The South Atlantic Quarterly 113:4, Fall 2014 doi 10.1215/00382876-2803558 © 2014 Duke University Press Bruno Bosteels The Efcacy of Theory, or, What Are Theorists for in Times of Riots and Distress? Humanity already possesses the dream of something of which it only needs to become conscious in order to possess it in reality. —Karl Marx, letter to Arnold Ruge, Deutsch-Französiche Jahrbücher Aprender es controvertir . (To learn is to be controversial.) —José Revueltas, México 68: Juventud y revolución A special issue of theoretical writings such as the present one inevitably raises questions about the possible effects of theory in the first place. These questions include not only, What is left of theory? but also and above all: What can theory do for the Left? Or, to put a counterintuitive Heideggerian spin on the same kind of question, What are theo- rists for in times of distress? 1 Few answers from the orthodox tradition are more relevant yet more misleading in this con- text than Lenin’s famous words in his 1902 pam- phlet, What Is to Be Done? “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement,” Lenin here claims. “This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-pdf/471192/SAQ1134_01Bosteels_Fpp.pdf by guest on 08 April 2019