthumanism offers a different perspective on human beings in their ambivalent relationships with natural environment and technology. Based on a variety of ideas put forward by such prominent exponents of new directions in humanities as Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, Cary Wolfe and others, the paper shows how contemporary intellectuals seek to challenge and transgress the traditional limits of human subjectivity demonstrating the porosity of borders separating humans from their “companion species” and man-made cyborgs.