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Yes. The only problem is that these nitwits still infest nearly all the English departments in the country, control appointments, control tenure decisions, control what gets published by university presses and journals, and subject their students to almost any kind of idiotic proceedings in classrooms except teaching them to read literature appreciatively and with understanding.

Theory is demoralized, perhaps defunct (if you don't count feminism, gender studies, black studies, chicano studies, postcolonial studies, queer theory, and similar practical-minded offshoots of theory) but it will be a long time, if ever, before students who choose to major in English or other literary fields will find teachers interested in teaching them what they came into their classrooms hoping to learn.

Exactly. However, the damage has already been done.

Now that these post-modern "theories" have permeated the university, it is no longer sufficiently reactionary to tout one's "theory." Best to move on to non-theories and stay cutting edge...

PoMo theory has trickled down in one manifestation or another. It is transformative: where did hate crimes come from? where did "the constitution is a living breathing document" come from? where did affirmative action and abortion rights come from? All these are natural consequences from PoMo theory and there are strong movements in America attempting to advance those ideas even further.

It may be academically passe, but these people control the university and have diverted important funding from REAL subjects to fund their drivel: money from Classics or History goes to Queer Theory/Women's studies or African-American Studies departments and there are generations of students that have suffered from a lack of education in the important subjects.

They are termites who've eaten through the disciplines of English, Linguistics, History, leaving nothing but a false front built of their own $#it. Is their anything left to save? I curse the old-school academics who stood by and let these Marxist lunatics destroy not only their own work, but decades upon decades of study.