After Theory

by Terry Eagleton

Book Overview

For anyone forced to wrestle with the likes of Derrida and Foucault during their college days, Terry Eagleton needs no introduction. His clear and accessible primer on literary theory was (and is) an indispensable guide to the post-modern era in the humanities. Now Eagleton argues that the golden age of cultural theory has ended, and with characteristic wit and verve, he traces its rise and fall from structuralism to post-colonial studies and beyond...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465017746
• ISBN13: 9780465017744
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 231 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Waking Up From Theory

Terry Eagleton, who introduced a generation of students to deconstructionism and postmodern theory (also called "theory"), now laments the state of the movement he once heralded. While still respecting some of the insights of Derrida, Barthes, Kristeva, and others, Eagleton believes their disciples are in need of correction. The movement is largely spent, focusing on trivialities instead of on deeper questions of truth and justice. So he charts a course "after theory." (He voiced similar criticisms in his 1996 book, The Illusions of Postmodernism.) Unlike postmodernists, who often revel in obscurity, Eagleton writes with lucidity, passion, and pluck. The book should interest philosophers as well as literary critics, since Eagleton addresses classic philosophical topics such as the objectivity and absoluteness of truth, the meaning and moral purpose of human life, and political philosophy. By "postmodernism," Eagleton means, "roughly speaking, the contemporary movement of thought which rejects totalities, universal values, grand historical narratives, solid foundations to human existence and the possibility of objective knowledge. Postmodernism is skeptical of truth, unity and progress, opposes what it sees as elitism in culture, tends toward cultural relativism, and celebrates pluralism, discontinuity and heterogeneity." This perspective provides scant resources for the perennial issues of philosophy and politics, since it denies the possibility of finding a philosophically satisfying worldview (or metanarrative.) But Eagleton believes that the crisis of international terrorism against the West means that it must reflect on its own foundations, a notion postmodernists abhor as "modernistic." Eagleton sometimes strongly indicts the deficits of postmodern theory. "It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals, and foundations, and superficial about truth objectivity and disinterestedness. This, on any estimate, is a rather large slice of human existence to fall down on." Indeed. Cutting against the postmodern grain, Eagleton argues persuasively for objective and absolute truth. He rightly notes that the fallibility of some truth claims does nothing to undermine the category of truth itself. Although he does not put it this way, postmodernists often confuse the metaphysics and the epistemology of truth. Truth, on the correspondence view--which Eagleton advocates-- is (or means) "agreement with reality." This is the definition--or metaphysics--of truth. Truth-claims may be defended through a variety of intellectual means; this concerns epistemology. Simply because truth is sometimes elusive does not imply that it is constructed (and deconstructed) by linguistic communities, as postmodernists posit. This matters to Eagleton because "it belongs to our dignity as moderately rational cr

Reawakening after Post-Modernity

While Eagleton seems to dismiss theory just because the revolution it might have envisaged actually did not happen (as if a few philosophical works could have been enough to cause it) he nevertheless has the merit of warning against that unfortunate consequence of the misuse of deconstruction that we may call "the bog of indeterminacy." Why has Derrida's crucial notion of "différance" de facto turned into a diffused practice of indifference? Probably because many post-modern intellectuals have grown suspicious of all material and rational distinctions whatsoever. Among the various intellectual habits, there is the one typical of "those who know and distinguish," warned Roger Fowler: let's still try to be among them, repeats Terry Eagleton. Personally, I could not agree more.

Fantastic Critical Realism

Terry Eagleton's book After Theory is fantastic. It details the problems of the aging ideas of postmodernism and critical theory. His views are particularly explosive because they threaten the way many professors have gotten their PhDs. (See other reviews to witness fear.) Also Eagleton literally wrote the book on Literary Theory so his views carry considerable weight. The book is fun and accessible. This book is a must read for anyone interested in Literary Theory. After Theory, though unwittingly, points to the movement of Critical Realism in today's intellectual thought.

Amusing, Well Argued and Important

Terry Eagleton's After Theory was hailed as philosophically serious and important on arrival and is destined to be far more popular that anything he has written before. It's not the first book to be titled After Theory, but it is the first book to take on the pretentions of `high theory', especially as articulated through postmodernism and cultural studies, explain its claims, evaluate them and offer alternative ideas and projects in plain language and with lots of excellent humour. With three or four stand alone one-liners on most pages and ideas concretized with examples from popular culture (as well as Aristotle, the Book of Isaiah, Shakespeare and Marx) and ordinary life, it is a rollicking good read and a welcome corrective to the laborious Derridean obscurantism that some still mistake for wisdom. Eagleton is happy to concede that high theory has entrenched some useful if not original insights such as the ideas that human beings are about desire and fantasy as much as reason, that ordinary life is an important focus of critical attention and that seriousness and pleasure are not necessarily separate. But he also argues that it has a disabling tendency towards the valorisation of the experiences of elites and the disregard for the experiences of ordinary people. He is deeply skeptical about, say, an Indian academic moving between Oxford and Harvard who celebrates cosmopolitanism and hybridity as the vanguard of post-coloniality while saying nothing about the children sewing Nike shoes in Delhi. He is equally skeptical about academics who reject the idea of progress without rejecting dental anesthetics. And he shows that post-modern arguments are very easily deployed by overtly reactionary agendas. He explores the attraction of postmodern arguments about liminality and diversity to reactionary Ulster academics. Some reactionary Afrikaaner academics have made very similar use of postmodernism.But the essence of Eagleton's critique goes deeper and is more interesting than his attacks on the pompous narcissism of Theory. He argues that postmodernism is a symptom of capitalism and not, as it claims, critical theory. Postmodernism celebrates the non-normative and sees redemption in diversity and transgression. Eagleton's point is that `the non-normative has become the norm...the norm is now money'. `Money', he notes, `is utterly promiscuous' and infinitely adaptive without any opinions of its own. Body piercing and Kwanza and sado-masochism are all just niche markets. They pose no threat to capital. And while capitalism has invented or exacerbated social divisions and exclusions when alliances with local elites are to its advantage it is, in principle, `an impeccably inclusive creed, it really doesn't care who it exploits...Most of the time it is eager to mix together as many diverse cultures as possible, so that it can peddle its commodities to them all...It thrives on bursting bounds and slaying sacred cows. Its desire is unslakeable and its spa