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The first chapter of Terry Eagleton�s �After Theory� makes a number of

interesting assumptions and poses challenging questions about the evolution


of cultural theory in recent decades. While a number of facets of cultural
theory and the issues they relate to are explored, it seems that the
underlying point is that cultural theory today is in many ways misguided,
and that this is due largely to historical context � political, social, and
cultural. I agreed with many points made throughout this piece, finding
certain ideas to be very significant as well as relevant to the areas I�m
studying, while I found other passages problematic, inspiring only questions
and leaving me with a sense of vagueness and uncertainty, particularly
concerning a definition of terms. In order to summarize my thoughts on
Eagleton�s ideas, I would like to move chronologically from the beginning to
the end of the text, reviewing my response to a representative selection of
passages.

�� Eagleton begins by accentuating what has been lost in terms of cultural


theory. The �pioneering works� of theorists like Lacan, Levi-Strauss,
Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida are behind us, he says, and nothing that has
been produced since this time are anywhere as original. While cultural
theorists expand upon and apply the ideas these �founding mothers and
fathers� came up with, nothing new has arisen. He then describes how the
interests of cultural theory have changed in recent years, essentially
focusing more on the popular than the political. He seems to be saying that
the cultural context of entertainment and pleasure are being studied
seriously in a way they have never been before, that they are receiving more
attention than the cultural context of labour, economy and politics.

�� Perhaps the trend he describes would be most clearly summarized as being


the movement (his many examples seemed to suggest this) towards studying
individual behaviour in one�s most narrowly defined social group and
identity instead of large-scale international or national events and social
behaviour. I could also be seen as a movement towards studying the most
immediate present as opposed to the past. In his words, what is of interest
now is �the erotic body, not the famished one.� There is an obvious
connection implied here. Because we aren�t thinking up any more
ground-breaking original ideas in cultural theory, we are looking in our
immediate personal environments for stimuli to study.

Although I found Eagleton�s discussion of how cultural theory has changed,


and how notions of what is worth studying has transformed, very even-handed
and enlightening, I still found it problematic in one respect. I was
surprised, after reading the first few pages, that Eagleton did not
recognize the general trend any newly created discipline inevitably faces:
that at the beginning, the most ground-breaking and original ideas surface,
no matter what kind of historical context is involved, and that after this
period, it is simply logical and expected that less original ideas and
theories are introduced. I would think that this would be particularly
characteristic of fields within the humanities. This aside, Eagleton makes
some excellent points. While making me feel somewhat guilty for writing my
dissertation on popular film, essentially �working on the history of pubic
hair while half of the world�s population lacks adequate sensation and
survives on less than two dollars a day,� Eagleton also made me feel pleased
that I am not bound up in what seemed to be largely a class-oriented
educational structure, one revolving more around the value of prestige than
of learning, where something is only worth studying if it�s very old and has
been studied before, and of course, no one outside the university classroom
has any access or exposure to. Even after reading about the practice of
studying popular culture as being a symptom of �Western narcissism,� I
realized that I is only natural to study what you know and have been exposed
to, and that it is not only natural, but intelligent. Didn�t Socrates say
that �the unexamined life is not worth living�? Why should my first impulse
not be to understand the context of my personal experience of life? How can
I understand the context of those in the third world with no television
before I understand myself?

�� After exploring these ideas about popular culture studies and trends in
education, Eagleton moves on to focus on a particular area of cultural
studies, the area which focuses primarily on escaping Western narcissism:
post-colonial studies. As the factor had been looming in my mind, I was
pleased to find that one of the first points Eagleton makes here is that of
the recent political and historical context, and how it relates to cultural
studies. I was surprised he didn�t mention it earlier, when describing how
the �golden age of cultural theory� is past. The point he makes here also
explains why fewer grand and original theories which are more political and
historical than popular have been produced in recent years. There are simply
fewer events, of a large political and historical scale, which is
immediately affecting those theorizing. The big revolutions and wars of
earlier in the century are long past, and, as Eagleton says, the �new
generations can remember little of world-shaking importance.� While the
�founding mothers and fathers� of cultural theory had these events in their
immediate context to explore and reflect upon, the more recent cultural
theorists have only a more distant memory of such large-scale and immediate
political stimuli at their disposal.

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