This thesis focuses on the nature of theory as portrayed in the metatheory2 of Stanley Fish. Fish is considered to be one of the most controversial literary critics, an ardent pragmatist and an uncompromising representative of antifoundationlist thinking. In the course of my argument, I will go along with Fish’s reasoning up to a certain point in laying down the foundations for my initial claim that theory as such is paradox in nature, but I get off at the point where he avers the inconsequentiality of theories. My main contention is that the functions attributed by him to theory—i.e. substituting of the general for the local, making objective noncontingent truth claims, which serve as grounds for his detraction, actually constitute the very basis of antifoundationalist criticism, hence his dismissal of theory is actually the consequence of his theory of theory.