"Theory [...] particular styles of thinking as our situation changes" (221). America, according to Eagleton, had better start rethinking our particular style of thinking. Perhaps we have, in the five years between the publication of After Theory and our election of Obama. Maybe I more fully understand why my British friends were casting their token votes for him as well.
Capitalism was highly touted when I was being educated in grade school. After all, most of us in the classroom had personal acquaintance with a relative who was only a generation removed from "getting off the boat" and making it good in the "land of opportunity". Socialism was reduced to four letters: U.S.S.R. The second "S" being socialist. This we learned was not a good word but one that threatened our very existence.
Eagleton shed new perspective on the linguistics of socialism, as well as evil, and hope. I was particulary struck with his concept "to live with sufficiency of goods but to be prepared to give them up" (184). Kinda gives Black Friday a black eye.
Maybe one version of Armagedon is for the human race to be burned on a pyre of its possessions. The glow seen in the West won't be the sun setting.
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Part of the appoclyptical thinking today may be a reflection of the deep seated fear that things are changing; the ground under our collective feet is not so stable anymore. It seems like more and more people are giving up a quality of life that was previously taken for granted, and there is no faith that a supposed "sufficiency" will actually be preserved. What happens if all that is left is insufficiency? Who decides what is removed? In whom do we place our faith? If much of what the theorists have told us so far is true, both faith and sufficiency are mental constructs with no real framework. All that is left is a mandated sort of socialism. Even that is just another construct.
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