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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the value of literature and art for their own sake, challenging materialistic views.
Terry Eagleton highlights how literature and art, often seen as lacking practical utility, attract individuals who reject capitalist values. He suggests that engaging in artistic endeavors solely for pleasure is seen as a threat to conventional authority, where the emphasis on productivity and utility reigns. The pursuit of art for its intrinsic joy represents a rebellious stance against societal norms that equate worth with material gain.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the value of arts education.
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.
One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies.
All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all.
The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body.
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.
Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will.
You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox.
If I were reading a book and happened to strike a wonderful passage I would close the book then and there and go for a walk. I hated the thought of coming to the end of a good book. I would tease it along, delay the inevitable as long as possible, But always, when I hit a great passage, I would stop reading immediately. Out I would go, rain, hail, snow or ice, and chew the cud.
For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.
My favorite flamenco singers, they're not trying to look pretty. They're trying to put truth in what they do, in the way they express themselves. Sometimes that's not beauty, but it's beautiful.
I don't know why so many artists talk about the mainstream's problems from the fringe. I think, unfortunately, it's almost like our education makes us too safe and terrified to step into the world.
I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.
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