Back to the Future

Back to the Future David Alderson University of Manchester The Reification of “Theory” The demise of “theory” has been variously predicted, willed, resisted and repudiated since the start of its career.f In the early days of that career, reactions against it were often conservative, so that it became a badge of one’ s progressivism to be a principled supporter of it, even if only because of a general democratic belief in the importance of debate. Despite his disagreements with structuralism, Raymond Williams supported Colin McCabe in the Cambridge debacle of the early eighties, as did Frank Kermode. (Both Kermode and Williams developed complex relations to theory as it came to be known and practiced, though for different reasons.) The radical credentials of theory were considerably bolstered by Terry Eagleton’ s own Literary Theory (1983), a text which has been crucial in the establishment and dissemination of a certain canon oftheory to more than one generation of undergraduate students. Doubtless, the mere fact that Eagleton, as a Marxist, was on the side of theory also contributed to the perception of its inherent subversiveness. Today, in the u.s., the language and values of theory have become identified with those of the left to the t This review article examines Terry Eagleton’s After Theory (Cambridge MA: Basic Books, 2003, 231 pp.). ESC 30.4 (December 2004): 167-187 David Alderson is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Terry Eagleton (Palgrave, 2004) and Mansex Fine: Religion, Manliness, and Imperialism in Nineteenth Century British Culture (Manchester UP, 1998), and the co-editor of Territories ofDesire in Contemporary Queer Culture (Manchester UP, 2000). extent that an attack on the former appears by definition to be an attack on the latter, though the reality of this situation is cast in partial doubt by one of the most forthright critics of the politicized academy: “the real battle that is now shaping up is not between radicals and conservatives but between radicals and old-style liberals. Or perhaps one should now say that the classical liberal position—which fought for ideals of quality, disinterested scholarship, and for advancement according to merit, not adherence to a given political line—is now castigated as conservative and reactionary” (Kimball 229). Clearly, for Kimball, the current conjuncture represents a change in understanding of what constitutes reaction. His truck is with a real or perceived relativism which is nonetheless hitched to an expressed desire to undermine dominant political, institutional and ideological arrangements. This seems to me accurately to capture the gen­ eral ideological complexion ofwhat appears to have been a determined and highly organised backlash against theory in the u.s., one which, as Ellen Messer-Davidow has demonstrated, has been highly successful in denying funding to theory-led projects, especially those perceived (consequently) to be left-wing (193-233)- In this context, any challenge to theory may be perceived as part of a more general reactionary agenda, and indeed, informally, I have heard responses to Eagleton’s After Theory along pre­ cisely these lines. This is no doubt because, superficially, Eagleton appears to share certain preoccupations with the Kimballites, since attempts to rehabilitate ideals of truth, objectivity, virtue and morality and to return to foundational thought, tend to be considered self-evidently the province of the political right these days. But here we touch on a paradox, since Eagleton, who has maintained a principled commitment to Marxism through a period when many fell offthat academic bandwagon with greater or lesser degrees of dignity, has begun to sound merely old-fashioned. In part Eagleton’ s own argument helps to illuminate why this should be, since that paradox is generated by theory’s complicity with modernity. What I mean by this is illustrated in part by Eagleton’s dismissive opening discussion of cultural theory’ s concern with the body. The parodic qualities of his account do Eagleton few favours, and are likely to be unconvincing to those who have found the work to which he alludes compelling, but his general point is, as usual, a dialectical one which recognizes that such apparently dissenting work is mostly in keeping with our desublimated times. To...