Session 3 - 16.10.09 The Pololities of Amnesia

So my thoughts on Eagleton's After Theory...

I really did enjoy reading Eagleton's book, well what I could read of it through Amazon. (The copy I ordered is still sitting in a sack in some post office while the postman have their yearly whinge about pay etc... anyways I digress, back to Eagleton) I found the book easy to read and I could relate to what Eagleton was agonising over.

As we have discussed in the previous two sessions, Dubai and Zaha, it is hard to apply architectural theory to modern day ways of thinking, this is because over the last century the civilised world has developed at an alarmingly quick rate. What is current now can so easily not be the case tomorrow. As Eagleton highlights "we still trading on the past" yet this is no longer applicable, I feel that theory just needs a bit of time to catch up.

One point that Eagleton raises is the way in which, "In some traditionalist universities not long ago, you could not research on authors who were still alive. This was a great incentive to slip a knife between their ribs one foggy evening, or a remarkable test of patience if your chosen novelist was in rude health and only 34." This can only be seen as a good progression in the study of theory surely? How crazy would that be trying to do this very course, for the obvious fact that we won't have been able to read this very text.

Theory isn't over; it has merely evolving into something quite different...it just needs a bit of time.