Terry Eagleton’s After Theory

Terry Eagleton’s After Theory

Terry, a Self styled intellectual outsider who was once the country's "top" literary professor. When he was Warton professor of English at Oxford he styled himself "a barbarian inside the citadel"
The arrival of literary theory from France was broadly welcome, for it crushed with its harshness the worn out grumble of conventional philosophy. Yet while he was theory's ambassador, he always managed to signal his own distance from it. Literary Theory ended with what became his personal statement of the hidden importance of politics in logical life.
It’s a big difference between being an observer and a critic to a “grumpy old man” as he describes the difference between being sexy and sex. In the good old days of 60’s for example the “Woodstock” was a musical concert of political messages of peace and love to the world and the politician in particular. Those participants had a different meaning of having sex in the open air as “love and being loved” rather than a raunchy sex of a porn star couple who want to impress the world by their size or number of positions they know! Yet using the drug was another way to reach the dream of true peace rather than get stoned and stab the innocent as we experiencing today.
In my opinion theory has gone lost, but not because it has encouraged academic of withholding information from the public and severe reductiveness.
It is because it has not been political enough. So, as a "radical", Eagleton is necessarily out of step with even the intellectual fashions for which he once seemed cheerleader. "It is not pleasant to be out of line,"
He is caught between two attitudes to the academic business. On the one hand, he rather wants to laugh at all those serious undergraduates (and lecturers) attaching the same arguments about sexual misbehaviour to whatever they are studying.
There is also a Marxist Terry, who sees the duty of all, intellectuals (in particular) to be revealing the criminal act of capitalism. On this matter he speaks sadly of the shortcomings of "cultural theory". We live in "a social order which urgently needs repair" and we are told that "theory must be harnessed to practical political ends". Yet it is not quite clear what he thinks is to be done. How is the study of culture to effect the revolutionary changes he dimly sketches? He talks about "fashioning a world in which the hungry could be fed", but takes it for granted that this is not something that would ever concern those professionally involved in politics or commerce. He is superciliously dismissive of all politicians. He likes to use the word "democratic" about what he likes, "the whole idea of cultural theory is a democratic one", and so on. Yet his only word for the state in which we live is "capitalist".