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Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist notions of utility. The idea of doing something purely for the delight of it has always rattled the grey-bearded guardians of the state. Sheer pointlessness has always been a deeply subversive affair.

Terry Eagleton

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Terry Eagleton
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 22
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Theorist
Non-Fiction Writer
Researcher
University Teacher
Writer
Salford
Greater Manchester
Art
Notion
Capitalist
Guardians
States
Materials
Sheer
Subversive
Ideas
Subjects
Affair
Notions
Look
Pay
Deeply
Utility
Looks
Literature
Delight
Guardian
Askance
Something
State
Tend
Attract
Pointlessness
Always
Idea
Obvious
Purely
Bearded
Like
History
Material
Grey
Rattled

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Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism.
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It is language which speaks in literature, in all its swarming 'polysemic' plurality, not the author himself.
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If we were not called upon to work in order to survive, we might simply lie around all day doing nothing.
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From the viewpoint of political power, culture is absolutely vital. So vital, indeed, that power cannot operate without it. It is culture, in the sense of the everyday habits and beliefs of a people, which beds power down, makes it appear natural and inevitable, turns it into spontaneous reflex and response.
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Americans use the word dream as often as psychoanalysts do.
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History works itself out by an inevitable internal logic.
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