Terry Eagleton

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Terry Eagleton holding one of his books after a talk in Manchester Mechanics' Institute in 2008

Terence Francis Eagleton (born 22 February 1943, Salford then in Lancashire) is a British literary theorist and critic, regarded by some as Britain's most influential living literary critic.[1] Formerly Eagleton was Thomas Wharton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford (1992-2001) and John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester until 2008. In October 2008, Terry Eagleton was appointed to a Chair in English Literature at the Department of English & Creative Writing at Lancaster University. He also holds a visiting professorship at National University of Ireland, Galway.

He has written more than forty books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983);[2] The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990), and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996).

He will give a Gifford Lecture in March 2010, titled The God Debate.[3]

Contents

[edit] Career

Eagleton obtained both his M.A. and Ph.D. from Trinity College, Cambridge and then became a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Having spent some years at Oxford at Wadham College, Linacre College and St. Catherine's College; he was John Edward Taylor Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester until he was forcibly retired in 2008. [4].

At Cambridge, Eagleton was a student of the left-wing literary critic Raymond Williams. He began his literary studies with the 19th and 20th centuries, then adapted to the stringent academic Marxism of the 1970s. He then published an attack on his mentor—Williams' relation to the Marxist tradition was more nuanced—in the pages of the New Left Review, doing so in the mode of the French critic Louis Althusser.

More recently, Eagleton has in a sense looked intellectually back to his Cambridge years, reintegrating cultural studies with more traditional literary theory. During the 1960s, he'd become involved with the left-wing Catholic group Slant, authoring a number of theological articles, as well as a book Towards a New Left Theology. His most recent publications suggest a renewed interest in theological themes. Another significant theoretical influence on Eagleton is psychoanalysis. He has been an important advocate for the work of Slavoj Žižek in the United Kingdom.

[edit] Published thought

[edit] Theory

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983, revised 1996), probably his best-known work, traces the history of the study of texts, from the Romantics of the nineteenth century to the postmodernists of the later twentieth century. Eagleton's thought remains firmly rooted in the Marxist tradition; he has also produced critical work on such more recent modes of thought as structuralism, Lacanian analysis, and deconstruction.

As his memoir The Gatekeeper demonstrates, Eagleton's Marxism is far from a merely theoretical pursuit. He was active in Marxist organisations (most notably the International Socialists, a forerunner to the British Socialist Workers Party), as well as Alan Thornett's Workers Socialist League, whilst in Oxford. He continues to provide political commentary for publications such as the New Statesman, Red Pepper and The Guardian.

After Theory (2003) represents a kind of about-face: a careful indictment of current cultural and literary theory, and what Eagleton regards as the bastardisation of both. He does not, however, conclude that the interdisciplinary study of literature and culture that comprises Theory is without merit. In fact, Eagleton argues that such a merging is effective in opening cultural study to a wider range of significant topics. His indictment instead centers on "relativism"—theorists' and postmodernity's rejection of absolutes. He concludes that an absolute does exist: Every person lives in a body that cannot be owned because nothing was done to acquire it, and nothing (besides suicide) can be done to be rid of it. Our bodies and their subsequent deaths provide the absolute around which humankind can focus its actions.

Eagleton has also completed a trilogy of works on Irish culture.

[edit] Religion

In October 2006, Eagleton produced an impassioned, widely quoted[5] critique of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion in the London Review of Books. Eagleton begins by questioning Dawkins' methodology and understanding: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology."[6] He concludes by suggesting Dawkins has not been attacking organised faith so much as a sort of rhetorical straw-man: "Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to ‘sophisticated’ religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass. The huge numbers of believers who hold something like the theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals."[7]

Although many of his texts include aspects of philosophical debate, Eagleton himself does not claim to be a philosopher, stating with his usual good-humour, "Perhaps I should add that I am not myself a philosopher, a fact which I am sure some of my reviewers will point out in any case."[8]

[edit] Ditchkins

During four days of talks at Yale University's Terry Lectures in April 2008, Eagleton spoke of a fictious person, Ditchkins, which is derived from the merger of the two last names Hitchens and Dawkins (Etymology: Dawkins + Hitchens). In these lectures Eagleton often caricaturizes the two famed writers and outspoken atheists, routinely drawing Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins as one single, formidable debate opponent.

  • "...someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, a couplet I will henceforth reduce to the solitary signifier Ditchkins..." (April 1, 2008 Christianity Fair and Foul)
  • "It would, I think, do no harm to Ditchkins comically intemperate politic against religion, indeed it would reinforce it, to approach the subject as the liberal rationalist that he is rather to subject us as he does to the kind of indiscriminate condemnation which is neither liberal nor rational. It would be greatly to the benefit of Ditchkins' moral integrity and intellectual honesty, I think, to intersperse his mildly monomaniac diatribes on the topic—we’re speaking her of monotheism versus monomania, if you like—with the odd glancing allusion, I mean even if he relegated it to some shy footnote nestling beneath his text.[9] (April 3, 2008 The Limits of Liberalism[10])
  • "Another familiar mistake by the Ditchkins of this world" (April 8, 2008 Faith and Reason)
  • "Moral relativism is an attempt to defuse conflict among other things. And so among other things, I think is, multi-culturalism. Multi-culturalism is extraordinarily coy of calling other people's beliefs errant nonsense, or unmitigated garbage. There are huge amounts of garbage around the place that we need to name for what it is. One of the most admirable aspects of Chris Hitchens's God is not great—a superbly stylish and well-argued book—is that Hitchens believes religion is disgusting and has absolutely no qualms about saying so. I mean he may be right or wrong about that, but he's properly unafraid to announce it and to take the consequences of it, including getting snagged off by me, his old comrade. [*Eagleton smiles*]" (April 10, 2008 Culture and Barbarism[11])[12]

[edit] Controversy

In Autumn 2007, Eagleton's vitriolic attack on Martin Amis—included in the introduction to a 2007 edition his book Ideology—was widely reprinted in the British press.

Eagleton had apparently been disturbed by Amis' own widely quoted writings on "Islamism," directing particular attention to a specific passage (which Eagleton misattributed, and was not in fact taken from Amis' writings, but rather quoted from an informal interview Amis gave in relation to the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, which had come to light the day before):

"What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suff­­er­­­ing? Not letting them travel. Deportation—further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan… Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children...It’s a huge dereliction on their part"

Eagleton attacked Amis for the passage, while claiming to register surprise as to its source, stating: "[these are] not the ramblings of a British National Party thug...but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world." Eagleton drew a connection between Amis and his father (the novelist Kingsley Amis), who Eagleton characterised as "reactionary". The younger writer, Eagleton went on to write, had learnt more from his father — [whom Eagleton described as] "a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals"— than merely "how to turn a shapely phrase." Eagleton went on to argue: "But there is something rather stomach-churning at the sight of those such as Amis and his political allies, champions of a civilisation that for centuries has wreaked untold carnage throughout the world, shrieking for illegal measures when they find themselves for the first time on the sticky end of the same treatment." [13]

The essay became a cause célèbre in British literary circles. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a commentator for The Independent, wrote an editorial about the affair; Amis responded via open letter, calling Eagleton "an ideological relict," adding that he would be "unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx".[14] Amis noted that the view Eagleton attributed to him as his considered opinion was in fact his spoken description of a tempting urge, in relation to the need to "raise the price" of terrorist actions. Amis also derided Eagleton's scholarly procedure: Eagleton had quoted him writing the above remarks, whereas they were actually "spoken"—excerpts from a newspaper interview about Amis' upcoming book on Islamism, The Second Plane, which Eagleton then presented out of context.

Eagleton's personal attacks on Amis' father, the novelist Kingsley Amis, further prompted a response from Kingsley's widow, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Howard wrote to the Daily Telegraph, noting that for a supposed "anti-semitic homophobe," it was peculiar that the only guests at the Howard-Amis nuptials should have been either Jewish or gay.[15] As Howard explained, "Kingsley was never a racist, nor an anti-Semitic boor. Our four great friends who witnessed our wedding were three Jews and one homosexual." Eagleton's position is belied by a reading of Kingsley Amis' published novels, not mention the numerous anti-racist sentiments he expresses in his memoirs — on the other hand, Martin Amis has characterized Kingsley's private political opinions[16] as occasionally reactionary. In a later interview, Howard added: 'I have never even heard of this man Eagleton. But he seems to be a rather lethal combination of a Roman Catholic and a Marxist ... He strikes me as like a spitting cobra:­ if you get within his range he'll unleash some poison.' [17]

Eagleton attempted to defend his comments about Martin and Kingsley Amis by article in The Guardian, claiming that the main bone of contention—the substance of Amis' remarks and views—had got lost amongst the media furore.[18]. During an interview with Jon Snow, Martin Amis commented that Eagleton had "never set eyes on the article" that he was claiming to quote from, and that Eagleton had "lazily and cornily defamed" his father "when he was not around to defend himself".

[edit] Critical reactions

William Deresiewicz wrote of Eagleton's book After Theory, as follows: "[I]s it that hard to explain what Eagleton's up to? The prolificness, the self-plagiarism, the snappy, highly consumable prose and, of course, the sales figures: Eagleton wishes for capitalism's demise, but as long as it's here, he plans to do as well as he can out of it. Someone who owns three homes shouldn't be preaching self-sacrifice, and someone whose careerism at Oxbridge was legendary shouldn't be telling interviewers of his longstanding regret at having turned down a job at the Open University."[19]

The novelist and critic David Lodge, however, writing in the May, 2004 New York Review of Books, took a more nuanced position on both Theory and After Theory. He concludes,

"Some of Theory's achievements are genuine and permanent additions to knowledge, or intellectual self-knowledge. Eagleton is quite right to assert that we can never go back to a state of pre-Theory innocence about the transparency of language or the ideological neutrality of interpretation... But like all fashions it was bound to have a limited life of novelty and vitality, and we are now living through its decadence without any clear indication of what will supersede it. Theory has, in short, become boringly predictable to many people who were once enthusiastic about it, and that After Theory is most interesting when its focus is furthest from its nominal subject is perhaps evidence that Terry Eagleton is now bored by it too."[20]

[edit] Publications

  • The New Left Church [as Terence Eagleton] (1966)
  • Shakespeare and Society
  • Exiles And Émigrés: Studies in Modern Literature (1970)
  • The Body as Language : outline of a new left theology (1970)
  • Criticism & Ideology (1976)
  • Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976)
  • Walter Benjamin, or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (1981)
  • The Rape of Clarissa: Writing, Sexuality, and Class Struggle in Samuel Richardson (1982)
  • Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983/1996/2008)
  • The Function of Criticism (1984)
  • Saint Oscar (a play about Oscar Wilde)
  • Saints and Scholars (a novel, 1987)
  • Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives (editor) Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989.
  • The Significance of Theory (1989)
  • The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990)
  • Ideology: An Introduction (1991/2007)
  • Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton Script, The Derek Jarman Film (1993)
  • The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996)
  • "Heathcliff and the Great Hunger" (1996)
  • "Crazy John and the Bishop and Other Essays on Irish Culture" (1998)
  • The Idea of Culture (2000)
  • The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (2001)
  • The Truth about the Irish (2001)
  • Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2002)
  • After Theory (2003)
  • The English Novel: An Introduction (2004)
  • Holy Terror (2005)
  • The Meaning of Life (2007)
  • How to Read a Poem (2007)
  • Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics (2008)

[edit] Quotations

  • "Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver. 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 rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on. It is also, as we have suggested before, rather an awkward moment in history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions." After Theory by Terry Eagleton, 2003.
  • "In some traditionalist universities not long ago, you could not research on authors who were still alive. This was a great incentive to slip a knife between their ribs one foggy evening, or a remarkable test of patience if your chosen novelist was in rude health and only 34." After Theory, by Terry Eagleton
  • "What perished in the Soviet Union was Marxist only in the sense that the Inquisition was Christian." - Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition 2002 Marxism and Literary Theory by Terry Eagleton
  • "Man eternally tries to get back to an organic past that has slipped just beyond his reach.” by Terry Eagleton[citation needed]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "...the man who succeeded F R Leavis as Britain's most influential academic critic." Paul Vallelly, "Terry Eagleton: Class warrior", The Independent, 13 October 2007.
  2. ^ Literary Theory: An Introduction
  3. ^ University of Edinburgh
  4. ^ Times Higher Education
  5. ^ See for instance John Cornwell, "Rebuking obnoxious views is not just a personality kink", The Sunday Times, 24 December 2006, and Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion - there are over 700 Google hits.
  6. ^ Terry Eagleton (2006-10-19). "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching". London Review of Books 28 (20). http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html. Retrieved on 2006-11-26. 
  7. ^ Terry Eagleton (2006-10-19). "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching". London Review of Books 28 (20). http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html. Retrieved on 2006-11-26. 
  8. ^ Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life, (2007) footnote to p. 1: "Perhaps I should add that I am not myself a philosopher..."
  9. ^ Continuation of talk in order to understand quote's entire context: To say, you know, the work in alleviating human suffering which Christianity and other faiths have carried out for centuries among the wretched of the earth or its efforts in the cause of global peace or the readiness that some religious types have shown to lay down their lives for others. All those clergy who have given their lives as martyrs not least in Latin America in the struggle against U.S. supported autocracies. Acknowledging all this would not necessarily mean for Ditchkins sustaining a fatal wound in the ideology. Many western liberals are, as I've said before, careful to distinguish their criticisms of so-called Islamism from criticisms of Islam itself. They're really [not] so scrupulous however when it comes to home-based faiths like religion. It seems not to be the case that liberalism begins at home. I live in Ireland and the Irish have been shamefully abused and exploited by the Roman Catholic Church in many tediously familiar ways. I won't go through them, but the way the Irish are perhaps the least aware of the way they have been exploited by the Catholic Church is the fact that they have not really been offered given a version of the gospels which took in even the slightest effort to reject for even half decent civilized person so like a lot of people they have been able to buy their atheism or agnosticism on the cheap. And this is a form of deprivation against which one ought properly I think to protest even if it’s a more subtle and less important form of deprivation than being locked up life by psychopathically sadistic nuns for having born a child out of wedlock justifiably bad odor in Ireland today that people sometimes cross the street when they catch sight of a Catholic priest approaching. In the old days it used to be a landlord. Yet the cruelties and stupidities, which the Irish church has perpetrated don't prevent me from recalling how without it generations of my own ancestors in Ireland would have gone unschooled, un-nursed , un-consoled, and unburied. One of my own forebears in late 19th century Ireland—father Mark Eagleton—got into hot water with his Bishop for denouncing the local landlord from the pulpit but I supposed Dawkins wouldn't take kindly to the case required political caricature characteristics can be genetically transmitted permissible but this does seem to be somewhat of an example of it.
  10. ^ video timestamp range 41 minutes 00 seconds to 45 minutes 45 50 seconds
  11. ^ video timestamp range 29 minutes 45 seconds to 30 minutes 49 seconds
  12. ^ "Faith and Fundamentalism: Is Belief in Richard Dawkins Necessary for Salvation?", April 1, 3, 8, 10, 2008
  13. ^ Eagleton, Rebuking obnoxious views is not just a personality kink, The Guardian, Wednesday 10 October 2007
  14. ^ Jonathan Brown, "Amis launches scathing response to accusations of Islamophobia", The Independent, 12 October 2007. (accessed 2008-07-01)
  15. ^ Lucy Cockcroft, "Family defends 'racist' Sir Kingsley Amis", The Daily Telegraph, 11 October 2007. (Accessed 2008-07-01)
  16. ^ Amis, Martin, Experience, Talk/Miramaix Books, 2000
  17. ^ Elizabeth Jane Howard, Daily Mail, 11/10/07
  18. ^ Terry Eagleton, "Rebuking obnoxious views is not just a personality kink", ZNet, 11 October 2007. (accessed 2008-07-01)
  19. ^ William Deresiewicz, "The Business of Theory", The Nation, 29 January 2004. (accessed 2008-07-01)
  20. ^ Lodge, David, "Goodbye to All That", New York Review of Books, 27 May, 2004. (accessed 2008-07-01)

[edit] External links

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