According to David Eagleton, we are living in the age where popular culture or current issues that he would consider as low-brow, has been taken seriously as an academic pursuit in serious journals and up to college levels. He mocked at this rather whimsical approach to studying social sciences, and humanities and would prefer an emphasis on other major concerns that are facing the world today. He mourned the times when serious cultural theory used to be a discipline that produced literary and philosophical debates and ideas on politics, society, economics and history. He wondered if the younger generation would build on these academic giants and produce more interesting ideas and ideology to seize the opportunity to change the world or improve it post 911 and Iraq War. Alas, the sense of complacency and the 'afflluenza' that has gripped the middle-class and baby-boomers in the last decades made us focus more on the less-meaningful aspects of life.; wealth has made us soft.
Perhaps in reaping the benefits that capitalism has provided in democratising knowledge (Facebook and Youtube seem the perfect vehicle as contemporary media), everyone has the right to theorize on any topic(or anyone) could be the subject of cultural theory? In the past, the bourgeois ensured that literary theory is liberal and left-leaning to allow greater exploration of the mind. Privilege upbringing allowed the fortunate few to dedicate their life-long learning to fight social injustice, oppression, feudalism, colonialism and gender inequality. But in contemporary times when capitalism is widespread and has become a form of mass 'opium', people are more pre-occupied with consumption rather than creative destruction. We are more obsessed with price comparison website to find the cheapest services and products listen to than rants and protests to redefine an ideology more appropriate and sustainable than a convenient marriage between democracy and laissez faire system. For academics like David, there is a concern that we have abandoned studying topics like Structuralism, Marxism, Post-Structuralism and the like and have opted for sensationalism. Students prefer the erotic rather than the cerebral and esoteric.
How real are David's claims? A quick survey of mostly 'liberal arts' course in the US bring out some fascinating but really bizarre subjects too lame to be taken seriously for the brain matter: Seinfeld and Philosophy at Georgetown University, Women's Studies disguised as Humanities offer a course on Soap Operas and Desperate Housewives, at State University of NY, undergrads undertake Cyberporn and Society and discussion on X-rated Japanese comics as assignments for Anthropology of the Unconscious . Instead of discussing political desires of the downtrodden class, scholars are researching on the 'aesthetics, societal and philosophical properties of smut in various academic departments ranging from literature to film, law to technology, anthropology to women's studies.'(1)
Eagleton considers the defects of cultural theory brought about by postmodernism. He argued that many theorists have turned their back to confront important social issues and have conspired with capitalism to advance the course of transformation, diversity and transgression. He objected to postmodernist rejecting the ideas of 'totalities, universal values, grand historical narratives, solid foundations to human existence and the possibility of objective knowledge.' He frowned upon them for being 'sceptical of truth, unit and progress, opposes what it sees as elitism in culture, tends towards cultural relativism and celebrates pluralism, discontinuity and heterogeneity.' (13) Nevertheless, he did not offer any alternatives. His form of Marxist ideals which promote a classless society in which anyone has the right to think ( in opposition to capitalistic oppression) contradicts his exclusive, elitist propaganda of maintaining intellectual status quo of the few.
Perhaps David has overlooked the importance of taking popular culture seriously. History has shown that left to its own device with no critic to debate its pros and cons, it has a damaging effect on politics and economics. Hasn't Scientology been a popular form of science-fiction based meditation on life before it took on a cultish personality? Now it has a very evil capitalistic(and hidden political) agenda all over its hands. Knowledge has been decentralised from the hands of the few (the autocrats, elites and the bourgeois) to the hands of the masses. On one hand, people could form theories that they fancy no matter how ridiculous. On another, the Occupy Wall Street, the Occupy London and Arab spring show that with the help of the power of interconnectivity and immediacy of social networking website and smart phones ( all the marvels of capitalism and globalism), ordinary people can rally each other to remove dictators even without the help of grand theories of Marxism and whatnot.
(1)Time Magazine Mar 26 2006, Sex in the Syllabus by Lisa Cullen
(13)After Theory, by Terry Eagleton
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