After After Theory

Jennifer Popa
Dr. Heyne
ENGL 601
4.7.12

After Theory

One thing that I found interesting as an ongoing discussion is the melding of high theory and the low-brow analysis of say “Jersey Shore.” That’s something that I’ve found to be a surprise in grad school, the freedom to incorporate canonical pieces of literature or theory with pop culture. It’s certainly something I enjoyed in Jen Schell’s class last semester, and it brought relevance to century old texts so that they could be evaluated in a more contemporary light (ie Pamela as perhaps the Twilight of another generation). One glaring issue in academia is that we devote entire semesters to thinking about texts, to ruminating, to engaging in cyclical dialogs about the abstract, but that seems to be where things end. The act itself can feel a bit pompous and even narcissistic at times, but then again we are a room full of writers so I suppose that’s to be expected. Hah! Eagleton points out the separation from the experiences of ordinary people, and that academics are the ones who speak for them. That seems like a rather daunting task.

I enjoyed the first chapter’s tour of theory, and found the reading witty and light given the dense subject matter. There were times though that the text felt a bit like sour grapes to me. Maybe this is just my reading, but Eagleton seems somewhat bitter at times. Capitalism reigns supreme and is the prettiest girl at the dance, and Marxism, though fundamental to theory seems to have become a bit of a wallflower. After Theory has a very specific audience in mind, more specifically the left. So in a way it feels like an act of preaching to the converted. Maybe this is just a sign that I’ve engaged in the masochistic act of watching Fox News, and know that Marx and socialism are dirty filthy words. And somehow Glenn Beck always seems to tie them back to him becoming a white slave? Oh Glenn!

Still, I felt a bit confused at what exactly Eagleton was suggesting as a solution to this after theory quandary we find ourselves in, because the solution of a breather from capitalism doesn’t seem to solve it for me. He turns to philosophy, specifically Aristotle, but I’m not sure how exactly this forges new territory. What does post-postmodernism look like? There’s great discussion of virtue, evil, truth, objectivity, but I’m unsure about how one gets back to their “human essence” and what precisely that looks like. How do we account for disparity between different culture’s ideas of human essence? I appreciated the book but it seems to have scratched the surface, and I’m not entirely sure what my take away is as the reader. What solution is Eagleton suggesting, aside from getting back to the roots of philosophy or socialism?