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Terry
Eagleton - "that Marxist goof from Linacre college"
as Northrop Frye once called him (102) - is one of
today's most important cultural critics. In his latest
book, 'Figures of Dissent', some 40 essays based on
book reviews written over the last 15 years have been
collected. Those essays are 3 to 12 pages in length,
and deal with topics ranging from postcolonial theory,
the nature of Gothic or utopia to David Beckham and
forgery. What gives the collection some form of unity
is that the majority of books reviewed have something
to do with some of Eagleton's known interests: literary
criticism, cultural theory, Ireland, Marxism, Wittgenstein...
The essay, as Eagleton writes in a review of a book
by Stuart Hall, is "that most supple, tactical
of literary forms"; and like that author, "he
fashions it with a rare blend of metaphorical flourish
and polemical punch, pitching his tone somewhere between
heavy-duty theory and zesty journalism, at once quick-footed
and high-minded, showman and specialist." (210)
Eagleton's tone is combative, provocative and imaginative.
Trenchancy comes naturally to him, but he also makes
a conscious effort not to be spiteful or unfair. His
prose style is humorous, and at the same time, his
writing retains a certain opacity. The reviews collected
in this book are of uneven interest. His essays on
Gayatri Spivak or Slavoj Zizek are likely to have
far more impact than those on IA Richards or gallows
speeches in eighteenth-century Ireland. However, even
his minor pieces are colourful. He notes for example
that David Beckham's prose "is as excruciating
as one imagines VS Naipaul's shots at a goal would
be. Reading this aggressively styleless book is a
bit like munching your way dutifully through yard
upon yard of muslin." (266). But there are also
limits to Eagleton's colourful style. Take for example
his critique of deconstruction's ethical turn: "Ethics
for the later Derrida, is a matter of absolute decisions,
which must be made outside all given norms and forms
of knowledge, decisions which are utterly vital, yet
which completely evade conceptualisation. One can
only hope that he is not on the jury when one's case
comes up in court." (247) On the basis of that
example, some could object that Eagleton's comical
turn of phrase is a substitute for more rigorous argumentation.
The
most interesting essays in the collection are those
dealing with the small number of innovative theoretical
currents that have appeared over the last two decades.
"It has been apparent for some time that literary
theory is in something of a cul de sac ... The path
breaking epoch of Greimas and the early Kristeva,
the Althusserians and avant-garde film theorists now
lies a couple of decades behind us. Few truly innovative
theoretical moves have been made since ... It is as
though the theory is all in place, and all that remains
to be done is run yet more texts through it."
(135) But there are exceptions. Gayatari Chakravorti
Spivak, one of the leading theorists of postcolonialism,
"is among the most coruscatingly intelligent
of all contemporary theorists, whose insights can
be idiosyncratic, but rarely less than original."
(161) However, postcolonialism has received so much
criticism "that to use the word unreservedly
of oneself would be rather like calling oneself Fatso,
or confessing to a furtive interest in coprophilia."
(158) Eagleton is not very enthusiastic about the
current postcolonial hype. He finds Spivakian metaphorical
muddles pretentiously opaque. "It might just
be, of course, that the point of a wretched sentence
like 'the in choate in-fans ab-original para-subject
cannot be theorised as functionally completely frozen
in a world where teleology is schematised into geo-graphy'
is to subvert the bogus transparency of Western Reason.
Or it might be that discussing public matters in this
hermetically private idiom is more a symptom of that
Reason than a solution to it." (159) Also, for
Eagleton, the theoretical radicality of postcolonialism
fails to translate itself into a radical political
praxis. "Orwell's politics are much more far-reaching
than his conventionally-minded prose would suggest.
With much postcolonial writing, the situation is just
the reverse. Its flamboyant theoretical avant-gardism
conceals a rather modest political agenda." (164)
But it would be wrong to think, on the basis of his
critique of the hermetic and turgid sentences of postcolonial
theorists, that Eagleton believes that the theory
has no valid insights to offer; Eagleton writes on
Irish issues from a postcolonial perspective. The
book contains essays on a number of Irish writers
(for instance, Wilde, Yeats and Heaney). Eagleton's
fascination with Ireland perhaps partly comes from
the fact that because the Irish "were condemned
to express themselves in a language not of their own,
they could reinvent it with a brio and boldness less
marked in the metropolitan nation." (48) On the
basis of that idea, Eagleton demonstrates the originality
of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. Eagleton's
postcolonial criticism does not suffer from a modest
political agenda as can be seen from his excellent
review of the leading revisionist historian of Ireland,
Roy Foster. Eagleton shows how the so-called 'great
demythologiser' of Irish history remains trapped in
a few myths of his own. Foster blames hostility to
the British state on some deluded demonology of the
Republican version of Irish history. Eagleton comments
that "there must be a fair few Satanists with
scars from plastic bullets." (232) He is entirely
correct to note that "Foster's constant nationalist
knocking, far from representing some daring dissidence,
is now the purest platitude in these islands. In fact
it would be hard these days to get an academic job
in Irish history without a certificate of proficiency
in the pursuit." (233) But what Eagleton fails
to take into account, is that in spite of its hermeticism,
postcolonial theory has proved to be much closer to
the spirit of the Republican Socialism of James Connolly
and more radical on Ireland than most of the intellectual
British Marxist left (like Eric Hobsbawm or Tom Nairn
and the New Left Review) who adopted a position reminiscent
of the old "socialist colonial policy".
For
Eagleton, Slavoj Zizek is "the most formidably
brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural
theory in general, to have emerged in Europe for some
decades." (200) Unlike the turgid sentences of
postcolonial theorists, "his writing is splendidly
crisp and lucid, even if his books can be fearsomely
difficult. ... His style is deep and light simultaneously,
shot through with an intense political seriousness,
but never at all portentous." (203) What Eagleton
presumably likes about Zizek is that he is a lot more
practical and political than most contemporary theorists.
Zizek shows how we are haunted by the Lacanian real
by using examples from popular culture, switching
from Hegel to Hitchcock. Eagleton's criticism is that
Zizek "never really takes time off from his explorations
to reflect on just what a hideous view of human life
he is delivering us, or on how this is compatible
with the political dissent which he clearly still
embraces." Just as human existence for Lacan
is the fantasy by which we plug the terrifying void
of the Real, "so Zizek's chirpy wit and anecdotal
relish serve in part to mask the obscene vision of
humanity he offers." (204-205) Eagleton also
deals with the studies, inspired by the work of Foucault
and Deleuze, on sexuality and the body. Eagleton predicts
that, "there will soon be more bodies in contemporary
criticism than on the fields of Waterloo". "Somatic
criticism" as Eagleton calls this new field of
cultural studies, makes it difficult to distinguish
soft porn from literary theory sections in bookshops;
"many an eager masturbator must have borne away
some sexy-looking tome only to find himself reading
up on the floating signifier." (129) But for
the new somatics, not any old body will do. "If
the libidinal body is in, the labouring body is out.
There are mutilated bodies galore, but few malnourished
ones, belonging as they do to bits of the globe beyond
the purview of Yale." (131) Eagleton engages
in a brilliant discussion of the relation between
body and mind. Eagleton's Roman Catholic background
enables him to have good insights and to write well
on topics such as the body and soul, confession and
resurrection. He corrects quite a few mistaken ideas
about what Christianity has to say about the body.
Eagleton constantly displays a sharp political edge
in those essays. The central problem for him is not
so much the flat-footed style of those texts written
by the cultural left, but that cultural theory today
is limited by the social and political context in
which it is inserted. "Today's left, bereft of
the political opportunities of a Lenin or a Lukács,
is accustomed to practice limping behind theory, or
even being replaced by it." (90) The divorce
between theory and practice has pathological consequences.
"Radical theory tends to grow unpleasantly narcissistic
when deprived of a political outlet. As the semioticians
might put it, the theory then comes to stand in metaphorically
for what it signifies." (160) These are no longer
the days "where 'Marxist' and 'cultural theorist'
are as synonymous as Ivana Trump and liposuction."
(209) Today "socialism is as alien a territory
as Alpha Centauri." (165) But one certainly cannot
accuse Eagleton of capitulating in those essays to
the current zeitgeist of hermetic sentences and political
shyness.
This article was first published in Variant
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