After Theory [Paperback]

Terry Eagleton (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 30, 2004

As heralded everywhere from NPR to the pages of the New York Times Magazine, a new era is underway in our colleges and universities: after a lengthy tenure, the dominance of postmodern theory has come to an end. In this timely and topical book, the legendary Terry Eagleton ("one of [our] best-known public intellectuals."-Boston Globe) traces the rise and fall of these ideas from the 1960s through the 1990s, candidly assessing the resultant gains and losses. What's needed now, After Theory argues, is a return to the big questions and grand narratives. Today's global politics demand we pay attention to a range of topics that have gone ignored by the academy and public alike, from fundamentalism to objectivity, religion to ethics. Fresh, provocative, and consistently engaging, Eagleton's latest salvo will challenge everyone looking to better grasp the state of the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of the seminal cultural studies primer Literary Theory now levels an equally trenchant critique at the field in this brilliant and provocative reassessment. Writing in a valedictory mood, Eagleton traces the rise of cultural theory through its golden age (c. 1965-80), and bemoans its decline into a shallow, depoliticized preoccupation with sex and pop-culture ephemera. As grad students churn out "reverential essays on Friends," latter-day cultural theorists espouse a "dim-witted" postmodernism that dismisses as hegemonic claptrap all talk of common values, objective truth and coherent historical narratives; they have thereby, he contends, turned away from the great socialist project of collective action in support of universal human liberation, and aligned themselves with the nihilistic thrust of a capitalism they pretend to oppose. Alongside Eagleton's indictment of the sorry state of cultural studies is a ringing defense of its potential to address grander subjects than The Matrix or nipple piercing, which he demonstrates by weaving in deft and illuminating commentaries on such topics as Aristotle's ethics, the tension between law and morality in St. Paul and the link between the body and social justice in Lear. The book stands as both rebuke and example to the kind of academic writer who deploys turgid abstractions to flesh out meager ideas; virtually every paragraph crackles with fresh and compelling insights, conveyed in a style that's intellectually sophisticated yet lucid, funny and down to earth. In rescuing cultural studies from some of its less thoughtful practitioners, Eagleton confirms its continuing importance to our understanding of the world.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Prolific and influential British cultural theorist Eagleton begins his newest treatise, a marvel of speedway wit, vivifying thinking, and humanitarian concerns, by assessing the direction criticism has taken in the wake of such intellectual giants as Derrida, Foucault, and Barthes. His take on academic concerns is acute and deliciously ironic, but he soon turns to the conundrums of everyday life in the global village, thus marking the populist path he believes cultural theory itself must follow. Eagleton defines theory as nothing less than "the taxing business of trying to grasp what is actually going on," then performs this invaluable feat by tackling such complex matters as our vision of the "good life," the specter of poverty, and the nature of morality. Along the way he cogently tracks the failure of socialism, the coalescence of revolutionary nationalism, and the concurrent rise of unfettered capitalism and violent forms of fundamentalism. Scathingly critical of America's current administration and passionate in his advocacy of knowledge and rational and independent thought, Eagleton is a welcome breath of fresh air in stifling times. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 231 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (November 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465017746
• ISBN-13: 978-0465017744
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #523,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #78 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Movements & Periods > Postmodernism

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 88 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Amusing, Well Argued and Important February 11, 2004

By Rm Pithouse

Format:Hardcover

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 space infinite. Its law is the flouting of all limits.'

Eagleton argues that the rise of the global anti-capitalist movements has shown that thinking globally is not the same as being totalitarian and develops a range of arguments against the postmodern critique of its own caricature of radical politics. For example he observes that conviction is not the same as authoritarianism and truth is not the same as dogmatism. One can be passionately democratic and committed to the truth that experiences differ. He argues for a radicalism that gives ontological priority to experience of the poor and seeks to enable collective action to sub-ordinate the market to democratic control.

Once one has learnt the jargon of high theory it is quite easy to prick its wildly over inflated balloons. But Eagleton goes further and shows that it is entirely possible to return to questions that matter. He develops stimulating and important meditations on virtue, suffering, death, politics and revolution. But his consideration of these questions is primarily ethical with the result that the hard political questions about strategy are not taken on.

Omissions are inevitable, but the book does have one obvious failing. Eagleton makes much of Hardt and Negri's argument that the poor have an ontological privilege when it comes to rebellion because they incarnate the failure of the system and so have less delusions about it and less of a stake in the system. But he ignores Hardt and Negri's warnings about anti-Americanism. Eagleton's scathing contempt for American consumerism and fundamentalism is persuasive and his argument that these are two, mutually dependent, consequences of the same ethical and political failure to respect the dignity of ordinary people is very interesting. But he completely ignores the radical America that Howard Zinn's history records and takes no account of the genuine popularity of radicals like John Steinbeck, Woody Guthrie and, in the current era, Bruce Springsteen. This omission gives Eagleton's account of America something of the feeling of a very English caricature.

After Theory is not written for a non-specialist audience. Slavoj Zizek and Frank Kermode are wildly enthusiastic about it. But it will be particularly appreciated by people whose encounters with `high theory' have been intimidating rather than enlightening. It proves the validity of Nietzsche's dictum that "Those who know they are profound strive for clarity: those who would like to seem profound...strive for obscurity." Hopefully, After Theory will prove to be one of many new books that seek to explore important philosophical questions in a spirit vastly more democratic than the narcissistic obscuratism of high theory. Read more ›

35 of 41 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars a nice read, but no breakthrough March 22, 2004

By Tron Honto

Format:Hardcover

I picked up this book after it had been mentioned on the Chicago NPR station as being hailed as 'critical bomb' being dropped on critical theory. This it was not.

Eagleton's work--at least all that I have read--is always lucidly written and adorned with insights of wide-breadth and importance. This book is not an exception. It is, however, not a book that seems to me likely to be read for eternity.

What I enjoyed most about was its fireside wisdom quality. In a sense, this book resembles a series a letters from your mentor about academic work, its potential, failings, and excesses, and some words about his view of life in general.

Thus, the claimed philosophical importance of the work is an exaggeration attached for pushing the work forward for publishing. It is by no means a definitively new alternative course for critical theory. It is nevertheless an enjoyable book full of numerous worthwhile insights.

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Rehabilitating the Left January 18, 2005

By Steven Reynolds

Format:Hardcover

This book has been somewhat mis-categorized by sellers as literary theory. Chapter 1 covers that ground admirably, and Eagleton's no-nonsense historical tour will be bracingly refreshing to anyone who has studied literature at university in the last twenty years. Of course, he doesn't quite toss out everything from structuralism to postmodernism, but he does probe their limits with his customary humour and flair and give a convincing explanation of the academic interest in pop culture that followed them. But all this is merely a prelude. Eagleton's real project here is the recovery of the intellectual Left which, since the 1970s, has been burrowing ever deeper into arcane academic specializations under the banner of "cultural theory", and simultaneously becoming ever more politically remote. As Eagleton puts it, Marxism is now just a mildly interesting way of talking about "Wuthering Heights". This won't do. By and large, cultural theory has been massively evasive on such central topics as Truth, Objectivity, Morality, Virtue and Evil, preferring to take a contingent, relativistic, culturally-informed non-view on the rare occasions when it got around to raising such issues at all rather than just shunning them in embarrassment at the prospect of having to stand for something. But the period when this was more or less acceptable may be coming to an end. The Left, he maintains, has a lot to offer in an age of resurgent far-right extremism - a malady afflicting both the West's enemies and its self-proclaimed defenders. Most of "After Theory" consists of an attempt to rehabilitate the Left - to lure it down from the ivory tower (if not smash its foundations) and to reapply it to those Big Questions.... Socialism is offered not only as a system of government, but as probably the only way of really understanding what a human being is.

Does Eagleton convince? He puts his case with verve and enthusiasm - even if a little too flippantly at times - but in devoting only 200-odd pages to such a vast topic he can do little more than scratch the surface. He admits as much in the final pages, but is a text which merely gestures towards the topic enough? "After Theory" will probably remind dormant radicals what they used to care about before they became depressed, but it won't convince the conservative morons it needs to. The problem is that it's very difficult to point to working examples of socialism. Marxism shifted to cultural theory partly out of political impotence and mass disenchantment. Nothing has changed on that score, whereas triumphal capitalism is the very air we breath (increasingly polluted as it is). Most people associate socialism with repression, uniformity and an embarrassing class consciousness, whereas capitalism (which has all those traits and more) has cunningly refashioned itself as democratic, libertarian and impeccably inclusive. Everyone is welcome. As Eagleton quips: "It really doesn't care who it exploits." Yes, Terry, but it doesn't much mind who it elevates, either. And while ever capitalism continues to succeed in pitching the dubious but occasionally truthful argument that the next billionaire might very well be you, then thinkers like Eagleton will have a very hard time shifting it. If you lean to the Left anyway, then "After Theory" will make you think about what you've wasted the last 20 years being distracted by, and it just might rekindle your revolutionary spirit. If you lean to the Right, then it's unlikely to change your mind. Read more ›

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Reminder of the compassion of true socialism January 27, 2006

By John L Murphy TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I agree with those who find this book preaches to the converted. In this case, the radical (as opposed to the liberal) left. I remain skeptical of all such world-changing agendas, but if you're needing a sharp rejoinder to the capitalist hegemony that permeates even this electronic screen you're reading, then this book's a sensible collection of somewhat scattered thoughts on the need for kindness, humility, and idealism. Getting back to the roots of Marx rather than Marxism, and the socialist imperative to assist what Eagleton updates to be "reciprocal self-realization", he argues that cultural theory must revive itself through an embrace of Aristotle's ethics of flourishing, and that freedom and autonomy can be achieved by attending to others' needs rather than our own, as capitalism demands.

Of course, as with many works in both philosophy and critical theory, how this is to be practically accomplished cannot be found in these lively if self-congratulatory pages that take on the current Bush administration, the selfish and hypocritical psuedo-Christian contigent, and those pursuing profit so that, as Eagleton notes in an aside that seems to be more true each day, capitalism can appropriate our very senses. Even if this is more inspiration than information, Eagleton, by his use of examplars as disparate as George Best, Lady Macbeth, Mick Jagger, the anawim of the book of Isaiah, and especially Lear on the heath makes his points engagingly and wittily. I noticed a strong anti-Americanism permeating nearly every page, especially as the book went on, but his postscript assures readers that he only means those in charge right now, not the rest of us presumably much better educated and more sensitively altruistic!...

The brisk first hundred pages, taking on the high and low points of what has come to be the currently pre-eminent power of critical theory were, for me, the most insightful. After this, his journey into philosophy, while nearly understandable and almost cogently clear (by comparison with most theorists), wandered into more rarified territory. I recommend his short book--nearly an elegy--on Marx as a companion to this; it's a bit of a shock to read 227 pages that preach the end of theory after his primer on Literary Theory: an Introduction aided many of us two decades ago in plodding our way through the muddled theorists with whom so many of my tenure-grasping professors and ambitious classmates were smitten. I disagree with his inclusion of some of these theorists as clear explicators of academic prose. On the other hand, his put-downs of scholarly obfuscation prove welcome. If only all scholars wrote with such verve.

After decades commenting on as well as leading the lefty and tenured vanguard, Eagleton keeps up with impressive stamina with the current zeitgeist, and he's not winded yet. While this book, again, will not likely convince anyone who is not already sympathetic to the socialist-humanist approach, it is worthwhile, if a little too reliant on a flow of snappy and snarky rejoinders. But then, how many theorists, right, left, or center, can entertain as they educate?

Although I left this book wondering all the more how Eagleton's mission to retrain the world so as to "take a breather from capitalism" and opt for a socialist rest-cure is in any real sense going to happen, I did learn from his eagerness and his enthusiasm to keep more aware of how we are being led further and further away from the compassion and the moral decency that have characterized true socialists, humanists, and educators. Read more ›