Culture and MaterialismVerso Books, 2020 M10 13 - 320 pages Raymond Williams is a towering presence in cultural studies, most importantly as the founder of the apporach that has come to be known as “cultural materialism.” Yet Williams’s method was always open-ended and fluid, and this volume collects together his most significant work from over a twenty-year peiod in which he wrestled with the concepts of materialism and culture and their interrelationship. Aside from his more directly theoretical texts, however, case-studies of theatrical naturalism, the Bloomsbury group, advertising, science fiction, and the Welsh novel are also included as illustrations of the method at work. Finally, Williams’s identity as an active socialist, rather than simply an academic, is captured by two unambiguously political pieces on the past, present and future of Marxism. |
Contents
Means of Communication as Means of Production | |
Ideas of Nature | |
Social Darwinism | |
Problems of Materialism | |
the Case | |
The Bloomsbury Fraction | |
the Magic System | |
Utopia and Science Fiction | |
The Welsh Industrial Novel | |
Notes on Marxism in Britain Since 1945 | |
Beyond Actually Existing Socialism | |
4 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract active actual advertising alternative analysis Anarres argument Bahro basic Bloomsbury Bloomsbury Group bourgeois capitalism capitalist central character complex consciousness course crisis critical crucial cultural revolution decisive difficult direct distinction dominant culture drama dystopian economic effect elements emphasis English English naturalism environment especially evident example experience fact fiction formation forms Goldmann human ideology important individual industrial novel intellectual kind labour Leonard Woolf limited literary literature look Lucien Goldmann major Marxist material materialist means of communication means of production melodrama mode modern naturalist necessary nineteenth century notion organization particular period perspective physical political position possible practice problems productive forces projection question radical relations relationships science fiction seen sense significant Social Darwinism social order socialist society sociology specific structure struggle technical theatre theoretical theory Timpanaro tradition transformation utopian Virginia Woolf Vril whole writing