Theory Is for Everybody*

Abstract

In Feminism is for Everybody, bell hooks states, "[t]o be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality" (hooks, 2000, p. 110). Drawing on this insight, I offer one possible future for teaching theory in sociology based on my own subject position and experiences that seeks to imagine how social theory needs to change regarding a fundamental reorganization of what counts as theory, who counts as a theorist, who teaches theory, and how theory is taught.My biography informs my approach. Born and raised in Toronto, I come from a working-class, immigrant family. I am the first generation in my immediate family to attend university. Though my experiences are distinct from, and privileged in relation to, those of Patricia Hill Collins, I have often felt, as she puts it, an "outsider within" in academic circles (Collins 1986). My experiences of class and gender-based "microaggressions" (Sue 2010; Yang and Carroll 2018),