Interviewed on the pages of the Los Angeles Review of Books, Gayatri Spivak— certainly regarded as one of the preeminent theorists of her generation (Benedict Anderson might place her on the A team of postcolonial studies)— had the following to say about Theory and its instruction:

I conclude with a reading of this response. It contains pretty much everything and exemplifies the point about the odd “when” of Theory. What matters is not really her (although Spivak is remarkable in her dogged attention to teaching), but these sentences. The “where” they take us to.

The terror Spivak admits to will remind readers of Death of a Discipline and its urging that we allow “literature to teach us that there are no certainties, that the process [of teaching literature] is open, and that it may be altogether salutary that it is so” (Spivak 2003, 26), followed later with, “the most important thing, as far as I can tell, is knowing how to let go” (ibid., 34). As forms of what Benjamin might wish to call “counsel” (Rat), such formulations are designed to remind those who teach, especially those who teach reading, that the practice is only effective when the uncertain prevails. Crucial to this effect is the displacement of instructive agency: the teacher does not teach, the literary text does.