David Thompson takes a look at some of Terry Eagleton’s latest intellectual stylings at al-Graun. It turns out that people who criticize multiculturalism consider it a threat because it creates fissures in the monolith of power, which is necessary to maintain and justify an unequal distribution of resources.
When I lived in Mexico, I travelled continually and would pass tiny towns in the mountains of Veracruz or Oaxaca, or the deltas of Tabasco, and wonder what the daily lives of the people must be like, and in my reverie would think it might be lovely to live amongst them for a while, and learn their ways, and get to know them. And then I’d recall that there was no internet service available, and I’d realize how full of shit I am.
I say this, because among other frothing insinuations, Eagleton proposes that insistence that outsiders abide by certain cultural norms (such as not blowing people up or committing “honor killings”, I presume) is tantamount to “cultural supremacy”:
It is easy to see why a diversity of cultures should confront power with a problem. If culture is about plurality, power is about unity. How can it sell itself simultaneously to a whole range of life forms without being fatally diluted? Multiculturalism is not a threat because it might breed suicide bombers. It is a threat because the kind of political state we have depends upon a tight cultural consensus in order to implant its materially divisive policies.
So culture today means not just sonnets and string quartets, but history, origins, language, kinship and identity. As long as these things are fairly uniform, political power can afford to leave them alone. It is when they become too diverse to scoop into one rigid set of categories that the state risks being undermined, and thus seeks to override them.
Which is exactly why the UK pays for BBC, strange “art” exhibits that challenge that consensus, and high academic posts for people such as Terry Eagleton. It makes me think that he is frankly incapable of realizing just how full of shit he himself is. I don’t see Terry living amongst the immigrant community, and the argument, expressed throughout the essay, that it is only radicals who ever speak truth to power, whilst flattering to the sensibilities of al-Graun readers, is silly. This is, in effect, like a professor, say, at Duke, having as an internet handle the name “intellectualthugniggah.” How chic. How likely to draw criticism from like-minded students and academics. How heroic.
You’d kind of hope, for his sake, that Eagleton would leave off there, but he does not. Here is how this piece ends:
A truly common culture is not one in which we all think alike, or in which we all believe that fairness is next to godliness, but one in which everyone is allowed to be in on the project of cooperatively shaping a common way of life. If this is to include those from different cultural traditions, and if our current society thrives on the exclusion of certain groups, then the culture we are likely to end up with will be nothing like the one we have now. And this is just what will be so valuable about it.
I’ll tell you what, Terry: why don’t you demonstrate your commitment to the differentness of the new, better tomorrow by renouncing your John Edward Taylor professorship of English (so parochial) at the University of Manchester, to demonstrate that you’re not just subsumed by the status quo?
I like this bit, too:
Unless authority entwines itself with the roots of people’s experience and identity, it will remain too abstract and aloof to win their loyalty. If it is to secure their allegiance, power must become the invisible colour of everyday life itself.
You mean, like South Park, Terry? Because I have to tell you that I find its cultural critique rather more compelling than yours. Perhaps that is because, as tenured radical Sir Philip Sidney would have noted, it delights as it instructs? This variety of hogwash pretends to be democratic, but in fact constitutes a language of latter-day hierophants. Let’s see how that translates into something that can move the masses: not much. It is fundamentally elitist. Christ was asked why he spoke in parables, and he said, “If a child ask for bread, who will give him a stone?” The inaccessibility of academic jargon makes it a kind of chamber music. Pitched to the al-Graun readership, this has no more moral force than Eagleton standing in front of his football team and haranguing them to win one for the Manchus.
Twipe.
UPDATE: Tim McNabb points out that I situate the quote incorrectly, in the comments, but allows that it can be read as a reference to accomodative metaphor. What can I say? I’m Catholic.
I wonder how many angels can fit on Eagleton’s pointy head?
“this has no more moral force than Eagleton standing in front of his football team and haranguing them to win one for the Manchus.”
Gold. Though I’ve always been partial to the Hsiung-nu myself.
This sentence made no sense whasoever:
The state needs us to come together in order to divide us? Did I read that correctly? Is that sentence actually that self-contradictory?
Well, technically he’s talking about the “kind,” Mikey. But yes, that’s kind of his point.
Uh huh. This is precisely the aim of identity politics, and it is only made possible by first lending social credence to the multicultural project.
Identity politics are only valuable insofar as they provide political power to a self-defined group (I say self-defined, because the group, as I’ve shown, has the power to excommunicate the “inauthentic”—defined, unsurprisingly to me but evidently unknown to Eagleton, as those who don’t think like they do.
Eagleton’s critique is exactly backwards. Hopefully later today I’ll be able to address an article on Iran I was hoping to get to so as to make this even more clear.
Again.
As an aside—now that you’re doing multicultural critiques, Dan, I’m nearly useless here. Which works out well.
You might consider bidding for the site when I put it up for sale
…
Will you throw your cock into the bargain, or will I have to make do with “Shorter Collins”? ;-p
Jeff,
Once he was but the learner, now he is the master.
(god, I’m a nerd….)
Shit. Too slow. But pretend Jeff didn’t already kinda say this, and enjoy….
Hm. A shockingly establishment-friendly line for a State-owned “radical” to take (shockingly, I say!), but easily fixed:
There we go. A properly Marxy argument against power-distorted culture, with actual radness–and the added bonuses of 1) being a fancy rephrasing of what actual proles think about multiculturalism, 2) being true, and 3) explaining precisely why Terry Eagleton, mouth of teh Power Monolith, would be talking the particular nonsense he’s talking.
Take it, Terry!
(tw: anyone68 …I laughed.)
Mr. Collins:
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
You are no doubt aware that the geezer and I have full copyright protections for the phrase Frothing Insinuationsâ„¢ and you use of said phrase constitutes a violation of said copyright.
We would gladly accept Wire Tranfer, Bank check or plastic to satisfy your obligation. Please be advised that we have the ‘dillo on retainer for collections. You do not want to go there. Upon receipt of payment, however, you will recieve a free “I Survived Andrew Sullivan’s Frothy Insinuationâ„¢” T-shirt in your choice of ecru, magenta or hot pink.
BTW: Great post!
Thanks, BJ. I forget the keystrokes to bring the TM up on this machine. Do you have a PayPal account?
We’ll talk. What color T-Shirt do you want? If you prefer we have the Glenn Greenwald tank top that says “Put a Sock in Your Frothing Insinuation!” Same colors along with Brazilian Rosewood, which, unfortunatly, is a bitch to wash…
Hey, now. Please don’t use the word “bitch” in relation to Glenn, or I’ll be accused of having incited it.
Just to throw a Bible Nerd flag, Jesus was adressing the issue of God giving good things to His people, not why he spoke in parables. The point is valid, but the illustration/quote isn’t.
What do you call it when you do that???
Tim:
I was thinking of Matthew’s comment:
[28] And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:
[29] For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
Where’s the relevant passage concerning parables?
Misattribution? What’s fivehundredwords.com going to be?
Try ™
Oh sure, McGehee! Now you remember the trademark!
The ‘dillo has you in his sights…
Hey, Dan? Did you have a flashback to Sister whoever rapping your knuckles for misattribution of biblical passages?
I know I did and I’m still sweating…
Nah. She was just glad that I knew the Holy Spirit looks like a dove.
Heh!
Many yesrs ago I earned myself several knuckle raps by making cooing sounds when Sister Francis was teaching about the Holy Spirit.
Then she told my Mom who added several wacks with a yardstick across my butt.
Good times…
Yeah. I sometimes prayed pretty hard for an angel to stay the ass-spanking hand of my dad.
I never did find out who the patron saint of snot-nosed little brats is.
Isn’t St. Fagin of the Orphan Brats?
[…]
Maybe not… being that Fagin was a Jooooooo!
I did my stint in academia. Four years “earning” an RTF degree at UT Austin. I had to take instruction from some of the most absurd Marxists that you’d ever think could hold a professional position anywhere. I critiqued the Weather Channel as a heartless tool of the US Hegemon. I argued FOR cable access as a viable state-smashing technology. I took a class on Ebonics.
That said, I can’t make heads or tails of this Eagleton article. It reads like a Burroughs cut up of two or three other articles. It’s so oblique that I can’t even read the critique cause I can’t figure out what its critiquing.
tachyonshuggy, the fact that the article is so foggy you can’t understand what the author is talking about is telling. The author is not doing what he ought to do, he is not trying* to get his point across to his audience. Instead he has made a great to not communicate with the audience. When someone does something like that, covers his argument in rhetorical flourishes and obscure phraseology and technical terms (for a general audience periodical – this is not a trade journal or a professional publication where certain technical terminology would be expected) then the author is trying to snow you.
The lack of respect shown by the author to the audience ought then be reciprocated by the audience to the author – by rejecting his argument out of hand.
*Or maybe he is and is just an abolsutely muddled headed ghastly bore who believes that he actually is being perfectly clear – a sort of earl of Emsworth, without the sheep-like mildness and the fondness for pigs.**
**Eagleton could be fond of pigs – I don’t know as I certainly haven’t asked him.
Not that I’m a fan of Eagleton, but I’d like to try for a more charitable reading of the article.
Eagleton’s basic premise is that values are essentially universal and cultural difference, at least in comparison with such commonality at the level of values, is irrelevant. No one seems to be arguing with that.
But as we’re all aware cultural differences are not irrelevant. Eagleton points out that arguing about cultural difference has, in many ways, become the substance of politics. We could consider the so-called “culture wars” in the US as a prime example of this. He goes on to argue that cultural change and transformation is more a threat to entrenched power than any single terrorist act. A terrorist act may simply just further empower the powers that be. Cultural change, resulting from cultural differences, can undermine it from the inside. This is already underway, and many commenters here would seem to agree, and argue that multiculturalism is itself a major symptom of this sea-change. This is the standard argument from someone like Bill Oreilley, who argues that the new secularism undermines traditionalism.
However, multiculturalism has become just one more indicator of cultural difference. It is not exempt from the situation it claims to describe or aspire to, it is implicated in the situation. It is in this sense that Eagleton also opposes at least certain brands of multiculturalism and postmodernism (he references these folks in the article right?) and relativists in general, because they do not share the basic “radical enlightenment” premise that values are universal.
Values, per se, may be universal, though not shared, and yet. . .
are some of them adverse to the principles of the radical enlightenment? And what, exactly, does Eagleton take to be the specific values of the radical enlightenment which ought to be intellectually romanticized and disseminated?
Dan, I assume your question was for me. I would assume that many things Eagleton considers part of the “radical enlightenment” are enshrined in the US bill of rights: freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly etc. The opposite of the oppressive systems which the enlighenment revolutions (American and French ex.) overthrew. Some values may be inimical to such premises, for instance, free speech means that people who are against free speech can speak out too. But free societies seem to agree that this is a small price to pay. Maybe.
All people named Eagleton are freaking nuts. Stay away from them.
I kept waiting for a “spaceship Earth” reference. But alas, I waited in vain.
Values are not universal, even if they should be. Nor are all values equal. This mindless multiculturalism is just another product of the mental garbage that is peddled as “postmodernism”.
All values are equal, but some are more equal then others.
Eagleton’s article is the most muddled piece of crap I’ve read in ages. And such people are paid “academics”?? Grrrrh!