Characters:
Professor Quillibrace
Mr Blottisham
Miss Elowen Stray
Blottisham:
I’ve been uncharacteristically charitable.
Quillibrace:
Alert the colleges.
Blottisham:
Hear me out. If meaning is situated, perspectival, and risky—if it only ever happens in the cut—then why write theory?
Elowen Stray:
That does seem like a fair question.
Blottisham:
At last. If theory doesn’t deliver truth, persistence, or guarantees, it looks like an elaborate way of narrating one’s preferences.
Quillibrace:
You’re proposing we stop.
Blottisham:
I’m proposing we be consistent. Live attentively. Speak locally. Abandon grand frameworks.
Quillibrace:
Ah. The moral high ground of quietism.
Blottisham:
Mock again if you must, but isn’t theory precisely the thing your account undermines?
Elowen Stray:
Because theory sounds like it claims authority.
Blottisham:
Exactly. And authority is what you’ve just dismantled.
Quillibrace:
No—I’ve dismantled invisible authority.
Blottisham:
That’s a distinction without a difference.
Quillibrace:
On the contrary. It’s the difference between a map and a mandate.
Blottisham:
Maps pretend to objectivity.
Quillibrace:
Bad ones do.
Elowen Stray:
So theory isn’t there to tell us what is, but to shape how we move?
Quillibrace:
Yes. To make certain movements thinkable.
Blottisham:
That sounds like manipulation.
Quillibrace:
All language does.
Blottisham:
Then theory is just rhetoric with better footnotes.
Quillibrace:
Sometimes worse.
Elowen Stray:
But rhetoric usually tries to win.
Quillibrace:
Theory, at its best, tries to fail productively.
Blottisham:
Now you’re romanticising incompetence.
Quillibrace:
No. I’m formalising exposure.
Blottisham:
Exposure to what?
Quillibrace:
To the limits of one’s own construal.
Elowen Stray:
So theory is a way of putting your assumptions on the table?
Quillibrace:
And inviting them to be broken.
Blottisham:
You could do that without writing at all.
Quillibrace:
You could garden without tools.
Some people do. They are called mystics.
Blottisham:
And perhaps they’re wiser.
Quillibrace:
Perhaps. But mysticism scales poorly.
Elowen Stray:
Then theory is a way of sharing risk?
Quillibrace:
Yes. Risk, and responsibility.
Blottisham:
Responsibility for what?
Quillibrace:
For the possibilities you normalise.
Blottisham:
You’re saying theory doesn’t describe the world—it biases it.
Quillibrace:
I’m saying it reweights it.
Blottisham:
That’s even worse.
Quillibrace:
Only if you think neutrality is an option.
Elowen Stray:
When I read a strong piece of theory, I don’t feel instructed. I feel… reoriented.
Blottisham:
Disoriented, more like.
Quillibrace:
A common first symptom.
Blottisham:
So theory is meant to unsettle?
Quillibrace:
If it doesn’t, it’s decoration.
Blottisham:
Then why not poetry?
Quillibrace:
Poetry unsettles experience.
Theory unsettles expectations about experience.
Elowen Stray:
So it works one level up?
Quillibrace:
Precisely where people are most complacent.
Blottisham:
This is starting to sound like an excuse for endless writing.
Quillibrace:
No. It’s an argument for timely writing.
Blottisham:
And when has enough been said?
Quillibrace:
When the framework starts answering questions it should be reopening.
Elowen Stray:
So theory should expire?
Quillibrace:
Gracefully, if possible.
Blottisham:
You realise this means your own work is provisional.
Quillibrace:
I should hope so.
Blottisham:
Fallible.
Quillibrace:
Cheerfully.
Blottisham:
Replaceable.
Quillibrace:
With better cuts? Yes.
(A pause.)
Blottisham:
Then theory isn’t a monument.
Quillibrace:
It’s scaffolding.
Elowen Stray:
Meant to be climbed—and then removed?
Quillibrace:
Or repurposed when the building turns out differently than expected.
Blottisham:
I must say, Professor… this makes theory sound almost humble.
Quillibrace:
Only in the sense that it knows where it can break.
Blottisham:
I still think silence has its virtues.
Quillibrace:
It does. But silence also leaves existing structures untouched.
Elowen Stray:
So writing theory is a way of intervening—without pretending to be final.
Quillibrace:
Exactly.
Blottisham:
An intervention that admits it might be wrong.
Quillibrace:
From the first sentence.
Blottisham:
Hmph.
Elowen Stray:
That doesn’t sound like quietism at all.
Quillibrace:
No. It’s closer to maintenance.
Blottisham:
Of meaning?
Quillibrace:
Of possibility.
End of Dialogue IV
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