Walter Benjamin or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism

by Terry Eagleton

From our finest radical literary analyst, a classic study of the great philosopher and cultural theorist.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Politics, Biography

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 17, 1985

About the author

Widely regarded as England's most influential living literary critic & theorist, Dr. Terry Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and as Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was Thomas Warton Prof. of English Literature at the University of Oxford ('92-01) & John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester 'til '08. He returned to the University of Notre Dame in the Autumn '09 semester as Distinguished Visitor in the English Department.

He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.

Reviews

[Rob Gifford]

me, terry eagleton, and walter benjamin, each living forty years apart from the other, doing the three pointing Spider-Mans meme as we tell ourselves “I guess I need to reckon with the left’s defeat”

[Jeroen Kuiper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Writings that bring Benjamin in connection with an array of thinkers and writers, but Eagleton doesn't clarify and also doesn't critically engage with his work. What was the point?

[Cerena · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the last book I checked out of the library....It ended up being the most expensive book in my collection!! So much for the library...

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is genuinely baffling - Eagleton supposedly wants to tackle the field of Marxist literary criticism and aesthetic critique (while insisting that the task of Marxist intellectuals is to resist the "division of labour" which cul-de-sac's them into such narrow confines or fixations), and begins with Benjamin's The Origin of Germanic Tragic Drama. He, oddly, mobilizes Derrida in order to cipher Benjamin on the Trauerspiel, a confounding decision only matched by that of taking up Benjamin in the first place, given the fact that Eagleton ultimately finds him too "idealist," not "materialist" enough, and opposes his notion of messianism (though he can at least endorse his literary analysis, if only by counterposing it to T. S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis as foils). As for Derrida, for some reason he consistently breaks Eagleton's brain, to the point where he is reduced to literally protesting too much, troping deconstructionism in adolescent babble that he somehow imagines serves as refutation, instead of engaging in a close reading of one of Derrida's texts, for example, an operation he seemingly refuses to perform. To risk a psychologism, it almost feels motivated by jealousy, for Derrida's popularity within Western academia is constantly placed under scrutiny, apparently serving as evidence of his non-radicality. But more than an examination of Benjamin, this is ultimately a gloss or coverage on what Anderson termed "Western Marxism" and their relation to the field of aesthetics, covering much of the same ground as that Verso collection, Aesthetics and Politics. We go over Adorno's critique of Benjamin's draft on Baudelaire, in too quickly assimilating isomorphisms in base and superstructure without properly elucidating the mechanisms by which the two are related and inform or affect each other, as well as the realism versus expressionism debate, the former championed by Lukács, the latter by Bloch, along with Brecht's intervention in the debate. Ultimately, this also means to serve as an exposition on Marx and history, through the byway of literature and thus historical narrative.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The socialist revolution, by contrast, does not for Marx derive its poetry from the past. It rejects the seductive tyrannies of parental authority, displacing the myth of origins for the practice of 'beginning.' The socialist reveolution takes its poetry from the future; but since that future, much mor e palpably than the past, does not exist, this amounts to saying that it derives its poetry from absence...The authority of the socialist revolution, then, is not to be located in the past, least of all in the texts of Marx himself, but in the intentionality of its transformative practice, its ceaseless 'beginning.'" (Eagleton, pg68-69).

Filled with salient thought-provoking asides like the one above, Terry Eagleton's "Walter Benjamin, or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism" is a tome that is divided, just about evenly, between a segment concerning Walter Benjamin, erstwhile mystic/Marxist/critical darling of the left, and a more proper section positing a new 'Revolutionary' criticism, notable for its fusing of critical schools, all under the aegis of Eagleton's considerable critical acumen. For one acquainted with literary theory, this work is, by all lights, accessible and relatively easy to comprehend (compared to Derrida Eagleton is a model of probity and lucidity). And all the critical points native to the parameters of Marxist criticism are here, from an analysis of Deconstuction from the point of view of Historical Materialism, to a critique of Marx's analysis of Louis Napoleon in "The Eighteenth Brumaire." Indeed, reading this slighty yet essential bAook, one is consistently amazed at the erudition and accomplishment of Mr. Eagleton in his chosen field of Marxist criticism. This is a man who holds the keys to communicating (what prose stylings!) and has at his finger tips the knowledge of a life time of thinking and reading about Benjamin and associated topics. The result? A book that equally instructs and entertains, and, at the same moment, tells something real and true about socialism. A great book this is!

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably, or surely?, quite a lot in this that went right past me, academically speaking. Walter Benjamin studies of any sort - much like the man - resist any true grounding, so a theorist/thinker who decided to NOT try to organize his writing ON Benjamin and instead intellectually wander through his writings was destined to frustrate me. There isn't much doubt Eagleton is smart and erudite, but I found this book a bit too meandering to be true brain food for me. There are a multitude of great nuggets and truncated attempts at developing a theory of something that Benjamin thought, wrote, or studied, but too much of it seems to drift away, unsettled. Was this in fact the point? Possibly. I would prefer to be confused or confounded by Benjamin's own writings, than doubly both by someone writing about said writings, enigmatically so.

[Lucía Hellín · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro tiene partes muy complejas, pero de repente dice Terry Eagleton: "Cualquier intento de recuperar directamente el pasado de forma no-violenta solo resultará en una paralizante complicidad con él", y arroja tanta luz...

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

wow. pretty fresh insight/analysis on benjamin. i gave it 3 stars because i didn't jive with the second half...

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eagleton and Benjamin -- who could ask for more?