Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis "Terry" Eagleton FBA is a prominent British literary theorist, critic and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth22 February 1943
political identity demand
Language, identity and forms of life are the terms in which political demands are shaped and voiced.
political age spheres
Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm.
struggle heart political
The political currents that topped the global agenda in the late 20th century - revolutionary nationalism, feminism and ethnic struggle - place culture at their heart.
people political everyday
From the viewpoint of political power, culture is absolutely vital. So vital, indeed, that power cannot operate without it. It is culture, in the sense of the everyday habits and beliefs of a people, which beds power down, makes it appear natural and inevitable, turns it into spontaneous reflex and response.
political historical recipes
Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.
political occupation invasion
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.
books-and-reading derivative enabling flawed lack less longer mark mere pen positively readers repressed secondary seen shameful status within writer
Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman ''other'' or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.
democracy socialism negation
Socialism is the completion of democracy, not the negation of it.
constitute core humanities men study university values worth
Real men study law and engineering, while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name.
reading practice literature
Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to happen, the reader is quite as vital as the author.
past viewpoints form
The present is only understandable through the past, with which it forms a living continuity; and the past is always grasped from our own partial viewpoint within the present.
thinking consciousness my-thoughts
All consciousness is consciousness of something: in thinking I am aware that my thought is 'pointing towards' some object.
winning looks states
The liberal state is neutral between capitalism and its critics until the critics look like they are winning.
slavery unions fruit
Modern capitalist nations are the fruit of a history of slavery, genocide, violence and exploitation every bit as abhorrent as Mao's China or Stalin's Soviet Union.