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File Size: 452 KB
Print Length: 162 pages
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (May 29, 2013)
Publication Date: May 29, 2013
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00D4NOZKG
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The Illusions of Postmodernism is one of Terry Eagleton's more difficult books. In good part, I think that the book's comparatively high level of difficulty reflects Eagleton's complex love-hate relationship with postmodernism and related developments, specifically structuralism and post-structuralism. In one of his later books, titled After Theory, Eagleton repeatedly pays homage to the intellectual ferment generated by postmodernism and its immediate antecedents, emphasizing their contributions to literary theory and cultural studies. In fact, he goes so far as to say that the last chapter of After Theory could not have been written had it not been for the work of Michel Foucault.At the same time, however, all other laudatory references to postmodernism and its theoretical kin are pitched at a very high level of abstraction. Eagleton continues to give thanks for their influence, but he stays away from anything concrete. It's as if he's trying to convince himself that these much-made-of departures from conventional theorizing may have shown themselves to be genuinely productive, but he can't think of specific examples to help sustain this favorable claim.Furthermore, in the second edition of his best known book, Literary Theory, Eagleton capably introduces his readers to structuralism and post-structuralism in a way that, in spite of the sensations they created, suggests that they were ultimately pretty sterile. It's hard to imagine a life-long socialist favorably disposed to Marx being impressed with the idea that binary opposites under-gird our social world, but then having to acknowledge that the binary opposites are inevitably misleading because signifiers are so slippery that each can mean almost anything depending on contextual factors. What's the point? And this brings us to postmodernism itself.The upshot of Eagleton's dense, learned, and masterfully written book is that postmodernism, insofar as it has value, is derivative and overdone. It's derivative, Eagleton would have it, because once we work through modernism as it became manifest in the first decades of the 20th Century, postmodernism has little to offer beyond exaggerated caricatures of ideas intrinsic to modernism itself. Yes, Eagleton acknowledges that postmodernists forced us to recognize the nature and extent of the damage done by the oppression of women and racial/ethnic minorities, outcomes that have to be taken very seriously and earnestly applauded. Postmodernists vastly underestimated the importance of class, however, and misconstrued its nature. Moreover, as far as ways of knowing the world and how it works are concerned, postmodernism comes up short.Once again, however, Eagleton seems to feel obliged to repeatedly praise the epistemological and ontological attainments of postmodernism as an over-arching perspective. But once again, the attainments are presented in a form so abstract as to be unrecognizable, and the genuinely productive participants in postmodern discourse remain unnamed. At times the reader may be tempted to raise questions that should have embarrassingly obvious answers, such as "just what is Eagleton claiming for postmodernism."I think the judgment that postmodernism is derivative is a good one, but one with regard to which Eagleon's impressive erudition is thin. A strong argument that our everyday experiences are shaped by social conventions -- that reality is socially constructed -- was made in explicit and convincing terms by sociologists of generations past. Perhaps the best known account of this view is embodied in Berger and Luckmann's book The Social Construction of Reality, first published in 1966.Beyond that, the essentially arbitrary but determinate nature of the social world was effectively acknowledged nearly two centuries ago in Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. To think otherwise, for Marx, was to fall victim to an oppressive ideology that buttressed the exploitative status quo.In short, one need not be familiar with the thoroughgoing uncertainty concerning foundations, values, identities, and truth claims found in the work of modernist writers such a Virginia Woolf to shake off the shackles of 19th Century realism. It is useful to note, however, that neither the sociologists nor the novelists went so far as to assert that the external world has no existence independent of us, a not uncommon judgment among postmodernists.If this critical assessment of the postmodern outlook is on the mark, why bother reading Eagleton's book? The best answer I can give is that it's an education. Eagleton is a talented and practiced polemicist, impressively knowledgeable and supremely skilled when it comes to dismantling an argument that he finds lacking. Yes, it's also true that can be entirely too glib, sometimes writing in a way that borders on stream-of-consciousness. Still, there is an enormous amount of information and insight in the one hundred thirty-five pages that constitute The Illusions of Postmodernism. It can sneak up on readers and take them by surprise. The distinction between use value and exchange value, for example, has been with us since Aristotle. I have to admit, however, that I didn't really appreciate the crucial nature of this dichotomy for Marx's work until Eagleton mentioned it just in passing in an off-handed sentence or two.Though unmistakably polemical, The Illusions of Postmodernism is rich in wisdom, something we can appreciate even when we disagree with Eagleton or find his snide asides at the expense of the U.S. gratuitous and annoying. This is certainly not his most reader-friendly book, but working through it is worth the effort, even for readers who are put off by Eagleton's politics. There is something to be said for Eagleton's love-hate relationship with postmodernism.
Terry Eagleton, best known for the excellent work Literary Theory, here takes aim at postmodernism, still a relatively nascent theory at the time, arguing that the philosophy is politically dangerous and hollow, with many postmodernists not even really believing in what they profess to believe in. It’s a very funny book, though Eagleton at times oversimplifies to make his case.
Terry Eagleton, THE ILLUSIONS OF POSTMODERNISM (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 1996) It is delightful to find a book written about post-modernism by someone who is actively employed in one of the vocations in which the movement was planted, and in which it has flourished. It is especially welcome that this English writer can write, well, in English, unlike so many of the original workers in this field, such as Derrida and Foucault. Eagleton is both a scholar (currently Distinguished Professor of English at the National University of Ireland) and a leading practitioner of literary criticism. Note that I especially agree with much of what Mr. Doepke says in his review, so I will not bother repeating it As you will surmise from the title, this book is critical of much which goes on under the heading of `post-modernism'. I am especially pleased with his statement that the movement suffers from having been developed primarily in the field of literature, and when its way of thinking is translated to other fields, especially ethics and epistemology; it gets in way over its head. Eagleton's primary credentials for speaking on matters relating to religion are his literary and ideological views on Jesus in the Gospels, The Meaning of Life, and his critique of the `new atheists' in Reason, Faith and Revolution, Reflections on the God Debate. The most dramatic impression one gets from reading this book is that `post-modernism' is neither a philosophy, such as `British Empiricism', a method of literary criticism, such as `The New Criticism', or even a framework for research, such as `Structuralism'. Post-Modernism is a political ideology, very similar to `socialism', `liberalism', or `fascism'. This contributes to the fact that there is post-modern architecture, art, dance, feminism, literature, music, anthropology, theatre, and film. There is even a post-modern post-modernism. This explains why so much of Eagleton's book is a play of `post-modernism' off against liberalism and socialism / Marxism. In this regard, Marxism has an unfair advantage, since Eagleton's arguments are based on a single theorist's works, and not on the mélange of ideas from great, average, and mediocre minds which contribute to his picture of `post-modernism'. This diversity of `fronts' on which post-modernism battles often leads to a lot of damage inflicted upon itself by friendly fire. There are often contradictions between people who operate under the post-modern umbrella. To some, the most interesting contradiction is in religion, where post-modernism celebrates diversity. On the one hand, Christianity and Islam are given the license to thrive, each in their own cultural crib, but it prevents the two from seeing eye to eye about things, such as the condemnation of the ideological basis of Islamic terrorism. (The fact that Christianity and Islam do see eye to eye on this matter is a sign that post-modernism has serious flaws). The fact that post-modernism is a political ideology makes Eagleton's book, at the outset, somewhat difficult to follow. From other books, such as Stanley Grenz' A Primer on Post-modernism, we are left with the sense that post-modernism is a coherent philosophy. It is nothing like this at all. It is a Weltanschauung, born of literary criticism and nurtured by several disparate sources, from Wittgenstein to French structuralism, to American pragmatism. This difficulty is compounded by Eagleton's very `literary' style which seems to enjoy the bon mot overmuch. But it explains why the book opens with a myth about a political ideology which has lost all traction on the minds of the populace. On the other hand, it seems that fellow literary critic Eagleton is speaking from the best possible vantage point to tease out post-modernism's clay feet. It is not until well into the second chapter of this book that Eagleton seems to get down to brass tacks, in this opening summary of his subject:`Postmodernist culture has produced, in its brief existence, a rich, bold exhilarating body of work across the whole span of the arts, which can by no means be laid at the door of a political rebuff. It has also generated more than its share of execrable kitsch'. Post-modernism, as its name declares, is a reaction to the `modernist meta-narrative' exemplified by Rene' Descartes, but traceable all the way back to Plato. Three pillars of modernism are the separation of mind (thinking) from the body (as in Descartes' cogito, ergo sum), the reality of universal truths (Plato's theory of forms), and the primacy of rationality as a method for arriving at knowledge. Unfortunately, as Eagleton often points out, the post-moderns are often aiming their arguments at straw men, positions which no one actually held, or at least, not as broadly as they would like us to believe. For example, The third `modernist' pillar is central only to what the History of Philosophy gang calls the `Continental Rationalists', epitomized by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz. And the irony is that two of these three were mathematicians, where this tenant is, was, and always will be true. In fact, since post-modernism, at its heart, is an epistemological skepticism, it fits right in with the primary tenants of that other Age of Enlightenment gang of philosophers, the English Empiricists, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Many of their tenants are so much like Locke's and Hume's philosophy, it's positively embarrassing. Similarly, when post-moderns enter the world of Ethics, they are `depressingly reliant of this Kantian terminology'. The reliance on Kant in Ethics is a good example of how the post-moderns waffle on one of their primary dogmas, the rejection, or at least the devaluing. of universals. Kant's Ethics (and the basis of modern Kantian justice systems by John Rawls) are all about arriving at universals, from another very non-post-modern point of view, the ideal disinterested observer or, in Kantian terms, the perfectly good will. Post-moderns devalue universals or `essential characteristics'. `one of the most heinous crimes in the post-modernist book'. Essential properties are as old as Aristotle. A flip way of characterizing them is the old saw, `If it walks like a duck and it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it's a duck.' If you remove an essential property from an idea of an object, it becomes a different object, not unlike the mechanism of evolution, where arms and scales evolve into wings and feathers, changing a Subclass Diapsida (reptilian dinosaur) into Class Aves (birds). To be sure, essentialism works a bit differently when it comes to cultural categories. The post-modernists love cultural diversity, but seem to ignore the fact that humans, by their nature, have both culture and language, even though there are great differences between cultures and languages. Eagleton is an unapologetic Marxist socialist, and it is from this point of view that much of his criticism of post-modernism is based, especially his final word on the subject. Leftist socialism is all about social action and reformation but `In confronting its political antagonists, the left, now more than ever, has need of strong ethical and even anthropological foundations; nothing short of this is likely to furnish us with the political resources we require. And on this score, post-modernism is in the end part of the problem rather than of the solution.
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