This book demonstrates that theory in literary and cultural studies has moved beyond overarching master theories towards a greater awareness of particularity and contingency - including its own. What is the place of literary and cultural theory after the Age of Theory has ended?

Acknowledgements.- List of Contributors.- Introduction: The Place of Theory Today; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- PART I: METATHEORY.- 1. Comes the Revolution; J. Hillis Miller.- 2. Literary Theory in Reverse: The Literariness of Theory; Gerold Sedlmayr.- 3. Misreading Shelley, Misreading Theory: Deconstruction, Media, and Materiality; Christian Huck.- 4. 'I am, yet what I am': Theory, Being and Dis-appearance; Julian Wolfreys.- 5. Matter Against Materialism: Bruno Latour and the Turn to Objects; Benjamin Noys.- 6. Avoiding Post-Structuralism at Its Root: Toward a New Theory; Dino Galetti.- Interlude I: The Cultures of Reflexivity; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- PART II: CULTURAL THEORY.- 7. The University: A Matter of Theoretical Importance; Thomas Docherty.- 8. When Theory Is Not Enough: A Material Turn in Gender Studies; Ingrid Hotz-Davies.- 9. Luhmann in da Contact Zone: Towards a Postcolonial Critique of Sociological Systems Theory; Lars Eckstein and Christoph Reinfandt.- 10. Passive Voice: Democratic Indifference and the Vibrant Matter of Literature; Dirk Wiemann.- 11. Managing Complexity: The "Literary Turn" in Organization Studies; Nicola Glaubitz.- Interlude II: Ideologies of Habitus; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- PART III: CRITICAL THEORY.- 12. Ecological Transformations of Critical Theory; Hubert Zapf.- 13. The Literary Work as Ethical Event; Derek Attridge.- 14. Ethics and Agency: The Limits and Necessity of Ethical Criticism; Sebastian Domsch.- 15. The Art of Compearance: Ethics, (Reading) Literature, and the Coming Community; Martin Middeke.- 16. Narrative Theory at the Limit; Richard Walsh.- Interlude III: On Interpretation; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- PART IV: TEXTUAL THEORY.- 17. The Fate of Texts under Changing Theory; Herbert Grabes.- 18. Latour & Literature; David J. Alworth.- 19. Reading Textures; Christoph Reinfandt.- 20. Plato or Aristotle? Form and Textuality; Sukanta Chaudhuri.- Coda: Theory Matters; Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt.- Index.