Starving Artists

First, a review of termonology via Wikipedia:

*Matthew Arnold 1822-1888 -English poet, cultural critic

*phenomenology- an approach to philosophy that begins with an exploration of phenomena--what presents itself to us in conscious experience.
"The reflective study of the essence of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view" -Edmund Husserl

*structuralism- (humanities/social sciences) theories that share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored
--approach in academic disciplines in general that explores the relationships between fundamental principle elements in language, literature, and other fields upon which some higher mental, linguistic, social or cultural "structures" and "social networks" are built
--through these networks meaning is produced with in a particular person, system, or culture--meaning then frames and motivates the actions of individuals and groups

"Liberal humanism has dwindled to the impotent conscience of bourgeois society, gentle, sensitive and inneffectual; structuralism has already more or less vanished into the literary museum" -Terry Eagleton

*Cultural critics, philosophers, thinkers, barbs WRITE. Thinking goes on paper, becomes literature, writing is the medium.
Eagleton says literature is unstable, an illusion...the problem, the issue is in defining literature at one place and time, because language is ever changing, evolving along with the culture it produces.

*Because one element cannot exist without the other, capitalism is a user, the system only works for investment. This is why we have the concept of "starving artist," and see an impotence of the arts in poor society.

"Capitalism's reverential hat-tipping to the arts is obvious hypocrisy, except when it can hang them on its walls as a sound investment....Departments of literature in higher education, then are part of the idealogical apparatus of the modern capitalist state. They are not wholly reliable apparatuses of the modern capitalist state." -Eagleton