How I wish I had this passage when I was a student trying to explain why the so-called two cultures divide was really just a big miscommunication:
A lot of scientists are fairly sceptical about science, seeing it as much more of a hit-and-miss, rule-of-thumb affair than the gullible layperson imagines. It is people in the humanities who still naïvely think that scientists consider themselves the white-coated custodians of absolute truth, and so waste a lot of time trying to discredit them. Eagleton, After Theory (18)
Of course, there are a few important differences:
Art encourages you to fantasize and desire. For…these reasons, it is easy to see why it is students of art or English rather than chemical engineering who tend to staff the barricades. Students of chemical engineering, however, are in general better at getting out of bed than students of art or English. Ibid. (40)
Over the dreary decades of post-1970s conservatism, the historical sense has grown increasingly blunted, as it suited those in power that we should be able to imagine no alternative to the present. Eagleton, After Theory(7)
“Blunted” is a convincing choice of words here. Our sense of history hasn’t been erased completely (if we couldn’t look back at all, we would cease to be human), but the edges are now dull.1 It’s a bit like the ways our taste buds have been diminished by decades of fast-food; we can no more appreciate the flavor of fresh arugula anymore than we can remember why we fought the Korean War.
- The “we” in this statement refers to “we Americans”; Eagleton is likely including his British co-citizens in this statement, but the loss of a historical sense seems acutely American to me. ↩
[One] anti-theoretical stratagem is to claim that in order to launch some fundamental critique of our culture, we would need to be standing at some impossible Archimedean point beyond it. What this fails to see is that reflecting critically on our situation is part of our situation. It is a feature of the peculiar way we belong to the world.…Without such self-monitoring, we would not have survived as a species. Eagleton, After Theory (60)
Speaking of the two cultures, I’ve often wondered if this perspective is the result of a misreading of the Heisenberg principal. Something like we can’t take the measure of ourselves without altering our own position. It’s a compelling, if stupid, analogy:
You do not have to be standing in metaphysical outer space to recognize the injustice of racial discrimination. This is exactly where you would not recognize it. Ibid. (61)
A certain postmodern fondness for not knowing what you think is perhaps reflected in the North American speech habit of inserting the word ‘like’ after every three or four words. It would be dogmatic to suggest that something actually is what it is. Instead, you must introduce a ritual tentativeness into your speech, in a kind of perpetual semantic slurring. Eagleton, After Theory (104)
I think this habit may also have to do with avoiding responsibility for what you think. If you, like, support the war, you can easily disavow that support later when, like, it’s no longer cool. My favorite version of this is the phrase “like, I don’t know,” meaning both “I don’t know” and “it’s like I don’t know.” The latter suggests that the speaker can’t distinguish between knowing and not knowing, something I imagine could be difficult when you know very little.
On the difference between liberalism and socialism:
One reason for judging socialism to be superior to liberalism is the belief that human beings are political animals not only in the sense that they have to take account of each other’s need for fulfilment, but that they achieve their deepest fulfilment only in terms of each other. Eagleton, After Theory (122)
I’ve heard whispers about rescuing the word “liberal” from the prison where the media have kept it these last forty years or so. But what of socialism? It would do us a lot of good to restore both terms to our political dialog. It’s infuriating that socialism has become synonymous with communism, which is, of course, synonymous with evil. (And what a renaissance that word has seen of late? Someone ought to study the frequency with which the word evil appears in public discourse both before and after the 2000 election. I’d lay money on an exponential increase.)
Speaking of evil (and an excellent example of how the conservative movement’s use of language has been both brilliant and horrible):
In the so-called war against terror, for example, the word ‘evil’ really means: Don’t look for a political explanation.…If terrorists are simply Satanic, then you do not need to investigate what lies behind their atrocious acts of violence. You can ignore the plight of the Palestinian people, or of those Arabs who have suffered under squalid right-wing autocracies supported by the West for its own selfish, oil-hungry purposes. Eagleton, After Theory (141)
Eagleton tackles tattoos:
It is, to be sure, no crime to tattoo your biceps.…But there can be more and less creditable reasons [for doing so]. The creditable reason is that it is fun; the discreditable reason is that it may involve the belief that your body, like your bank account, is yours to do what you want with. Eagleton, After Theory (165)
And, later:
‘Personalizing’ the body may be a way of denying its essential impersonality. Its impersonality lies in the fact that it belongs to the species before it belongs to me; and there are some aspects of the species body – death, vulnerability, sickness and the like – that we may well prefer to thrust into oblivion. Ibid. (166)
I’m not so sure about this latter point. Haven’t tattoos historically been a way of identifying the body as part of a particular species body (read: tribe)? In that sense, tattoos are about demonstrating how you are alike, not how you are different. Claims of youthful rebellion aside, I don’t think much has changed in this respect.
How America is like King Lear:
In casting off so cruelly the fruits of his body, his daughter Cordelia, he discloses the fantasy of disembodiment which lies at the heart of the most grossly material of powers. Lear believes at this point that he is everything; but since an identity which is everything has nothing to measure itself against, it is merely a void. Similarly, a nation which becomes global in its sovereignty will soon have very little idea of who it is, if indeed it ever knew. It has eliminated the otherness which is essential for self-knowledge. Eagleton, After Theory (182)
Morris Berman hits a similar note in Dark Ages America:
It seems clear enough that when you put money (or commodities) at the center of a culture, you finally don’t have a culture. Indeed, the Germans have a word to describe this type of situation: sinnentleert (“devoid of meaning”). America can strut and puff all it wants, but on some level, all of us know this (it struts and puffs because it is empty). Berman, Dark Ages America (77)
The latter analogy is particularly interesting from the perspective of a designer: like it or not, the discipline of design is entangled with the capitalist ethos. An unspoken, if obvious, role of design is to make the emptiness of so much commercial activity seem meaningful. The red campaign – a scam if there ever was one – is a cogent example: you can tell yourself when you buy those jeans with the red tag that you’re doing something for the people of Africa – but you should know better. The void does not disappear simply because you avert your eyes.
More on anti-theory (otherwise known as anti-thinking):
Since September 11, a number of anti-theoretical terms have been in vogue in the United States. They include [the aforementioned] ‘evil’, ‘freedom-loving’, ‘bad men’, ‘patriot’, and ‘anti-American’. These terms are anti-theoretical because they are invitations to shut down thought.…Theory – which means, in this context, the taxing business of trying to grasp what is actually going on – is unpatriotic.…This is a pity, since unless the United States is able to do some hard thinking about the world, it is not at all certain that the world will be around for that much longer. Eagleton, After Theory (223)
Eagleton’s definition of theory here bears repeating: theory is “the taxing business of trying to grasp what is actually going on.” In this context, theory is not esoteric or inaccessible, and it’s not relegated to the ivory-tower. It’s simply the way we need to be with the world, if we’re to have a world we want to be in.
What is thus called for is long-term study and thought, in an effort to come up with a serious alternative to global bourgeois democracy – blueprints for a better time, perhaps, and for another place. “What radicals need right now,” says de Zengotita,1 “isn’t action but theory.” Berman, Dark Ages America (329)
Put another way: when you’re rolling down a hill and picking up speed, digging in your heels or grabbing at twigs isn’t likely to slow your descent. But if you take the time you have to consider how you got to where you are – and you shout it at the top of your lungs – you just may avert someone else from suffering a similar fate. Neither the critic nor the protestor is immortal; but the critic’s words will outlast the protestor’s flags.
- Berman is quoting Thomas de Zengotita from a 2003 article in Harper’s Magazine. ↩
On fundamentalism and texts:
Jehovah’s Witnesses are fundamentalists because they believe that every word of the Bible is literally true; and this, surely, is the only definition of fundamentalism that will really stick. Fundamentalism is a textual affair. Eagleton, After Theory (202)
I’ve always suspected that fundamentalism afflicts those unfamiliar with reading; spend enough time with a book in your hand (and more than one of them), and you’ll develop a healthy cynicism about the meanings of words:
Writing just means meaning which can be handled by anyone, anywhere. Meaning which has been written down is unhygienic. It is also promiscuous, ready to lend itself to whoever happens along. Ibid. (202)
The concept of promiscuity is particularly interesting: meaning as a whore – downtrodden, easily manipulated, too simple to care what people say about her. (The word promiscuous is almost never applied to men, because men are expected to couple loosely; there’s no need to describe that which is normal. It’s when a woman behaves like a man that terms like promiscuous are thrown about.) Why would you rest the foundations of your faith - or your law - on her?
As for law, nothing illustrates its slipperiness more than Portia’s legalistic sophistry in The Merchant of Venice.…Portia gets the doomed Antonio off by pointing out to the court that Shylock’s bond for securing a pound of his flesh makes no mention of taking any of his blood along with it.…Portia’s reading of the bond is false because too faithful; it is a fundamentalist reading, sticking pedantically to the letter of the text and thus flagrantly falsifying its meaning. To be exact, interpretation must be creative.1 Ibid. (206)
Underneath this statement is a useful corrective to the way we often think of the word “creative.” Creativity does not require invention. At it’s best, creativity is an effort to reveal the truth, no matter how elusive or complex it may seem. It’s 12 Angry Men, not Athena emerging from Zeus’ head.
- Emphasis mine. ↩
Relative to Eagleton’s comments on the body:
The fact that such common locutions as “my leg,” “my eye,” “my brain,” and even “my body” exist suggests that we believe there is some non-material, perhaps fictive, entity that stands in the relation of possessor to possessed to the body’s “parts” and even to the whole body. Or else the existence of such locutions shows that language cannot get purchase, cannot get going, until it has split up the unity of experience. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year (59)
