ISSN: 2350-0476 ISSUE-I, VOLUME-I Contemporary Literary Theory: A Disputation of Common Sense INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIFACETED AND MULTILINGUAL STUDIES Website: www.ijmms.in Email: ijmms14@gmail.com 1 Vikki M. Gaikwad Research Student, Dept. of English, SPPU, Pune. Abstract The present article is an endeavour to suggest that theory (literary or any other kind of theory) is a kind of view (as it means etymologically: thea=a view, horan=to see) to look at something and to decipher reasons behind its negative reception in literary studies by claiming it to be a disputation of common sense. People now a day’s do say that the theory has radically changed the nature of literary studies, but people who say this do not mean literary theory, i.e.’ systematic account of the nature of literature’, what they have in mind precisely that there is too much discussion of non-literary matters in it. Some students and critics protest that literary theory gets in between reader and the work. A good deal of hostility or resistance to theory then, comes from the fact that to admit the importance of theory is to make an open-ended commitment, to leave yourself in position where there are always important things you don’t know. It is a view that differs and tends to be a new and shocking for its receivers. Somehow it disputes the common sense of people. Common sense view about literature, writing, meaning and experience is weakened by theory. It is an attempt to show that what we take as granted as common sense is in fact a historical construction, a particular theory that has come to seem so natural to us that we don’t ever see it as a theory .The thinking that becomes theory offers striking moves that people can use in thinking about other topics. To support this argument there is a discussion about the radical nature of theory presented by Foucault (about Sex and tradition) and Derrida (about Writing), comparing their differences and similarities in case of disputing common sense. Key Words: Theory, Disputation, Common sense, View, Literary studies, Resistance, Radical nature, Derrida, Foucault, Writing, Historical construction. Theory, always considered as a hard ice to break (of course it is but not the only thing to be so), has been given a kind of elitist importance. People expect one to be specially equipped and intelligent too if he has certain knowledge about theory (literary or any other). This causes a negative reception of theory in literary studies. People now a day’s do say that the theory has radically changed the nature of literary studies, but people who say this do not mean literary theory, i.e. ‘systematic account of the nature of literature and of the methods of analysis 1 ’ or they does not mean that it ‘asks about nature and function of literature and 1 Culler Jonathan, Literary theory: A Very Short Introduction (New York, Oxford University Press,2000)p.2.