Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977): This text carefully outlines how Marxism needs to embrace a more comprehensive understanding of culture as a dynamic, integrated process of human development. We are constituted fundamentally as social beings and our articulations (language, art) extend beyond fixed notions of economic determinism or ideology.
Williams engages in a dialogue with Adorno and Marcuse, but his straight-forward tone, the accessible language, and the clear format found within this text all indicate to me that Williams hoped to reach a broader audience. Williams’ design choices (no footnotes, short chapters, larger print, and chapter titles in a “roadmap” format) all seemed to reflect a desire to reach an interdisciplinary academic audience, and perhaps these choices are related to the scope of the project that Williams presents. Williams writes during a time of radical change and great social upheaval. He wants Marxism to become a useful tool for addressing human alienation and despair, but he feels it has been misinterpreted, interpreted too narrowly, or applied in unrealistic ways and consequently, Marxism overlooks or demonizes critically important aspects of human production that occur outside of production for consumption.
Williams engages in a dialogue with Adorno and Marcuse, but his straight-forward tone, the accessible language, and the clear format found within this text all indicate to me that Williams hoped to reach a broader audience. Williams’ design choices (no footnotes, short chapters, larger print, and chapter titles in a “roadmap” format) all seemed to reflect a desire to reach an interdisciplinary academic audience, and perhaps these choices are related to the scope of the project that Williams presents. Williams writes during a time of radical change and great social upheaval. He wants Marxism to become a useful tool for addressing human alienation and despair, but he feels it has been misinterpreted, interpreted too narrowly, or applied in unrealistic ways and consequently, Marxism overlooks or demonizes critically important aspects of human production that occur outside of production for consumption.
I would like to explore Sarah’s question regarding hegemony, as I felt that this discussion was one of the most useful aspects of Williams’ text. As Sarah posits, “How does Williams' discussion of hegemony directly relate to our discussions of aesthetics and the ability to "escape" or "transcend" reality through art?
If hegemony encompasses a dynamic, fluid, non-totalizing interaction between the dominant, the counter-dominant, and the alternative dominant (112-113), Williams believes these complex interactions occur through active, formative, and transformational processes which can be evidenced through art (114). Perhaps art’s power to signify—through ruptures, breaks, openness, reconfigurations—is a kind of generative power that is transcendent or presents an escape from contemporaneous experience. In any event, this language in Williams' text seems to align his work more closely with texts by Adorno and Marcuse which affirm that art can be a critical site of signification that is revolutionary, rather than merely political.
If hegemony encompasses a dynamic, fluid, non-totalizing interaction between the dominant, the counter-dominant, and the alternative dominant (112-113), Williams believes these complex interactions occur through active, formative, and transformational processes which can be evidenced through art (114). Perhaps art’s power to signify—through ruptures, breaks, openness, reconfigurations—is a kind of generative power that is transcendent or presents an escape from contemporaneous experience. In any event, this language in Williams' text seems to align his work more closely with texts by Adorno and Marcuse which affirm that art can be a critical site of signification that is revolutionary, rather than merely political.
Michael Bérubé, The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies (2005): This introductory chapter entitled “Engaging the Aesthetic,” critiques what Bérubé perceives to be a limited understanding of the aesthetic within cultural studies. Working particularly through Mukarovsky and Williams, Bérubé argues that the aesthetic should not be viewed as an abstract "return to beauty" or a transcendent realm of experience. Bérubé wants cultural studies to embrace a more multi-faceted view of the aesthetic as a critical site of human experience (and creative imagination) that is socially constituted in very specific ways. He calls for cultural studies theorists to more closely evaluate and historicize both the production and the reception of a multitude of cultural forms.
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