After Theory

Contemporary Review, July, 2004

After Theory. Terry Eagleton. Allen Lane. [pounds sterling]18.99. ix 225 pages. ISBN 0-713-99732-X. Prof. Eagleton, famous among left-wing thinkers as a leading cultural theorist, has now questioned the value of currently held high cultural theories. The book opens with the assertion that 'the golden age of cultural theory is long past'.

'One zealous orthodoxy' he writes, 'gives way to another'. It is, in short, very hard to know how one should think. Prof. Eagleton provides the answer by tracing the histories and uses of various theories of culture whilst insisting that 'culture is a set of spontaneous habits so deep that we can't even examine them'. Were man not culturally grounded he could not worry about cultural theories, nor could he read Prof. Eagleton's writings. There is, then, still a place for cultural theory, for the idea of absolute truth, for the idea of a relationship between objectivity and ethics and for morality. Regarding moral precepts he adds that 'there can be no love without law'. Religion too has a place, a large place, for 'much atheism today is just inverted religion'. Theories remain important but 'the style of thinking known as postmodernism is now approaching an end'. Theories of class, race and gender are not enough in themselves. The new demands of globalisation and world-wide terrorism will require new ways of enquiry: 'This book' he concludes, 'has been an opening move in that inquiry'.