The critical in theory

I'm thinking the distinction between literary theory and critical theory is growing more and more useful. Despite the fact that it probably originated because Barnes & Noble had some weird shelf-space issues, I feel like we also know this difference intuitively.

This is not just because critical theory is something more like "theory for theory's sake" and literary theory "has literature as its object." In fact, I'd like to insist (and I think it needs to be insisted upon more and more in the years to come) that it matters less what object each has. What matters more is the difference in method, in the way each works, and what concerns are generally proper to its working.

Literary theory pulls the act of determining a text's meaning apart from the act of saying something about a text, or interpretation. Critical theory, on the other hand, invents useful concepts that saturate the concerns of the human sciences (philosophy, sociology, history, political theory) with politics. It is because of this that you see literary theory more in literature departments, and critical theory in architecture. It is also because of this that you see literary theory in architecture, and critical theory in literary theory.

Indeed, literary theory's political power is usually found in troubling this distinction, spilling into critical theory. Whether this happens when its concepts lose or gain their power is a real question. As literary theorists try to answer it more and more, or, to put it another way (to use the titular phrase of Jonathan Culler's excellent book), become concerned with the literary in theory, one of two things must happen: either the distinction between critical and literary theory will have to base itself more and more on the objects involved, or literary theory will have to assert its political power in other ways.

I hope things move in the latter direction, not because I think literary theory should become less political (that should be clear from what I've said), but because I think it should define itself less in terms of its object--that is, because I think it should become more methodical, or aware of itself as method.

Whether this means that the critical in theory will have to come into its own more, I don't know. It has, I think, had no problem in doing this over the years. But I think critical theorists should be more aware, at least, of the distinction, so that they aren't made aware of it in the way literary theorists have been.

Then again, maybe critical theorists have been made aware of it from the get go...