Terry Eagleton
Terry EagletonCapitalism is a system bound to ensnare itself in its own strength, since the more it proliferates, the more fronts it breeds on which it can become vulnerable.
Capitalism is a system which needs to be in perpetual motion simply to stay on the spot. Constant transgression is of its essence.
Capitalism is a way of life as much in love with transgression and transformation and diversity as the postmodernism which so often critiques it.
Capitalism is not the cause of our 'fallen' state. It is the regime which most exacerbates the contradictions built into [us].
Change is unintelligible if it is radical enough. If it is intelligible than it is not full-blooded enough.
Civilization is rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt. It is today conflicted with culture, which is a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and irrational.
Class is a category of 'struggle over the surplus' and he argues that the class struggle 'is likely to continue as long as there is not sufficiency for all..
Cultural theory is responsible for having brought gender, race, power and environment, flesh, desire, and madness, to the fore, but it has come also to have been coopted by capitalism as an exercise in farce with an emphasis on diversity, and transgression: (precisely those seemingly rebellious qualities that capitalism trades in).
Cultural theory is theory aiming at the production of better people through the social transformation of society the goal is to help the lion to awaken.
Cultural theory is today, no longer a dissenting intellectual movement committed to exposing power in all its cultural forms and finding ways to resist it. It has degenerated into an exercise in intellectual futility, not to say into farce'.
Cultural theory is today, nothing but a mildly interesting way of talking about wuthering heights, an 'eccentric hobby,' a 'gentrified version' of the revolutionary philosophy it used to be.
Culture is that without which power cannot operate. That is to say, everyday habits and beliefs of a people, bed power down, making it appear natural and inevitable, turning it into spontaneous reflex and response.
Deconstruction is grounded not in the claim that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.
Evil is a reality in the world. Some people do evil things because they are evil. They are evil in the way that some things are colored indigo. They commit their evil deeds not to achieve some goal, but just because of the sort of people they are.
Evil is unintelligible. It is just a thing in itself, like boarding a crowded commuter train wearing only a giant boa constrictor. There is no context which would make it explicable.
Fundamentalism is the neurotic anxiety that without a meaning of meanings, there is no meaning at all. It is simply the flip side of nihilism.
Fundamentalism is what loomed up as an alternative to the hemorrhaging of public meaning.
Happiness is that which people can even perversely derive from unhappiness (such as complaining).
