Terry Eagleton's 'After Theory'

This week, we have been asked to read part of Terry Eagleton’s ‘After Theory’. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. He writes that we are living in an aftermath of what one might call high theory, in an age, which, having grown rich on the insights of thinkers has also in some ways moved beyond them. It seems quite depressing to think that we are now of the generation that cannot think at the same intellectual level as previous generations. He writes that structuralism, Marxism and post-structuralism are no longer the sexy topics they were, and what is sexy instead is sex. Maybe he is right in many cases, but I don’t think that that is the case with everyone, and I’m sure that not everyone in the past felt that structuralism was sexy.

I also wonder how far new thinking can go? We live in an age where almost anything can be interrogated as part of a student’s studies. I don’t think that this is a bad thing, as long as it doesn’t come to the point where more traditional topics are neglected. However, I do think that if someone has enough of an interest in something, they have the right to look into it more closely, even if I personally don’t find that topic remotely interesting.

Maybe I do not understand this fully, I think Friday’s lecture will help me get my head around this. What Eagleton is saying does make sense, but I’m not quite sure where he’s going with it. Maybe once my part-time job starts I’ll buy the book and find out more!