Terry Eagleton

Jan 5, 2025 | unherd.com | Terry Eagleton

BritainLiberalismNationalismSocietyUK During her campaign to lead the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch described women from ethnic minorities who, when she was canvassing during the election, would hand the matter over instantly to their husbands saying: “I can’t speak to you.” This is a culture, she said, which isn’t as equally valid as our own. It is, she suggests, contrary to British values. It would be interesting to know how far she’s prepared to press this case.

Dec 1, 2024 | unherd.com | Terry Eagleton

British class systemClassKarl MarxMick JaggerMonarchySocietyUK Imagine a Conservative Party intent on moving to the political centre but anxious about alienating its Right-wing by doing so. One way of resolving this problem would be to appoint as its deputy leader a wine merchant who owned a slice of Aberdeenshire, wore the finest tweeds in Westminster and spoke up for traditional values at every turn.

Nov 22, 2024 | unherd.com | Terry Eagleton

Donald TrumpFrench RevolutionIdeologyNeo-NazisReligionSocietyUS Ideology matters far more in the United States than in Europe. Over here, you won’t hear many politicians talking about “this great country of ours” or making pious allusions to God. In Brussels or Wolverhampton, you would simply stare at your shoes and wait for this kind of thing to stop. The florid, high-pitched, hand-on-heart tone of American political discourse is religious at root.

Nov 4, 2024 | unherd.com | Terry Eagleton

Conspiracy theoryCultureDonald TrumpHolocaustNazisUK The United States is the land of conspiracy theories, not least when it’s busy electing a president. Such theories are a secular version of the idea of a malevolent God, for which the world is a sinister place but at least makes sense.

Oct 2, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Fredric Jameson |Terry Eagleton

In the later decades​ of the last century, a new wave of ideas broke across the study of literature throughout the world. Known simply as ‘theory’, it ranged from structuralism to feminism, semiotics to hermeneutics, Marxism to deconstruction. All this was formidably abstract stuff, but it managed to be sexy as well. Its intellectual ambitiousness, along with its readiness to raise fundamental questions, attracted some of the most talented students of the day.