When the very foundations of your civilization are literally under fire, however, pragmatism in the theoretical sense of the word seems altogether too lightweight, laid-back a response.

After Theory begins as an intellectual history and concludes as a cautionary tale. Unfortunately in between there is a messy didactic midriff where Eagleton labors to define Truth and Morality. Such an exploration undercuts the wonderful narrative of the opening chapters where Eagleton paints with tremendous skill and never avoids landing a quick jab:

The most avant-garde cultural journal of the period, the French literary organ Tel Quel, discovered an ephemeral alternative to Stalinism in Maoism. This is rather like finding an alternative to heroin in crack cocaine.

and

Fate pushed Roland Barthes under a Parisian laundry van, and afflicted Michel Foucault with Aids. . .It seemed that God was not a structuralist.

Eagleton weaves his history of Theory and points that its time has now passed. It thrived from 1965-80 and compares this fifteen years with rupture of High Modernism from 1910-1925. He argues that Barthes, Derrida and others were the Joyce and Schoenberg of this later, messier time. He also notes how most of the Theory Gang were left leaning if not further radicalized. The proximity to May '68 isn't really confronted subsequently nor the spot of bother which was both the Cultural Revolution as well as the Islamic Revolution of Iran 1979, the latter of which proved to be a pickle for Foucault. I suppose this is picking battles but such remains distracting, especially given the strange turn the book takes to epistemology and ethics, which comprise chapters 4-7, nearly half of the text. I would give the work two stars on such a twisted agenda but the writing and humor are deserving of more.
( )

Being a theorist – cultural, literary, or anything else – could be intimidating if you’re doing it after the impressively productive years of the ‘60s and ‘70s. These were the acme years of people like Habermas, Derrida, Bourdieu, Foucault, Lyotard, Rorty, Jameson, and several others who played a major role in completely reshaping what theory means inside and outside of academic discourse. In “After Theory,” Eagleton confronts a world where many of these people’s ideas, once considered controversial, are now practically de rigueur. He also shows himself to be a very different thinker than I’ve always assumed him to be. His socialism has hardly abated, but for some reason, I always had him pegged as a staunch postmodernist, too. But that couldn’t be further from the case.

The structure of the book is a bit confused and unfocused. The first half consists of statements about the birth of postmodern theory which are true enough, but Eagleton gives you no idea of what he’s trying to establish or any point he’s trying to make. Perhaps he was trying to spell out some basic postmodern assumptions: a deep distrust of grand narratives, truth, and objectivity, and an overt focus on culture that wasn’t there in modernism. The second half quickly becomes focused and razor-sharp. He comes out to defend the idea of truth, objectivity, and the morality and ethics as theoretical pursuits. And he makes these arguments brilliantly – by showing that, if postmodern assumptions were true, then postmodernism itself couldn’t be, i.e. by showing that it’s internally inconsistent. To pick an exceedingly simple example, if truth didn’t exist, then neither could the statements of postmodernism be considered true. He ends by saying that postmodernists have a bad history of associating all of these things – narratives, truth, objectivity, et cetera – with fundamentalism, and showing why this makes absolutely no sense.

If you’re even somewhat familiar with the overall shape that theory has taken over the last fifty or so years, and have serious doubts about some of its claims, you’ve probably thought about some of the things that Eagleton talks about here. I know I have. I just wish that I was able to articulate them so capably. There’s one major gripe that I have with the book: some of his pronouncements about American leaders and foreign policy seem grossly strident and out of place. Whether one agrees or not isn’t really the point, either: they just looked embarrassing in a book in a book that was mostly about the internal contradictions of postmodernism and critical theory. Well, that, and the slow, bumbling start that I mentioned above. But if you stick with it, he does actually get around to making some important points that really make you scratch your head as to how these ideas could have been held so uncritically by such otherwise intelligent people. ( )

brilliant Eagleton, as always, notwithstanding his sketchy definition of postmodernism (p. 13)

"No way of life in history has been more in love with transgression and transformation, more enamoured of the hybrid and pluralistic, than capitalism. In its ruthlessly instrumental logic, it has no time for the idea of nature -for that whose whole existence consists simply in fulfilling and unfolding itself, purely for its own sake and without any thought of a goal. This is one reason why this social order has a boorish horror of art, which can be seen as the very image of such gloriously pointless fulfillment. It is also one reason why aesthetics has played such a surprisingly important moral and political role in the modern age" (p. 119)

Is jumping from cultural theory to the vices of american foreign and other policy a defect of the book, as suggested by a previous reviewer? Why? It's rather one of its strengths, marking the era of its birth and connecting cultural to political criticism. This is real marxism today -and it makes the book so much more interesting ( )

It started off very strong but in the last two chapters it started to peter out. Around that time it began to focus a bit too much on the errors the West has made in the past several years, particularly the United States, with regard to foreign policy. Quite a drift from the purpose proposed in the introduction. The afterward was on par though. Reading it made me feel rather ignorant because I only recognized 1/5 names he referenced throughout. Still need to look most of those up. I have read very little literary theory (er-not that this was theory, exactly) so this was an interesting book for me, coming from a background with no formal (and very little informal) theory education. I was most interested in what Eagleton had to say about the state of cultural studies in the world today; what it means, what has been explored, what hasn't, etc. I want to read some of his other work as I'd like more in-depth academic exploration. Eagleton could be very amusing at times but I definitely could've handled something denser. Maybe The Illusions of Postmodernism or Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory. ( )

Rambles around rather haphazardly but very provocative along the way. ( )