DOCSLIB.ORG

Raymond Williams

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Raymond Williams RAYMOND WILLIAMS: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism Don Milligan www.studiesinanti-capitalism.net © Don Milligan, 2007. This monograph may be extensively quoted, freely copied in part or in its entirety, on condition that the following citation is always used: Don Milligan, Raymond Williams: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism, published by Studies in Anti-Capitalism at www.studiesinanti-capitalism.net 2007. 2 RAYMOND WILLIAMS: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism By Don Milligan CONTENTS Introduction: Reading Williams ....................................................... 5 Chapter One: Defending the Soviet Experience Solzhenitsyn’s Witness ........................................................... 14 The ‘Soviet Literary Controversy in Retrospect’ ................. 19 A Commitment Undiminished by Defeat ............................ 22 Early Enthusiasms and the Popular Front ............................. 28 Socialist Realism and ‘the utopian impulse’ ........................ 32 Beyond Soviet Experience ..................................................... 36 Chapter Two: Marxist Literary Criticism Marxism and Marxism(s) ....................................................... 42 L. C. Knights’s Challenge to Marxism ................................. 45 Politics and Letters, Reading and Criticism ......................... 52 The Caudwell Controversy .................................................... 53 Constructing An Alternative Tradition ................................. 59 Theory: Williams’s Independent Course .............................. 62 Marxism Reasserted ................................................................ 67 Chapter Three: Drama, Context and History The Time of Leavis & Bateson .............................................. 77 The Structure of Feeling ......................................................... 81 A Kaleidoscope for Feeling ................................................... 86 Encounter with T. S. Eliot ...................................................... 88 Religion as A Whole Way of Life ......................................... 93 Middleton Murry’s Modes of Feeling .................................. 99 Muriel Bradbrook’s Historical Criticism ............................ 103 Williams: ‘a delegate from the future’? .............................. 109 Raymond Williams: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism, by Don Milligan, published by Studies in Anti-Capitalism at www.studiesinanti-capitalism.net 2007. 3 Chapter Four: Language, Film, Television and Advertising Structuring Meaning ............................................................. 112 Thoughts on Film .................................................................. 119 Televisual Flow: One Night in Miami ................................ 124 Monty Python’s Flying Circus ............................................. 130 Advertising: The Hidden Persuaders .................................. 133 Chapter Five: Literary Representations of Class Wordsworth and Clare, Cobbett and Austen ..................... 140 Clare and Tressell’s impatience with the Parochial and the Reactionary ....... 145 Sean O’Casey and ‘endless bibulous and blathering talk’ 149 Gissing and Brecht: The Individual Against Society ........ 154 Gissing’s Prejudices .............................................................. 156 The Case of Felix Holt .......................................................... 161 The Working Class: Deadlock or Incorporation? .............. 165 Chapter Six: Williams’s Novels ‘A specifically Welsh structure of feeling’ ......................... 169 Future Sadness ....................................................................... 173 Postmodern Geography and other strategies ...................... 179 A Topology of Labour .......................................................... 182 The Pleasures of Work .......................................................... 185 Writing Beyond Class ........................................................... 188 Remote Controls: The Metropolis at Work ........................ 193 Feeling the Struggle .............................................................. 196 The Volunteers ....................................................................... 201 Chapter Seven: Belonging, Exile and George Orwell ‘Born and bred among the presumed Welsh’ .................... 204 A Welsh European in Border Country ................................ 210 George Orwell: A Cold War Émigré .................................. 215 The ‘Invasion’ of Literature by Politics .............................. 220 Necessary Killing and the Fact of Murder .......................... 224 Colluding with Dystopia ....................................................... 230 Plain Men Bumping into Experience .................................. 235 Animal Farm: Anti-Communism and Collective Failure . 239 Raymond Williams: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism, by Don Milligan, published by Studies in Anti-Capitalism at www.studiesinanti-capitalism.net 2007. 4 Chapter Eight: Real History and the Knowable Community The Country and the City ..................................................... 242 Jane Austen and George Eliot .............................................. 251 Discourse and The Great Tradition ..................................... 255 Placing Thomas Hardy ......................................................... 259 F. R. Leavis and Dickens ...................................................... 262 Entrapped by Tradition ......................................................... 267 Chapter Nine: Modernism and the Unknowable Community Modernism as Rupture ......................................................... 270 The Unknowable Community ............................................. 273 Joyce’s Exiles and the rejection of ordinary feeling .......... 279 Modernism and the Attenuation of Social Consciousness 282 Bloomsbury and Bourgeois Dissidence .............................. 285 Postscript: Positive Criticism ......................................................... 293 Bibliography ...................................................................................... 298 Acknowledgements I should like to thank all the staff of the Open University, Manchester Public Library, the John Rylands Library, Manchester Metropolitan University Library and the British Library. I extend warm thanks to Dr David Johnson of the Open University Literature Department for his patient criticism and encouragement. I must also thank Dr Linnie Blake, of Manchester Metropolitan University, Dr Stephen Regan of Royal Holloway, and Dr Robert Fraser of the Open University, for their advice and support. I was sustained throughout by Gary Banham’s affection, conversation, and criticism, and by the support of my friends and colleagues Robeena Amjad, Lesley Farage, Keith Gould, Frank Carr, Ian Townson, Terry Stewart, Mary Naughton, and Joe Whelan. Raymond Williams: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism, by Don Milligan, published by Studies in Anti-Capitalism at www.studiesinanti-capitalism.net 2007. 5 Introduction: Reading Williams aymond Williams was a revolutionary. He believed that fundamental shifts in the distribution of political and Reconomic power were necessary in order to change decisively the terms and trajectory of social development to the advantage of the great majority of people in society. However, he was not a Jacobin or a Bolshevik; there was to be no Year Zero. No severance between past, present, and future was contem- plated. Recognition of the importance of both continuity and change lay at the heart of his creative enterprise. It was an enterprise in which, as a teacher, critic, novelist, and political activist, he focused upon the mediations between the ordinary commitments of everyday life and the wider relationships in which they take place. Consequently, his investigations did not attempt to employ reason and historical study to dissolve tradition, nor did he attempt to restore, conserve or perpetuate existing traditions of discussion on culture. On the contrary, he used historical study and criticism to ratify what he regarded as positive traditions or continuities to which each new generation shaped its own creative response. His attempt to discern and analyse these responses emerged from his work as a teacher and literary critic in the late nineteen forties and continued for the next forty years. Initially, he combined teaching and literary criticism with writing drafts of what later became his first novel.1 Very quickly, however, in 1952 or 19532 he began to develop the thoughts concerning politics and literature, first articulated in Politics and Letters (1947a), into a mode of cultural criticism, which would by the late fifties take him well beyond the confines and protocols of both the academy and of established schools of literary criticism. 1 Border Country (1960a). All references in round brackets are to works by Raymond Williams unless otherwise stated. 2 See ‘Film as a Tutorial Subject’ (1953b); ‘The Idea of Culture’, (1953a); Preface to Film (1954b). It was also during these years that Williams was doing preparatory work on Culture and Society, which he finished in 1956 and published in 1958. Raymond Williams: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism, by Don Milligan, published by Studies in Anti-Capitalism at www.studiesinanti-capitalism.net 2007. 6 His early critical innovation — the structure of feeling, his rejection of phrases
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Culture and Materialism : Raymond Williams and the Marxist Debate
    CULTURE AND MATERIALISM: RAYMOND WILLIAMS AND THE MARXIST DEBATE by David C. Robinson B.A. (Honours1, Queen's University, 1988 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (COMMUNICATIONS) in the ,Department of Communication @ David C. Robinson 1991 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY July, 1991 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL NAME: David Robinson DEGREE: Master of Arts (Communication) TITLE OF THESIS: Culture and Materialism: Raymond Williams and the Marxist Debate EXAMINING COMMITTEE: CHAIR: Dr. Linda Harasim Dr. Richard S. Gruneau Professor Senior Supervisor Dr. Alison C. M. Beale Assistant Professor Supervisor " - Dr. Jerald Zaslove Associate Professor Department of English Examiner DATE APPROVED: PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENCE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis or dissertation (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Title of Thesis/Dissertation: Culture and Materialism: Raymond Williams and the Marxist Debate Author : signature David C.
    [Show full text]
  • Narrative Machines, Or, from ‘Bottom to Top’ Early Discourses on the Novel and Film
    10.1515/nor-2017-0302 Narrative Machines, or, from ‘Bottom to Top’ Early Discourses on the Novel and Film JOHN SUNDHOLM There is a certain tendency in the contemporary rience of modernity. The subject of film and cultural historiography of early film studies to construe mo- modernity is an established field of its own within dernity as a model for the textual analysis of spe- the broader film studies context.3 However, such cific, isolated moments in film history. Furthermore, historiography could also be criticised as a sort of film history – and other media histories – is usually “historical blind spot”, founded on an excessively studied and written within the academic boundaries expressive interpretation of history. of different departments. We are given the history The original arguments used in early 20th cen- of media according to media and communications, tury discourse are reproduced in studies by later film studies, art history, literature and so on. Very scholars as expressing a homogeneous tendency – seldom are we offered a perspective founded on an broadly defineable as modernity – thus placing the interdisciplinary or comparative approach. discourse aside from most historical and compara- Therefore, I will both criticise some trends in tive relations with, for example, previous 19th cen- early film historiography and argue in favour of the tury discourse. Such deterministic views on tech- importance – and necessity – of employing a histo- nology – and on film vs. society – often fail to con- rico-dialectical and comparative analysis. I support sider that the object under study and the agent that my argument and discussion by comparing the constitutes the object are both part of the same paradigmatic interpretations of “modernity vs.
    [Show full text]
  • Raymond Williams and the Structure of Feeling of Reality TV
    International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 7; April 2012 Raymond Williams and the Structure of Feeling of Reality TV Beverley Best Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Concordia University Montreal, QC, Canada. Introduction There is some general truth to the narrative that cultural studies moved away from its fraught, yet productive, entanglement with Marxist critique in the 1980s, never again to seriously rekindle that engagement. The trajectory of the work of Raymond Williams, however, moves in the opposite direction to much of that field of inquiry of which Williams is often identified as a founder. I will argue, for instance, that on the question of method, the work of Raymond Williams is increasingly influenced by debates in Marxist cultural theory. More so, the question of method itself, and in particular the problematic of mediation, both become central concerns for Williams— fundamental theoretical occupations which he shared with the Western Marxists, such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Walter Benjamin. The increasing centrality of the problematic of mediation, in its various guises—the dynamics of materialist critique, the relation between structure and agency, the question of determination, and even the movement of the dialectic—in Williams‟ later work, reflects a deepening engagement with traditional Marxist categories while never claiming a simple identity with Marxist critique. The deepening engagement with traditional Marxist categories signals both a continuity and a rupture within the trajectory of Williams‟ analytical method over his career: for instance, the approach which Williams first calls “cultural materialism” evolves into an approach which in his later work he comes to refer to as the “sociology of culture.” My goal in this chapter is to sketch the movement of the critical method which Williams calls the sociology of culture and why the question of mediation is a central dimension of it.
    [Show full text]
  • King's Research Portal
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by King's Research Portal King’s Research Portal Document Version Peer reviewed version Link to publication record in King's Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Hutton, A. N. (2016). Literature, Criticism, and Politics in the Early New Left, 1956–62. Twentieth Century British History, 27(1), 51-75. Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Research Portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognize and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. •Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. •You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain •You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Research Portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
    [Show full text]
  • 'The Significance Is in the Selection': Identifying Contemporary Keywords
    Alan Durant ‘The significance is in the selection’: identifying contemporary keywords Immediately before the conventional acknowledgements which close Raymond Williams’s Preface to Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society (1976), the author comments that his ‘publishers have been good enough to include some blank pages, not only for the convenience of making notes, but as a sign that the inquiry remains open, and that the author will welcome all amendments, corrections and additions’.1 More than thirty years on, those blank pages seem to have offered mostly only symbolic promise (even if, in repeating his invitation in the Preface to the 1983 second edition, Williams did feel prompted to thank nearly thirty correspondents for specific suggestions).2 To the extent that Williams’s invitation was ever taken up, copies of Keywords in active use will be annotated with ‘amendments, corrections and additions’ of three main kinds: firstly, extra meanings and quotations for words already in the book (illustrating, antedating or functioning as counterexamples to meanings given in particular entries); secondly, notes on connections between the meanings given for closely related headwords (refining semantic networks that Williams considered particularly important, and which inspired his own investigation, in Culture and Society 1780 – 1950, of the verbal cluster ‘culture’, ‘art’, ‘class’, ‘industry’, and ‘democracy’);3 and thirdly - at least equally likely, I suspect - notes on different words altogether, words not included in Williams’s list but for which a case for inclusion might have been made. The strong likelihood of notes of this third type would not have surprised the author of Keywords.
    [Show full text]
  • In Spite of History? New Leftism in Britain 1956 - 1979
    In Spite of History? New Leftism in Britain 1956 - 1979 Thomas Marriott Dowling Thesis Presented for the Degree of PhD Department of History University of Sheffield August 2015 ii iii Contents Title page p. i Contents p. iii Abstract p. vi Introduction p. 1 On the Trail of the New Left p. 5 Rethinking New Leftism p. 12 Methodology and Structure p. 18 Chapter One Left Over? The Lost World of British New Leftism p. 24 ‘A Mood rather than a Movement’ p. 30 A Permanent Aspiration p. 33 The Antinomies of British New Leftism p. 36 Between Aspiration and Actuality p. 39 The Aetiology of British New Leftism p. 41 Being Communist p. 44 Reasoning Rebellion p. 51 Universities and Left Review p. 55 Forging a Movement p. 58 CND p. 63 Conclusion p. 67 iv Chapter Two Sound and Fury? New Leftism and the British ‘Cultural Revolt’ of the 1950s p. 69 British New Leftism’s ‘Moment of Culture’? p. 76 Principles behind New Leftism’s Cultural Turn p. 78 A British Cultural Revolt? p. 87 A New Left Culture? p. 91 Signifying Nothing? p. 96 Conclusion p. 99 Chapter Three Laureate of New Leftism? Dennis Potter’s ‘Sense of Vocation’ p. 102 A New Left ‘Mood’ p. 108 The Glittering Coffin p. 113 A New Left Politician p. 116 The Uses of Television p. 119 History and Sovereignty p. 127 Common Culture and ‘Occupying Powers’ p. 129 Conclusion p. 133 Chapter Four Imagined Revolutionaries? The Politics and Postures of 1968 p. 135 A Break in the New Left? p.
    [Show full text]
  • Border Country: Raymond Williams in Adult Education
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 358 300 CE 063 833 AUTHOR Mcllroy, John, Ed.; Westwood, Sallie, Ed. TITLE Border Country: Raymond Williams in Adult Education. INSTITUTION National Inst. of Adult Continuing Education, Leicester (England). REPORT NO ISBN-1-872941-28-1 PUB DATE 93 NOTE 351p. AVAILABLE FROMNational Institute of Adult Continuing Education, 19B De Montfort Street, Leicester LE1 7GE, England, United Kingdom (12.99 British pounds). PUB TYPE Books (010) EDRS PRICE MFO1 /PC15 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Adult Education; Adult Educators; Adult Learning; Adult Literacy; Biographies; *Cultural Awareness; Cultural Education; Educational History; *Educational Philosophy; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Interdisciplinary Approach; Literacy Education; Literary Criticism; Literature; *Popular Culture; Soeirl Change; Social Science Research IDENTIFIERS Great Britain; *Williams (Raymond) ABSTRACT This volume brings together a collection of writings from 1946-61 by Raymond Williams, a British university adult educator. Section 1is a brief account by Mcllroy of Williams' involvement in teaching adults, his intellectual influences, and the relationship of his educational and intellectual life to his personal experience and political concerns. Section 2 is a selection of Williams' published work that documents his chief intellectual concerns. It presents 14 writings ranging from pieces in the journals "Politics and Letters" and "The Critic" through early essayson the theme of culture and society to his review of "The Uses of Literacy," an extended dialogue with Richard Hoggart, and a contemporary evaluation of the New Left. Section 3 illustrates the changing curriculum and methods of literature teaching in university adult education and illuminates, in 12 articles on teaching culture and environment, public expression and film criticism, the beginnings of today's cultural studies.
    [Show full text]
  • Myllyntaus, Timo Ed. Thinking Through the Environment: Green Approaches to Global History
    The White Horse Press Full citation: Myllyntaus, Timo ed. Thinking Through the Environment: Green Approaches to Global History. Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 2011. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/3497. Rights: All rights reserved. © The White Horse Press 2011. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism or review, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, including photocopying or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the publishers. For further information please see http://www.whpress.co.uk. Thinking through the Environment Thinking through the Environment Green Approaches to Global History Edited by Timo Myllyntaus Editorial Board Pertti Grönholm Laura Hollsten Jaro Julkunen Aino Laine Timo Myllyntaus, chair The White Horse Press Copyright © 2011 The White Horse Press, 10 High Street, Knapwell, Cambridge, CB23 4NR, UK Set in 10 point Adobe Garamond Pro Printed by Lightning Source All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism or review, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, including photocopy- ing or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system. The cover illustration represents the European lowland bison. It was published as a lithograph in the 14th edition of Brockhaus’ Konversations-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1892–1897). British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-874267-62-1 (HB) Contents List of Illustrations and Tables.
    [Show full text]
  • An Examination of the Cultural Materialisms of Raymond Williams
    Musicology and Mediation: an examination of the cultural materialisms of Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu in relation to the fields of contemporary music and musicology, with a case study of Arvo Pärt and ECM. In memory of Dee Begbie Copyright Statement This copy of the thesishas been suppliedon conditionthat anyonewho consultsit is understoodto recognisethat its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no informationderived from it may be publishedwithout the author'sprior written consent. Signed:... T...... ý.:.. ........ Date: 0.1.....S. k., ' °[. ... eF. : t..... Musicology and Mediation: an examination of the cultural materialisms of Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu in relation to the fields of contemporary music and musicology, with a case study of Arvo Pärt and ECM. Tom Begbie A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth In partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY University College Falmouth Incorporating Dartington College of Arts l November 2008 1W'`ý(ýý5ý= =i- '" Z tlýt 7 Abstract This thesis examines the usefulness of the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Raymond Williams for discussions of material mediation in musicology. In part I, I focus on Bourdieu's discussions of cultural production as set out in The Rules of Art and "The Field of Cultural Production", and reconstruct the terms of Williams's late theoretical project. In establishing the terms of these projects, I draw a parallel between their attempts to materialize the categories of Marx's superstructure - noting in Williams's subsequent use of a revised Marxist production paradigm Adorno by a proximity to the work of - before noting the differences imposed the pressures and limits of their respective intellectual cultures.
    [Show full text]
  • European Elites and Ideas of Empire, 1917–1957
    Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.22, on 02 Oct 2021 at 05:04:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/DC85C5D84467A2F4A8F8E5EE7BD2B4AA Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.22, on 02 Oct 2021 at 05:04:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/DC85C5D84467A2F4A8F8E5EE7BD2B4AA EUROPEAN ELITES AND IDEAS OF EMPIRE, 1917–1957 Who thought of Europe as a community before its economic integra- tion in 1957? Dina Gusejnova illustrates how a supranational European mentality was forged from depleted imperial identities. In the revolutions of 1917–1920, the power of the Hohenzollern, Habsburg, and Romanoff dynasties over their subjects expired. Even though Germany lost its credit as a world power twice in that century, in the global cultural memory, the old Germanic families remained associated with the idea of Europe in areas reaching from Mexico to the Baltic region and India. Gusejnova’s book sheds light on a group of German-speaking intellectuals of aristocratic origin who became pioneers of Europe’s future regeneration. In the minds of transnational elites, the continent’s future horizons retained the con- tours of phantom empires. This title is available as Open Access at 10.1017/9781316343050. dina gusejnova is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Sheffield. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.22, on 02 Oct 2021 at 05:04:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
    [Show full text]
  • Culture in Cultural Studies
    Klementina Batina UDK 069.01:008 Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts 008:069.01 Institute for Historical and Social Sciences in Zagreb 316.74:069 Department of Ethnology Review paper Zagreb Received: March 27, 2009 Croatia Accepted: April 7, 2009 [email protected] Cultural Studies and its Contribution to Understanding the Phenomena of Rapid Museum Growth The “museum boom” is the phenomenon of rapid growth in the number of museums over the last several decades. I will try to find the reasons for the progressive growth of the number of museums from the stand- point of the discourse of cultural studies, explain the meaning of the role of museums in contemporary society and in the context of various rela- tions of power through the analysis of texts of the several most promi- nent cultural theorists (R. Williams, S. Hall, R. Johnson, T. Bennett, T. Eagleton). Through the questioning of the terms “lived”/’recorded” culture, the culture of the “selective tradition’, ‘documentary’, “ideal” and ‘social” culture, the ‘structure of feelings”, identity /”identifica- tion”, I will try to answer the question whether museums really meet the needs they create and whether we need them at all. Key words: cultural studies, role of museum, contemporary society Introduction n the last quarter of the last century great changes in Imuseum practice and museums as cultural and heritage institutions took place. One of the more significant ones is the trend of the museum boom, i.e., the phenomenon of the progressive growth in the number of newly built and reconstructed
    [Show full text]
  • Raymond Williams Culture and Society
    Raymond Williams Culture and Society Dr. Amrita Sen Online Teaching Resource for M.A. English Students Module One Raymond Williams’ Introduction • Williams identifies the end of the eighteenth century as a period of economic and social transition. • He chooses 5 keywords – industry, democracy, class, art and culture – to chart their semantic shift, and in turn, connect this shift with a larger discursive transition during the late eighteenth century. • Specifically, Williams wants to show how the Industrial Revolution brings about a fundamental change not only in the economic base but also in the ideological structures. Keyword: Industry Industry continued • Williams argues that the word “industry” initially meant skill or diligence, a connotation that still survives today. • The predominant meaning of industry, however, now means mechanized manufacturing processes and institutions. • So in other words when we now speak of industry, we usually mean industrial production or industrial unit. That is to say, we understand a specific mechanized means of production. For example the coal industry, the IT industry, or terms such university-industry interface, etc. • When we speak of industry, we rarely imply personal skill or diligence. Consider for example the related term industriousness. Industry continued • Williams identifies Adam Smith (1723 –1790), a Scottish economist and philosopher, as one of the first writers to use the term “industry” in this new sense in his The Wealth of Nations. • Of note, The Wealth of Nations (1776) is a seminal work that attempted to take stock of the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, covering topics such as the accumulation od staock, division of labour, etc.
    [Show full text]