Within the humanist framework, the writer was at the center of the system of literary production. Rather, they are the kinds of theory most favored within academic circles, and hence most widely read, talked about, and taught. In this statement Christian makes several useful puns, or plays on multiple meanings. Many people in this class may feel the same way. Theory, Christian argues, ought to be prescriptive, meaning that it ought to have some relation to practice.
Theory is useful when it informs what real people do.
In literary studies, we shouldn't have a theory of how we ought to read, according to Christian, because such theories keep us from reading literary texts. Rather, we need to read works of our writers in our various ways and remain open to the intricacies of the intersection of language, class, race, and gender in the literature. These are some of the principles of Christian's theorizing of how literary theory, and its interactions with literary texts, should operate. In her objections to theory, however, Christian says, she's not implying that neutral humanists are right in seeing literature as pure expression, while not admitting to the obvious control of its production, value, and distribution by those who have power, and denying that literature is, of necessity, political. Rather, she says, we need to theorize in ways that don't just reproduce the repressive binary structures which split intellectual from aesthetic perceptions, or feelings from knowledge.