Raymond Williams (=W)
Marxism and Literature (1977)

- reads like a lexicon with argument, plottingly a case for a particular kind of intervention into cultural analysis
- clumsy transitions!
- Structure of feeling, dominant residual, emergent media
- Takes out specific recommendations and examples in favour of presenting a theoretical challenge
- Art movements
- Culmination work of his theoretical framework/proposal – left with a series of questions or encouragements to follow in cultural study
- Boom in cultural studies in US and Canada – what is it, what can we do with it..? Seems to be the second choice of academics today – it’s very current
- Study of the place of culture in the social formation (not society) org. of traditions, institutions, etc.
- Key questions pertain to texts and practices and social relations, how do we do what we do or know what we know?
- How does culture organizes what we do, our understanding of ourselves, of affiliations,
- Help us make political decisions in the cultural context
- No longer guaranteed universal class
- Sorting out political question in age of history where agent is not guaranteed
- Cult studies (british) emerges out of a context diff from Marx’s capitalism – diff finance, labour, and thus, class
- Unavoidable presence of forms of mass comm. – media analysis at root of british cult studies; so integrated into ordinary life, profound impact on advanced capitalism
- W doesn’t mention “media” that often – sociology of culture could be mass comm.
- Sense of disappointment with existing lit on culture – W can travel to Cambridge to study lit, but what he finds there is a disconnect b/w culture and lives of people outside university
- W compelled to expand study of culture
- “Culture is Ordinary” – quotidian, ordinary, everyday – as focus of study
- critique of semiotics, and of closed system in favour of connections to the world – meanings and impacts of works
- culturalist impulse – before the move to structuralist, post-st, etc
- W reminds people of connections to lived politics
- W loves Banjamin and Gramsci, but not Althusser, and W is not sure about deSaussure
- W is a humanist – he was criticized for this b/c he had to much faith
- Inspired by core Marxism that “people make history but in conditions not of their own making”
- Too much emphasis on first part of the sentence?? Not sure…
- Attention to process of making, doing, understanding – engagement and human energy captured here
- Who is the lowest common denominator, mass mob, easily manipulated population, etc – he doesn’t pursue those – he always has room for human energy, not an image of passivity

First section – worth noting that he writes this analysis using generally accepted Marxist terms,
- Basics concepts: culture, language, literature, ideology
- Opening these concepts us
- Culture is widely varying entity, dynamic (dynamism of subject) and in process
- Language becomes a maker of worlds
- Ideology – wrestles with diff defs, classes mistakenly take other ideas as their own
- “practical consciousness” – how people organize themselves in a material world
- static model = doomed to failure
- as a working class intellectual, educated at elite university, builds from Marx
- base/superstructure – model of economic relation, org. social relations, production (productive force) of society in the context of capitalism, how is society made and how is it reproduced
- divisions are produced – what roles do people play in society, who owns what, who works for whom?
- Surplus – extra resources, class with extra purchase is going to try to build institutions that reproduce these divisions
- Stability – how is capitalism able to continue through time despite the differences in benefits?
- W’s first pt of attack – determination, attacking interpretations that suggest that it is a closed system / base and superstructure are reflected in one another
- Mediating force b/w b and ss?
- Changes in B (productive forces) don’t always reflect changes in SS; eg. Peaks in art and peeks in economics are not timed together – so what is mediating?
- This is an attack on economists – challenge to political economy
- What are the productive forces identified – Marx and Engels – expanding the def (91) of productive force: “all and any means of production of real life”
- Maybe there are other forces transpiring that will have some sort of impact on the org. of society
- This is where culture comes in as a productive force – expression and affiliation are making something
- W: “cultural materialism” - not about pots and architectures – for W is about less tangible aspects, an affective dimension
- Producing all sorts of division inside populations – beyond ruling, proletariat and petite bourgeoisie,

Ideology
- Ideas of the ruling class are the ideas of the day – no more! What do you do with ideology then?
- Hegemony – process by which consent is won – doesn’t mean you agree or don’t see the divisions but there is a level of consent, the we-can-live-with-this idea
- W is drawn to the process oriented nature of this term
- Series of competing ideas
- Hegemony to hegemonic- shift in language – no more ideological dominance but rather dominance
- Provisional and temporary nature of culture(s) clashing?

Section 2– cultural theory section
- Not about the good and the bad in culture
- Structural homologies
- Structures – avoidance of overemphasis on the individual expression, it’s about organizations of expressions
- Examination of patterns of lived experience
- Cultural formations as process and movements
- Less predictable than institution, but more so than phenomena
- Structures of feeling – to identify formations, organized nature of it
- Ideas of generations – micro/macro, different sensibilities,
- “Sensibility” – things that are meaningful in particular moments in time/place → becomes a formation (not all structures of feeling are formation)
- writes about art movements ****
- “Change” – a discursive element built around the provisional
- dominant, residual and emergent – de-emphasize the dominant, what are the elements form the pat being carried forward, what are the new formations in process competing for dominance

Critiques
- b and ss interchangeable / W isn’t worried about the traffic b/w
- not enough struggle in his book – depiction of struggle lacking, rather finds community and affiliation, and humanism
- doesn’t define real life or experience or the ordinary – at the end of the day, there’s an of-course-ness in this
- Emphasis on popular and urban, youth, etc. in CS – expanding?

Questions
- do intellectuals affect change more than normal people? Elitism?
- Gramsci (from Lenin) and W – diff versions of hegemony / what is the role of the intellectual?
- Organic intellectual? Leaders? Giving voice to a particular class formation, hist. specific, emerging when class is in formation and they help that faction come into being
- People of their time? Ready to speak of what is happening at a certain moment??
- Hall’s “counter-hegemony”
- Hegemony done through forms of leadership??
- Observation vs. speaking for? Activism and engagement and a need to describe the world…
- Structure = Weber rather then individuality*** historically noteworthy is not about individual utterances but rather about their wider connections
- Anti-elitism, empathy?