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The title of this contribution draws attention to the fact that our dealing with texts is to a significant degree determined by our theoretical presuppositions—presuppositions that have changed considerably over the last seven decades or so with the arrival of a whole number of theoretical turns and that will do so in the future. What will be investigated is the fate of texts rather than "text' or "textuality', that is, of quite specific assemblies of particular signifiers in a fixed sequence; and "theory' will be taken in the sense in which it has become disseminated in the domains of literary and cultural studies as well as of linguistics since the 1960s: that is, as a theory of language claiming in some cases to be, as such, also a theory of everything cultural—and in a few cases to even be a theory of everything.In order to demonstrate the dependence of the one on the other, there is first mustered the various versions of theory that have come up since the 1930s with respect to their influence on our understanding of and dealing with texts, both literary and non-literary. Then follows an assessment of the present situation which already on first sight appears to be anything but systematically homogeneous and influentially stable. Last but not least the attempt is made to show how more attention to the yet insufficiently explored theory of performative processes would better the future fate of texts considerably.

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-47428-5_21

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