Week 3

The picture at the top here is by Shumon Basar. The image on the left was taken in Zurich, the one on the right in Dubai. Juxtaposed they relate pretty well to my own consideration of the two texts by Hickey and Davis you were given last week, especially if you relate them to the piece on my blog 'A Contribution to a Maoist Critique of Striptease' @ pauldaviesarchitecture.blogspot.com

The book above is your text for Session 3. I do not expect you to read all of it but at least the first 100 pages. Eagleton is a smart writer who you may think is far too smart if you are encountering him for the first time. His humour may be an acquired taste but once you begin to get it you can be assured you have joined the ranks of those who are thinking rather than those who just spout opinions. What's the difference? Well Eagleton would enjoy this since he is passionate about many things Irish, but if I said I thought the Irish in general really piss me off with their overarching lapses in to literary pretension, that would be an opinion. An idea might stand for quite the opposite, that it is illogical to preach any kind of discrimination at all on the basis of nationality, creed, colour and so on. These two things are not incompatible; understanding this will get you past your opinions and into ideas.

Postscript: What is somewhat annoying in Eagleton is that the kernel of the thing he hankers for is still elusive to us. Bar an appreciation of a more pleasant time for more of the worlds population that is. The 'Theory' he is talking about is a many headed beast, and on the one hand you might remember that the most important quest is that for TRUTH rather than LIES, that in line with that search may come virtue, but along side it an almost unfortunate realization that 'Marxism' whilst certainly a search for rational, materialist, truth, can almost be as curious a thing to think about as 'sexual attraction'; you know it's there but there seem to be many ways of defining it and even ruining it in the process. Meanwhile the level of our enquiry in to truth appears somewhat paradoxically and uncomfortably circumstantial, leaving us with the idea that presently, we might all be being lead down the garden path.