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trekbicycles's review
4.0
It took me a decent chunk to settle into the hyperbolic tone, but by the final chapter, I was deeply on board Eagleton's argument. Fun to see the specifically British examples that color his work. Also feeding into my budding interest in Raymond Williams right now.
irina_maria's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Clear and straightforward while managing to offer many valuable references. Would recommend to people doing cultural studies.
swalls95's review
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Terry Eagleton is a great literary critic... find him really insighful and accessible
colin_cox's review
3.0
On the whole, Terry Eagleton's Culture is a broad yet short meditation on a variety of ideas and concepts that fit under and intersect with notions and impressions of culture. Therefore, it is tricky to find a coherent thesis throughout Eagleton's book, but as he writes in the Preface, "Perspicacious readers," will undoubtedly detect "an Irish motif running throughout the book" (ix). This "Irish motif" as he describes it, anchors Culture around a set of predictable suppositions, but a clearer thesis may have made Eagleton's book more enjoyable.
Chapter 3 titled "The Social Unconscious," is particularly interesting. By suggesting that the "social unconscious is one thing we mean by culture," Eagleton explicitly references and subsequently uses a Freudian framework to understand the impulsive and inconsistent trends that define popular consumerist culture (50). Most of the chapter, however, attempts to understand culture in conjunction with Edmund Burke, who, as Eagleton writes, "[Understands] culture [as] more fundamental than law or politics" (65). The power that culture possesses can act in productive and destructive ways. Eagleton develops this point by placing Burke in conversation with German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, T.S. Eliot, and near the end of the chapter, Raymond Williams. By doing so, Eagleton can address several interesting but well-worn points of conversation: high and low culture, self-actualization through culture, cultural elitism, and cultural production. What I hope is apparent, is the size and scope of Eagleton's analysis. Despite the lack of an overarching thesis about culture, Eagleton's quirky even frenetic analytical approach is advantageous but pleasant to read.
Chapter 3 titled "The Social Unconscious," is particularly interesting. By suggesting that the "social unconscious is one thing we mean by culture," Eagleton explicitly references and subsequently uses a Freudian framework to understand the impulsive and inconsistent trends that define popular consumerist culture (50). Most of the chapter, however, attempts to understand culture in conjunction with Edmund Burke, who, as Eagleton writes, "[Understands] culture [as] more fundamental than law or politics" (65). The power that culture possesses can act in productive and destructive ways. Eagleton develops this point by placing Burke in conversation with German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, T.S. Eliot, and near the end of the chapter, Raymond Williams. By doing so, Eagleton can address several interesting but well-worn points of conversation: high and low culture, self-actualization through culture, cultural elitism, and cultural production. What I hope is apparent, is the size and scope of Eagleton's analysis. Despite the lack of an overarching thesis about culture, Eagleton's quirky even frenetic analytical approach is advantageous but pleasant to read.
gracectracey's review
4.0
This book was well written and easy to understand. I completely disagree with most of the material. However I am looking at culture through an anthropological view, not a literacy view.
pioocampo's review
4.0
Culture, prior to reading this book, meant of a lose, almost vague concept somewhere between society and the concept of nationhood. Eagleton’s highly knowledgeable perspective and insight on the matter created a clearer path to understanding the context of culture vis a vis it’s historicity in contrast to well-known thinkers—from Edmund Burke to the collective contemporary critics of pop culture. But at the same time, he used references that were centric of England and the European region. Given that Eagleton is a British writer, this is understandable, but carrying the weight of a definition of “culture” in-depth is too heavy a task without a voice from another side of his world.
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