Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Books

After Theory by Terry Eagleton

Abdelkader Aoudjit discusses Terry Eagleton’s take on what comes after postmodernism.

In 1983, Terry Eagleton, previously Professor of English Literature at Oxford University and now Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester, argued in his highly popular and influential Literary Theory: An Introduction, that no work of literature and no literary theory are genuinely apolitical. He wrote that what counts as literature and good taste “only serves the ruling power-interests of society at large.” Thus, according to him, English as an academic discipline became important in the early 20th century in order to incorporate middle classes into “unity with the ruling aristocracy,” and “to diffuse polite social manners, habits of ‘correct’ taste and common cultural standards.” Eagleton further argued, following British cultural theorists Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, and E.P.

…