tagged with evil
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. ↩
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)
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.)
