Eagleton on "Theory"

'Theory' indicates that our classical ways of carving up knowledge are now, for hard historical reasons, in deep trouble. But it is as much a revealing a symptom of this breakdown as a positive reconfiguration of the field. The emergence of theory suggests that for good historical reasons, what had become known as the humanities could no longer carry on in their customary shape. This was all to the good, since the humanities had too often proclaimed a spurious disinterestedness, preached 'universal' values which were all too socially specific, repressed the material basis of these values, absurdly overrated the importance of 'culture' and fostered a jealously elitist conception of it. It was for the bad, since the humanities had also kept warm some decent, generous values brusquely disregarded by everyday society; fostered--in however idealist a guise--a searching critique of our current way of life; and in nurturing a spiritual elitism had at leas seen through the phoney egalitarianism of the marketplace. Literary Theory, p. 207

I feel from time to time the need to make clear that while it may appear so, my defense of humanism is not a defense of the Liberal humanism that emerged during the Enlightenment. It is a defense of "the human", whom I would define as a linguistic being in a historical/material world who is open to transcendence. I understand the humanities to be the full spectrum of intellectual and creative activity in which being human is so understood. As such it's an area within which we find it possible to think and to be actively engaged with culture and its institutions that live in a tension between preserving what the best humans--i.e., those humans most radically open to the transcendent: its greatest prophets, artists, and philosophers--have bequeathed to us while at the same time subverting all the ways in which what they have bequeathed has had the life squeezed out of it by an elite clerisy/professoriate for ideological or other purposes.

On the one hand, a true humanism should subvert positivism in all its ideological guises, but it should also subvert the kind of nihilistic, anti-positivist, transgression for transgression's sake, debunking for the sake of debunking that has infected too many humanities departments, elite creative writing programs, film studies programs, museums and arts institutions of all kinds. This is less a problem now than it was a few years ago, and I'm not saying that there aren't some very valuable things to be found in the efforts of people in those institutions, but in most cases it's found in the efforts of those who resist what Eagleton, a few paragraphs above the one quoted above, describes how the humanities clerisy functions:

Postmodern theory is part of the postmodern marketplace, not just a reflection upon it. It represents, among other things, a way of amassing valuable 'cultural capital' in increasingly competitive intellectual conditions. Theory, partly because of its high-poweredness, esotericism, up-to-dateness, rarity and relative novelty, has achieved high prestige in the academic marketplace, even if it still provokes a virulent hostility of a liberal humanism which fears being outside by it. . . Theory has been one symptom in our time of the commodifying of the intellectual life itself, as on e conceptual fashion usurps another as shortwindedly as changes in hairstyle. . . .theory has become a kind of minority art form, playful, self-ironizing and hedonistic, one place to which the impulses behind high modernist art have now migrated. It has been among other things, the refuge of the disinherited Western intellect cut loose by the sheer squalor of modern history from its traditional humanistic bearings and so at once gullible and sophisticated, streetwise and disorientated.   p. 206

Cultural sophisticates are just as guilty of 'group think' as the benighted masses from whom they hope to distinguish themselves. I want nothing to do with either the hipness of postmodern theory or the stodgy, liberal humanism that it seeks to subvert. There is some value to sift out from all of that, and I want to give it its due, but both are otherwise symptoms of a deep alienation that I argue comes from a misalignment with the transcendent Deep Real. Postmodern theory seeks to subvert Liberal Humanism because it thinks its assumptions about the 'human' and what it means to be a human subject are untenable, but surely the assumptions of Postmodern Theory need to be subverted because its nihilistic assumptions are untenable. The idea that it's more courageous to be a nihilist is just another form of faux-Nietzschean, phoney, elite group think. There was only one Nietzsche, and he died in an asylum.

I want to argue instead that while I agree that the fundamental assumptions that support the Enlightenment narrative are no longer tenable because it's impossible to defend a metaphysics that assumes stasis and the possibility of certainty--I think that God does play dice and he did so in the creation of the human. And so it is nevertheless possible to present an alternative humanistic metaphysics that embraces dynamic change, chance, and the provisionality of all knowledge while yet asserting that there is such a thing as transcendent truth and goodness.

Justice is not just something we make up. While it's something we never possess or see anywhere in its pure form, it is nevertheless something that we see all around us as working in institutions and in the lives of individuals where it manifests in greater or lesser degrees of approximation to it. It's that ability that any deeply human being experiences that enables him or her to discern this "greater or lesser degree of approximation", and it's  that commonplace experience that provides the premise for my argument. Such an experience, of course, is culturally and linguistically mediated, but the point is that there is something there that is mediated.

This blog is my modest effort to "keep warm generous values brusquely disregarded by everyday society".  I believe that those generous values  are intrinsic to what makes us human, but also that what makes human beings capable of generosity depends on the kind of culture that cultivates it.

Our beliefs and customary practices open up and close off human possibility. Those who work for a just society are those who think it's possible to create one that gives its citizens the best chance to develop that kind of generosity.

It should be clear to anybody who has any sense of the deep meaning of justice that American capitalism promotes beliefs and practices that are toxic for the development of a just society. It's not just the political economic system that needs to be transformed but the fundamental beliefs that ordinary Americans accept as commonplace. Without the latter, the former can never have a chance. 

Americans must wake up from their delusional individualistic fantasy that anything is possible, the sky's the limit, that anybody can be whatever they dream of becoming--if you're willing to work hard for it. This collective delusion breeds narcissists who think that their individual happiness has little or nothing to do with promoting the flourishing of others. And by others I don't mean just friends and family--I mean the stranger, i.e., the broadest understanding of the neighbor. Americans justify their narcissism by aspiring to become billionaires so that they might distribute their excess to causes they deem worthy, but never consider that the system that allows them to become billionaires in the first place is fundamentally unjust. 

That's why an American restlessness of spirit is endemic to the American soul. It's always looking for happiness in precisely the ways that are guaranteed to disappoint it. People want to be autonomous, independent, a power to themselves, unrestricted by the demands of others--or of justice. They want to do as they please. This is the essence of the American Dream, and it's what makes Americans so restless and unhappy. This fantasy is so deeply woven into our national character that is is hard to imagine how it could possibly be dislodged. The only way likely is for an alternative to replace it. It's not something people will be able to say No to until something emerges to which they can say Yes.