“Truth is ugliness, not beauty. If the artist is to redeem the whole of reality, whether as naturalistic novelist or demonic post Baudelairean poet, he must undergo what Yeats calls the baptism of the gutter, refusing orthodox moral distinctions so as to become imaginatively at one with the slime and refuse of human existence. Only in this way will he be able to gather the excremental into the eternal. It is an aesthetic version of crucifixion and resurrection, one which invests the poet with a certain aura of sanctity. Yet he is also sacred in the ancient sense of being both blessed and cursed. To live by imaginative empathy is to be bereft of a self; to be without a self is to exist as a kind of nothingness; and nothingness is unnervingly close to evil.” SelfTruthSeriousEmpathyArtificialFalse Book:Culture and the Death of God Source: Culture and the Death of God
“What Althusser does… is to rethink the concept of ideology in terms of Lacan’s ‘imaginary’. For the relation of an individual subject to society as a whole in Althusser’s theory is rather like the relation of the small child to his or her mirror-image in Lacan’s. In both cases, the human subject is supplied with a satisfyingly unified image of selfhood by identifying with an object which reflects this image back to it in a closed, narcissistic circle. In both cases, too, this image involves a misrecognition, since it idealizes the subject’s real situation. The child is not actually as integrated as its image in the mirror suggests; I am not actually the coherent, autonomous, self generating subject I know myself to be in the ideological sphere, but the ‘decentred’ function of several social determinants. Duly enthralled by the image of myself I receive, I subject myself to it; and it is through this ‘subjection’ that I become a subject.” SelfIdeologySubjectivityLacanMirror StageAlthusserThe Imaginary Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction
“To declare in St John's words that Jesus and the Father are one is to claim that Jesus's dependence on the Other is not self-estrangement but self-ful lment. At the core of his identity ..lies nothing but unconditional love.” SelfLyingFatherJesusIdentityClaimsCoreUnconditional LoveDependenceUnconditionalEstrangement Author:Terry Eagleton
“In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the 'imaginary' level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it.” HumansSelfWould BeActionLevelsKnownImpossibleAchieveSubjectsEffectsEgoConsciousFunctionChainsImaginaryDiscourseIdenticalPsychoanalysisUnifiedIcebergTip Of The Iceberg Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction
“It is silly to call fat people "gravitationally challenged", a self-righteous fetishism of language which is no more than a symptom of political frustration.” PeopleSelfPoliticalLanguageSillyFatsFrustrationRighteousSymptomsPolitical CorrectnessCorrectnessSelf RighteousFat People Author:Terry Eagleton
“An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns.” HumansSelfReasonBitsSelf ImprovementCapacityWideImprovementEnlightenedSuperstitionsSovereigntyLimitlessExploitsScientismHuman ReasonLeprechaun Author:Terry Eagleton
“We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and arational.” MeanSelfFacesFormUsedCultureIndividualSidesDoubtMaterialsConflictReflectionPassionateRationalUsed To BeCollectivesIronicIrrationalSpontaneousAutonomyCivilisationWellbeingSelf-doubtIndividual Autonomy Author:Terry Eagleton
