Eagleton's Body Discourse Research

Terry Eagleton(1943-)is an outstanding contemporary Western Marxist literary theorist,cultural critic and literary theorists and is listed as the Big Three in Western Marxist theorists with Germany Habermas and American Jameson.Eagleton’s attention and construction of his theoretical system are linked to the liberation of the people.The body discourse theory is no exception.Body discourse is an important clue throughout Eagleton theoretical system.In the late 1960s,he began to focus on the oppressed,hungry and labor bodies under capitalism.In 1990,he formally proposed the possibility of reconstruction of Marx’s aesthetics in name of the body in his book "The Ideology of the Aesthetic".The book attempts to explain body ethics with the body aesthetics for achieving "political love".In 2000 another book titled;"The Idea of Culture" focuses on the dialectical unity of natural and cultural through the body,and analyses the possibility of body liberation under common idea of culture.Then tragedy of the body was discussed by later published book "Sweet Violence:The Idea of the Tragic",it examined the root causes of modern tragedy.As a staunch Marxist,Eagleton is concerned with the labor,hunger and revolutionary body,and resolutely resist postmodern pornography,sexy and entertainmental body.Therefore,his body discourse theory is the theories of body liberation about alienation and anti-alienation,is intertwined with ethics,aesthetics and politics discourse.This kind of body discourse seeks to re-construct the cultural and natural dialectical unity,realize human’s liberation and freedom,achieve the unity of subjective and objective,the mental and physical harmony and the aesthetic existence.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,this thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter analyses the evolution of body discourse and Eagleton’s criticism on the postmodern body discourse.The paper firstly combs the philosophy transmutation of the body from absence to presence to ontological status acquisition,from ancient Greece to the post-modern period.In this process,the body discourse completes the conversion from"consciousness ontology" to "body ontology",and the multiple narrative of body discourse also opens the curtain.For the cultural turn of the body discourse,Eagleton attributes to the reason that the post-modernism’s unwillingness to adopt grand narrative.He sharply criticized post-modernist "new body discourse":the body will be either regarded as object of cultural construction,or degenerated into contemporary cynicism.No matter what kind of,body is alienated.Eagleton affirms the liberation role that postmodernism has played in the process of resisting ideology,but it could not withstand the consumerism erosion in the commodity society,it itself is ideology and becomes material existence "without subject".Such subjects break away from the restriction of the body and become the absolute free will,leading to the collapse of the ethical system.Therefore,only returning to the grand narrative of Marxism could save the lack of essentialism of post-modernism,and realization of human liberation and freedom.The second chapter expounds the body discourse in the aesthetic ideology.First of all,this chapter analyzes Eagleton’s ideology,then the relationship between aesthetics and ideology,and finally discusses how Eagleton rebuild materialist aesthetics with labor bodies.Eagleton holds the aesthetics has ideological character in nature since its creation by Baum Garden,and serves the practical needs of the ruling class.However,due to its self-discipline,aesthetical so represents a challenge to ideology.Eagleton tried to take the aesthetics as an intermediary category,and to link up the concept of the body with some traditional political actors such as the state,the class contradiction and the mode of production.As a result body acting as material carrier of ideology is no longer an organism biologically,but a source of various power discourses.Through a detailed study of the history of Marx’s aesthetics,Eagleton further discusses the possibility of the reconstruction of the aesthetics of materialism with the body as a starting point,in order to make the aesthetics truly return to the humanity and desire.In his view,restoring emotional body is a process,which actually could meet and swing fully human needs,abilities,pleasure,productivity and so on in a labor practice.So the life of the freedom without utilitarian conside rationis aesthetic,and realizing the human nature is just the beginning of a better life.The third chapter discusses the body discourse from the stand point of Eagleton’s cultural ideas.This section firstly introduces Eagleton’s analysis about cultural significance and crisis,he believes that reality of political struggle is projected onto the field of culture with the capitalist global diffusion and dormant in the struggle of the left,there arises one phenomenon that politicized culture shifts to culture politics,and the cultural field itself becomes a political struggle place.Everything is related to culture.On one hand culture seems to do anything,on the other hand it is viewed abuse and insignificant.Whether the culture as a political alternative,or the vulgarization and entertainment of culture itself,it will inevitably lead to deep cultural crisis.The disorientation of cultural theory aroused Eagleton’s determination to reshape the concept of common culture.Eagleton believes culture and nature can be dialectical unity with the body.For one thing culture is an integral part of the body,for another culture pulls apart human being and the nature,and raise the emotional body to the flesh pleasing life.To this end,Eagleton advocates a common cultural idea with the body as the basis.This conception is a kind of shared network of significance and activities,by all members participating together,creating together,and it is a kind of equal,conscious and unconscious cultural concept,thus fundamentally solving the crisis of capitalist culture.At the same time,because the common cultural idea emphasizing the common biological basis of the body,common humanity is thus generated.Since deriving from nature,it has no ideology,so that people can sympathize with each other,care for each other,and benefit from each other.This is the ethical basis of Eagleton’s body discourse and a good remedy for the post-modernist virus.The fourth chapter expounds the body discourse from the point of Eagleton’s tragic ideas.This part firstly analyzes Eagleton’s tragic ideas.In his view,"the value of the extreme pain" is the common basis of the tragedy.Tragedy can point to art,real events,world outlook or emotional structure.As long as it can make people feel "the value of extreme pain",it can be regarded as a tragedy.According to Eagleton’s point of view,evil is the main cause of the tragedy of modernity.Eagleton distinguishes the double aspect of evil:on one hand,it is the absolute will to try to get rid of all the limited and the defects of the human being,and on the other hand,it showed emptiness and the lack of sense of being.Different from Arendt who is the first to explore the two kinds of evil.Eagleton connects the absolute freedom with evil and so digs out the deeper root of evil.People try to get rid of the inherent and external constraints in the name of pursuing freedom,it is bound to be difficult to control the reverse side.It is the absolute freedom that leads to the loss of the subjectivity and complete void,thus nourishing and releasing the evil.Remodeling of the human subjectivity and advocating the moral consciousness,is a fundamental way to get out of the modern crisis.However,as the tragedy of the "scapegoat".Eagleton also points out that the evil body could become the power of revolution and the hope of turning the history,which is the significance of his tragedy.Finally,Eagleton proposes that the painful body is the only one in the tragedy.He believes that suffering cannot shaped by ideology,so the painful body has no ideological character.Through the re-elaboration of the two mechanisms of the pity and the fear,Eagleton sums up seven kinds of aesthetic pleasure from the tragedy,and classifies them as the core connotation of Aristotle’s theory of purification.Based on the previous four chapters,the fifth part of the thesis explors the logical lines hidden behind the theory of Eagleton’s body discourse.This chapter is also the summary of Eagleton’s body discourse theory.The paper argues that Eagleton’s body discussion generally follows this narrative logic:Foundation-Criticism-Construction.Based on Marx’s labor body,Nietzsche’s power body and Freud’s desire body,Eagleton’s body discourse criticizes the postmodernism "new body",evil body and ideological body,and finally here constructs the idea that the dialectical unity of natural and cultural through the body.He believes that only such a physical concept could achieve the freedom and liberation of the body,and the new socialist body could thus be established,which clearly reflects Eagleton’s firm Marxist outlook.The conclusion points out the value and defects of Eagleton’s body discourse theory.