On Eagleton's Theory Of Ideology

Terry Eagleton (1943-), one of theorist on western Marxism aesthetics, wasfamous for his study on ideology. Since 1970's, his works on aesthetic theory andliterature criticism began to focus on ideology which also served as the theoreticalweapon for some social criticisms. The definition of ideology was a complex problem,and there existed a lot of arguments on this problem as well as the relationshipbetween literature and ideology. It is expected that this study may provide someimplications to the study in this area at home. The theory of ideology experienced gradual development and construction in thefollowing decade in which Eagleton absorbed various related theories to improve thedefinition of ideology, and to form different confinements to the terminology.Meanwhile, he applied the theory to the study on literature, and proposed that"literature was production of ideology", which changed the methodology of a largenumber of western Marxists on literature with in-depth analysis of the texts byMarxism theory. From 1980's on, Eagleton's attention was distracted from literaturecriticism to culture criticism, which was a larger research field than the former. On thebasis of the regression to Raymond Williams' theory as well as the introduction intothe theory of Hegemongy by Antonio Gramsci, he claimed aesthetic ideology for thefirst time, which suggested a widely different research method from most of otherpost-modernism theories. This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter One provides a generalintroduction to the development of Eagleton's ideology theory. In 1970's, Eagletonattempted to ground the definition of ideology within Louis Althusser's theory, andargued that ideology was characteristic of spontaneity, unconsciousness, experienceand the practicality of constructing the subject, especially of hierarchy and sociality.In 1980's, he developed the definition into a new one by taking social history factorsinto consideration, and stressed that ideology played a significant role in constructingthe subject and interfering the social life. While in 1990's, Eagleton redefinedideology and wrote that it was a strategy to maintain social power and socialreproduction. These diverse definitions provided by Terry Eagleton reveal that he is aMarxist theorist with critical spirits. And a review of all his theories also reveals thatideology in literature and aesthetics was the focus of his research and that his findingswere particularly based on the analysis of the essentials that constituted ideology. Chapter Two is a discussion about the argument that literature was theproduction of ideology, which was a completely new way to explain the relationshipbetween literature and ideology. Based on this theory, Terry Eagleton examinedliterature on two levels: one is internal and the other is external. This new methodcontributes a lot to Marxist aesthetics and literature critical theories. On the externallevel, literature production concerned five types of factors, such as general mode ofproduction,literary mode of production,general ideology,authorial ideology,aesthetic ideology, which associated, intergraded and conflicted with one another atthe same time. Therefore, a literature text was the production of the above factors, butin the text, the relationships among them were complex, so were the relationshipsbetween these factors and the text itself. On the one hand, ideology determined a text;on the other hand, a text constructed ideology. Authors at different eras or the sameauthor at different times created different texts, because both ideology and textsdetermined each other in the course of literature creation. In this sense, the value ofliterature required people's reconsideration in that reading literature works was a kindof consumption as well as the production of the interaction between readers and texts. Chapter Three discusses the theory of aesthetic ideology. Terry Eagletonassociated feeling, body and ideology and proposed that body was the basis ofideology and aesthetic activities, which, meanwhi...