Response to Eagleton

Caitlin Scarano

ENGL 601

Heyne

7 April 2012

Reading Response 4: After Theory

In After Theory, Terry Eagleton takes issue with modern cultural theory – that it is not politically relevant and active enough.  This text, I believe, addresses the gap between theory and practice. Here, Eagleton describes the envisioning potential of theory, how theory can create more livable lives, as Judith Butler might say, “We need to imagine new forms of belonging, which in our kind of world are bound to be multiple rather than monolithic.  Some of these forms will have something of the intimacy of tribal or community relations, while others will be more abstract, mediated and indirect.  There is no single ideal size of society to belong to, no Cinderella’s slipper of a space.  The ideal size of community used to be known as a nation-state, but even some nationalists no longer see this as the only desirable terrain” (Eagleton 21).

This envisioning potential and the “intimacy of tribal or community relations” made me think of a passage from Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia – a text I would highly recommend.  The following is a description of the communities in the fictional country of Ecotopia (comprised of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California when they secede from the United States in an attempt to live more sustainably):  “Around the factory, where we would have a huge parking lot, Alviso [the town] has a cluttered collection of buildings, with trees everywhere. There are restaurants, a library, bakeries, a ‘core store’ selling groceries and clothes, small shops, even factories and workshops – all jumbled amid apartment buildings. These are generally of three or four stories, arranged around a central courtyard […] They are built almost entirely of wood, which has become the predominant building material in Ecotopia, due to the reforestation program. […] The apartments themselves are very large by our standards – with 10 or 15 rooms, to accommodate their communal living groups” (Callenbach 26).

Callenbach had a theory of how we could live more holistically (with little to no negative impact on the environment) and enacted this vision through the mode of literature.  A question I might have for Eagleton – does theory have more or less transformative, envisioning, or political potential than the art it considers?  Either way, theory, like literature, should be proactive in creating solutions to issues of the human condition and capitalism, not disconnected from the process.

Nowadays, we have a shallow, materialistic understanding of culture (for example, pop-culture), and a focus on the deviant nature of culture, not the political questions at hand, but once culture functioned as “a critique of middle-class society, not as an ally of it.  Culture was about values rather than prices, the moral rather than the material, the high-minded rather than the philistine” (Eagleton 24).  I found the following passage interesting in regards to the connection between marginality, liminal space, and the creation of art:  “To be inside and outside a position at the same time – to occupy a territory while loitering skeptically on the boundary – is often where the most intensely creative ideas stem from” (Eagleton 40). Also, the use of the word occupy in the quote brought the Occupy Movement to my mind.  I wonder if Eagleton would view the Occupy Movement as a good example of political theory in action, especially in an anti-capitalist sense. 

“The inescapable conclusion is that cultural theory must start thinking ambitiously once again – not so that it can hand the West its legitimation, but so that it can seek to make sense of the grand narratives in which it is now embroiled” (Eagleton 73).  I think that theory should be radical, visionary, challenging, and tangible. Tangible here means not separate from practice, or even bridged to practice, but within practice, part of an interlocking system.  We think in terms these theories and automatically live out those terms.  For example, the essay I am writing for our class is not just an academic exercise that begins and ends in itself (get the grade, done), but meaningful to me because the concept (or theory) of the queer-uncanny makes an applicable, real-world criticism and has transformative potential in how the LGBT community is treated and how they live.

Eagleton clearly takes issue with capitalism, but what exactly are his proposed solutions?  For example, not the vagueness here: “By encouraging us to dream beyond the present, it may also provide the existing social order with a convenient safety-valve.  Imagining a more just future may confiscate some of the energies necessary to achieve it” (Eagleton 100).  Eagleton does appear to be a proponent of socialism as a theory in practice solution:  “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 fulfillment, but that in fact they achieve their deepest fulfillment only in terms of each other” (Eagleton 122).  Eagleton views socialism as, yes, another system, but one with a conscience, an awareness of the human factor (where as capitalism is all centered around production and efficiency): “A socialist society co-operates for certain material purposes, just like any other; but it also regards human solidarity as an estimable end in itself” (Eagleton 172).

When Eagleton discusses love and the need for something between love and friendship, this called to mind Butler’s concept and redefinition of kinship: “Objectivity can mean a selfless openness to the needs of others, one which lies very close to love” (Eagleton 131).

            I think Eagleton is fascinating and confusing, and I have to agree at least with his assessment of the rich and the poor and how capitalism prevents us from living a meaningful narrative: “The rich have no future because they have too much, whereas the poor have no future because they have too little present.  Neither can thus recount a satisfactory narrative of themselves” (Eagleton 185).