After theory Terry Eagleton

Chapter 1: Politics of Amnesia

• Age of cultural theory is gone, yet Eagleton thinks that the ideas of past great thinkers are still of immense value
• Although we are going towards a post-modern theoretical era, we cannot ‘forget’ the theories that have been discussed
• We are now living ‘in the aftermath of what one might call high theory’ – moving beyond insights of past thinkers (such as structuralism), moving beyond them and creating new ideas
• New thinking (sexuality, pleasure/fun, contemporary culture, narcissism, etc.)
• New generation forgetting or not realizing the political importance of previous theories (such as post-colonial studies, discourse of gender and sexuality, etc.)
• There are some who believe in ‘historicizing’ and believe that ‘anything that happened before 1980 is ancient history’, that is the amnesia
• The world as we know it is made of recent waves of ‘revolutionary nationalism’, happening since after WWII
• Post-colonial theory shifted focus from class/nation to ethnicity, which is a more cultural than political issue, and this shifted the focus from politics to culture
• Some post-moderns believe that group consensus is dictatorial and solidarity and brainless uniformity
• Feminism has transformed our culture and also the code of morality that exist today
• Rising sense of attacking the ‘normative’, and this postmodern prejudice against the norm and group consensus is “politically catastrophic”
• The traditional working class, which stood for political solidarity, is fading from view
• Postmodernism believes in a social order that is “as diverse and inclusive as possible”