Raymond Williams through Sri Lankan eyes

[Part 2]

In my last column, I presented a general overview of Raymond Williams’ writings and why they matter to us in Sri Lanka. In today’s column I wish to examine his all too important concept of culture. An understanding of the concept of culture that he proposed is central to a proper understanding of his writings, interests and projects.

He wrote on a broad range of issues ranging from literature and communication to social theory and politics. All his diverse writings and analytical efforts are united by his professed desire to give pride of place to the idea of culture. It acts as an integrating force that gives his work a cohesive focus.

Hence, it is extremely important that we acquire some knowledge of his preferences and partialities when it comes to the question of culture. In this column, I wish to explain as clearly as I can, based on my reading of William’s’ writings, his view of culture.

Raymond Williams, in his book Keywords says that, ’Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. This is so partly because its intricate historical development, in several European languages, but mainly because it has now come to be used for important concepts on several distinct and incompatible systems of thought.’

This observation of Williams merits close consideration. As he points the word culture comes from a Latin word which carries a range of meanings which include inhabit, cultivate, protect, honor with worship. However, the word took on the primary meaning of cultivation or tending.

As Williams points our, culture in all its early usages was a noun of progress – the tending of something, mainly crops or animals. From the sixteenth century on, the tending of natural growth was enlarged to include a process of human development.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, this indeed was the preferred meaning.

Later in the 19th century, thanks in large part to the influence of German thinking the word culture acquired the meaning of civilisation. This indeed constitutes an important segment of the meaning of culture as it finds articulation in current usage. Examining the historical evolution of this term, Raymond Williams says that there are three important senses we need to keep in mind.

First, the independent and abstract noun, whether used generally or specifically, which characterises a general process of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual development. Second, the independent noun whether used generally or specifically, which signals a particular way of life; it can be of a period, people, a group or humanity in the broadest sense.

Third, the independent and abstract noun which points to works and practices of intellectual and aesthetic activity.

Indeed, it is this third sense that seeps to predominate today, where culture is equated with art, literature, music, drama, film and sculpture.

Raymond Williams goes on to say that, ‘faced with this complex and still active history of the word, it is easy to react by selecting one true or proper or scientific sense and dismissing other senses as loose or confused.’ He is, I am persuaded, right on this point; this is precisely what we find the writings of modern scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

What is noteworthy about Williams’ approach to culture is that he is keen to adopt a deep historical vision as well as an orientation that stresses its contemporary complexities arising from its inter-discursive overlaps.

For example, in his seminal book Culture and Society, 1780-1950, he sought to focus on the cluster of five intersecting concepts – industry, democracy, class, art and culture – to map social transformations effectively.

Similarly, we see how in almost all his works he displays a clearly articulated interest in relating culture to other equally compelling concepts such as society and economy.

In his book Marxism and Literature, he makes the following pertinent remark. ‘Are we to understand culture as the arts, as a system of meanings and values or as a whole way of life, and how are these to be related to society and the economy?

He goes on to assert that, ‘the questions have to be asked, but we are unlikely to be able to answer them unless we recognise the problems which were inherent in the concept of society and economy and which have been passed on to concepts like culture by the abstraction and limitation of those terms.’

This is indeed a most profitable line of interrogation, and one which we could draw on usefully.

To my mind, one fruitful way of approaching Raymond Williams’ concept of culture is to examine closely the chapter titled in his important book The Long Revolution.

Here he lays out his understanding of culture in what I think are compellingly lucid terms. He begins by stating that there are three general categories linked to the definition of culture.

First, the idea in which culture is a state or process of human perfection.

This is understood in terms of certain universal or absolute values. If one adheres to such a view of culture, culture should be regarded essentially as the discovery and description of lives of people and the works they produced, of those values which are deemed timeless. Here culture is clearly attached to a universal human condition.

Second, there is the documentary sense in which culture is the body of intellectual and artistic work; in these writings human experiences are delineated in a detailed manner. When one subscribes to this notion of culture according to Williams one focuses on the act of criticism; it highlights the nature of experience and thought, complexities of language, convention, style and form, in which the experiences and thoughts are portrayed and assessed. Third, there is the social definition of culture. Here culture needs to be understood as a characterisation of a particular way of life.

It seems to articulate certain meanings and values both in art and learning as well in day to day behaviour of people and the various institutions they have created. As Williams observes, ’the analysis of culture, from such a definition, is that clarification of meaning and values implicit and explicit in a particular way of life, a particular culture.. ’What is interesting about this third approach is that it in addition to historical criticism of intellectual and imaginative work that was alluded to earlier, it will include analyses of facets of everyday life such as the organization of production, the structure of the family, the nature of social institutions which shape social relationships.

Division

Raymond Williams has presented us with a three-fold division linked to the understanding of culture. While all three have their strengths and merits, it is evident that Williams leans towards the third and more capacious category. In his analysis of the three approaches, Williams advances his argument with reference to a particular work of literature – Antigone of Sophocles. He says that we can examine it in terms of the three orientations underlined above. First, we can examine it in terms of the discovery of certain universal and timeless values.

Indeed, many distinguished literary critics have done precisely this. Second, we can explore the complex ways in which this play communications a given constellation of values through certain artistic strategies. Some critics have chosen to follow this path; both, it needs to be said, have produced valuable results. As Williams points out, the first will underscore the absolute value attached to the reverence for the dead, while the second will highlight the articulation of certain fundamental tensions through conventionalised literary firms.

Third, we can adopt the more capacious approach advocated by Williams which seeks to capture the energy and the strengths of the two earlier mentioned forms. As Williams observes,’ much will be gained from either analysis, for the first will point to the absolute value of reverence for the dead; the second will point to the expression of certain basic human emotions through the particular dramatic form of chorus…yet it is clear that neither analysis is complete. the reverence as an absolute value is limited in the play by the terms of a particular kinship system and its conventional obligations.- Antigone would do this for a brother but not for a husband, similarly, the dramatic form, the meters of the verse not only have an artistic tradition behind them, the work of many men, but can be seen to have been shaped not only by the demands of experience, but by a particular social forms through which the dramatic tradition developed.’

What the third approach stresses is the need to locate the given work of art, in this case Sophocles’ Antigone – in a larger and dynamic social context. As Williams says it is not a question of establishing relations between art and society but of exploring all the activities and their interrelations without granting priority to any one of them we may opt to abstract. The organisation of a whole way of life, which is central to Williams’ understanding of culture, here plays a crucial role. it is only when we are able to locate Antigone in the larger social context with its diversity of intersecting activities that we will be able to understand the work fully and to justice to the intentions of the author.

We can take a local example and pursue Williams’ line of thinking further. Let us examine Martin Wickremasinghe’s Viragaya (The Way of the Lotus). It can be analysed as a work that represents certain timeless and universal values related to attachment and detachment, involvement and renunciation. Secondly, it can be studied as text that seeks to question and affirm certain human values by articulating them in certain identifiable literary form.

Third, we can relate the novel to the larger social discourses from which it draws and on which it seeks to exercise and influence by summoning for scrutiny the whole way of life as outlined by Williams. Martin Wickremasinghe, in his numerous commentaries on his novel, has referred to patterns of Buddhist culture that he wishes to focus on. This effort of Wickremasinghe finds a ready echo in Williams’ formulations.

For example, it is with the discovery of patterns of a characteristic kind that any useful cultural analysis begins, and it is with the relationship between these patterns which sometimes reveal unexpected identities and correspondences in hitherto separated discontinuities of an unexpected kind, that general cultural analysis is concerned.’ What this means, of course, is that we can expect to know the general organisation of society and the way of life in any comprehensive way only in societies and times in which we live.

This is a task challenging enough; but it becomes far more demanding with regard to periods and works that are distant from us; we are here called to fill in blanks in a more imaginative manner. Williams emphasised that ‘we can learn a great deal of the life of other places and times, but certain elements, it seems to me, will always be irrecoverable. Even those that are recovered are recovered in abstraction, and this is of crucial importance.’

Culture

In examining the vexed topic of culture Raymond Williams says that it is important that we distinguish three levels of culture. First we have the lived culture that characterises given time and place. It is only fully available to those who inhabit that space and time. Second, we have the recorded culture, the documentary aspect he referred to earlier, this can take diverse forms ranging from art to the facts of day to day existence; in other words, the culture of a period.

Third, we have the culture of what he terms selective tradition; this can be seen as a force that is bringing together lived culture and period culture that alluded to earlier. It is important that we grasp what he means by the selective tradition – a notion that is vitally linked to his concept of culture. The selection of the tradition, in many ways, begins with the period itself. Some aspects of a complex of activities are selected for highlighting and evaluation. Williams says no one has read all the English novels published in the nineteen fifties. Yet this does not prevent literary critics and literary historians from identifying certain common features associated with that period and coming up with a list of the better works. Clearly, there is a process of critical selection involved in this effort to create a selective tradition.

Special interest

As Williams claims, ‘within a given society, selection will be governed by many kinds of special interest, including class interests. Just as the actual social situation will largely govern contemporary selection, so the development of the society, the process of historical change, will largely determine the selective tradition.’ What he is keen to emphasize is that cultural traditions are not only constitute an act of selection but also interpretation.

Forging new links with the past and re-drawing current boundaries is clearly an undertaking of supreme importance. And the following remark by Raymond Williams encapsulates his vision succinctly.’ the more actively cultural work can be related, either to the whole organization within which it was expressed or to the contemporary organization within which it is used, the more clearly shall we see its true values.’

To understand Raymond Williams’ notion of culture we need to bring into view his notion of the structure of feeling. This is indeed a notion that is central to his exegetical endeavors. In a broad sense, the structure of feeling can be described as the culture of a period; it is the special active outcome of all the ingredients in a general organisation. And according to him communication largely depends on this structure of feeling.

The structure of feeling comes into being as a consequence of various elements of social existence acting and reacting in an organised fashion. As Raymond Williams states, ‘I do not mean that the structure of feeling any more than social character, is possessed in the same way by the many individuals in the community. But, I think, it is a very deep and wide possession in all actual communities.’

Accuracy

Williams first deployed this term in his book Preface to Film published in 1954. There he observed that, ‘in the study of a period, we may be able to reconstruct with more or less accuracy, the material life, the social organisation, and to a large extent, the dominant ideas. It is not necessary to discuss here, which, if any, of these aspects is in the whole complex, determining.

An important institution like the drama will in all probability, take the colour in varying degrees from them all….to relate a work of art to any part of that observed totality may, in varying degrees be useful, but it is common experience in analysis to realize that when one has measured the work against the separate parts there yet remains some element from which there is no external counterpart. This element, I believe, is what I have termed the structure of feeling of a period and it is only recognisable through experience of the work of art itself as a whole.’ What is evident from this comment is that Raymond Williams is keen to employ this term with the objective of putting in play a dialogue between two contending forces in art and literature; they are the individuality of a work and its representativeness vis-à-vis a given period of time. It is his intention to examine the continuity of experience from a specific work, through its characteristic form, to its recognition as a general form, and the way this general form is connected the period which it inhabits. The structure of feeling, to be sure, is an interesting way of exploring art and society and the complex interactions between them. This is, of course, not to suggest that this concept of the structure of feeling does not have its own blind spots.

Let me refer to three of them. First, it does not adequately address the question whether in any given period there could not be several alternative structures in operation. If this is indeed possible as is likely, how do we recognize and interpret these alternative structures? Second, it is increasingly clear that the structure of feeling cannot be easily turned into a concept that investigates into sociality without anchoring it in a well-developed idea of social structure.

Third, it seems to me that Williams does not pay sufficient attention to the issue of continuities that are established between these structures of feeling over time. Despite these deficiencies, this concept, I will argue, has opened a highly productive pathway to understanding culture and social change

Notion

Another notion of Williams that deserves careful study is his belief that culture is ordinary. At a time when culture was seen as elite-driven, exclusive, sophisticated, fenced-off territory, he underscored the importance of the everyday, the ordinary and the quotidian. This orientation is central to his analysis of culture. Williams sought to dismantle the deeply entrenched duality between high culture and low culture in promoting his idea of culture being ordinary, he repudiated the axioms of both orthodox literary studies and orthodox Marxist studies. He learned from both but was eager to go beyond them.

He proclaimed that, ‘I could not have begun this work if I had not learned from Marxism and from Leavis.’ Having said that he went on to remark, ‘I cannot complete it unless I radically amend some of the ideas which they and others have left us.’ Williams attempt to characterize culture as ordinary is reflective of this desire to move beyond the orthodoxies of literary studies and Marxist studies.

Closely related to this is the notion of a common culture that was promoted by Raymond Williams. This is a central thread in his discourse on culture/he sees culture as a nexus of commonly shared meanings and practices that grow out a whole society. According to him, common culture suggests the c collaborative generation of those meanings. and the citizens of that culture are fully active members. T.S.Eliot, too, talked about a common culture.

However, there is a significant difference between their approaches. It is Williams’ conviction that a culture is common only when it is collaboratively fashioned by a collectivity. Eliot was of the opinion that a culture achieves this commonality when the views and values of a minority of elites achieves widespread acceptance, even though it happens passively. Williams was adamant in his belief a common culture is perpetually made and re-made through practices adopted by a proactive collectivity.

An interesting aspect of this common culture, according to Williams, is that it demands an ethic of responsibility.; it involves a total vision of democracy where everyone participates willingly and on an equal footing. A corollary of this common participation of the members of a collectivity in the production of a common culture is that it cannot be known in advance. Williams once remarked that,’ we have to plan what can be planned, according to our common decisions. But the emphasis of the idea of culture is right when it reminds us that a culture, essentially, is unplannable. We have to ensure the means of life, and the means of community. But what will then, by these means, be lived, we cannot know or say. The idea of culture rests on a metaphor; the tending of natural growth. And indeed it is on growth, as metaphor and as fact, that the ultimate emphasis must be placed.’

When describing culture and the unpredictable ways in which it moves through society, Raymond Williams identifies a three-fold division (Williams is often fond of three-fold divisions). They are the residual, dominant and emergent. Any active and progressing cultural tradition manifests the complex and multi-faceted interaction among these three elements. The residual signals the active presence of the past in the present – those highly relevant legacies from the past. The dominant refers to the most pervasive and consequential aspects of modern times. The emergent indexes those elements which are discernible in embryonic and shadowy forms but which carries with them the possibilities for future growth and influence. These three elements that Williams has identified can prove to be of inestimable value in cultural analysis. As Williams states the following.

Complexity

‘The complexity of a culture is to be found not only in its variable processes and their social definitions – traditions, institutions and formations – but also in the dynamic interrelations, at every point in the process, of historically varied and variable elements.’ it is in this context of analysis that we have to be probe into the significance of the dominant, residual and emergent elements that Williams’ has focused on.

To understand Raymond Williams’ approach to culture, we need to pay close attention to his idea of cultural materialism. This idea can be seen in its shadowy form in the earliest of his writings, but it is only in his later works that he was able to flesh it out cogently. He always believed that culture was a constitutive force in social and political reproduction, and this idea led to cultural materialism. This concept seeks to challenge the supremacy accorded to economics over culture in social analysis, and argue that culture is as influential as economics in the propagation of the social order.

Cultural materialism aims to avoid the twin dangers of unbridled individualism and economics-centered thinking urged on by traditional literary studies and Marxism. And the central role played by language – not as a mere instrument of communication, but a vital social practice that is constitutive of meaning – has to be pondered carefully. When one examines Raymond Williams’ concept of cultural materialism carefully, one would realise that through the formation of this concept he is seeking to enforce a conjunction of three facets of analysis that are normally left unconnected. First there is the textual analysis which focuses closely in the text, its formation, its texture. Second, he focused on the theoretical analysis which aims to locate the object of analysis in a wider discursive field. Third, the historical analysis is important. This focuses on how cultural forms changed over time and newer forms and conventions came into being as a consequence of the pressures exerted by social, institutional and material factors. These facets of analysis were kept apart, and Williams labored to bring them together through his concept of cultural materialism.

Raymond Williams’ intention in proposing the concept of cultural materialism was to avoid the limitations of what he thought were sterile formalistic and dogmatic sociological approaches; he was keen to promote a form of cultural analysis that sought to locate texts in their proper conditions of existence and these conditions included material, social and formal contexts. Williams attempt to dislodge the superficial binary between base and superstructure promoted by certain Marxists is clear. His focus is on the complex process between them. His notion of cultural materialism seeks to give equal weight to the base and superstructure and call attention to the nature of the interaction between the two.

Experience

What I have attempted to do in this column is to summarise Raymond Williams’ approach to culture as clearly as I can on the basis of my extensive reading of his works and experience of teaching them in my graduate courses over the years. This is, to be sure, a near impossible task; his writings are varied and his style is often dense and abstract. As I was explaining his approach to culture, his relevance to us in Sri Lanka, why he matters to us, was constantly at the back of my mind. Hence I sought to look at him through Sri Lankan eyes. By was of underlining his possible relevance to us, I would like to make seven points.

First, he was keen to examine culture in relation to economics, politics and social transformations and not in isolation from them. Second, he always adopted a productive historical orientation. Third, the material forces shaping culture attracted his attention in important ways. Fourth, he saw culture as ordinary and not extraordinary, that is to say, he shunned the ruling elitist paradigm of culture.

Fifth, it was his belief that the idea of a common culture should guide our thinking – a common culture where everyone participated willingly and actively in a democratic fashion. Sixth, he disdained the easy duality between high culture and low culture; it is well to remind ourselves that while most British scholars of culture were decrying cinema as an inferior art form he underscored the need to study it seriously.

Seventh, he focused on close reading of cultural texts as well as careful situating of them in their proper socio-political contexts. All these seven points have a direct bearing on our own cultural projects and desires in Sri Lanka. Let us take Sinhala literary criticism; it wavers uncomfortably between narrow biographical criticism and arid formalism. Martin Wickremasinghe and Gunadasa Amrasekera saw the inherent limitations and counter-productive nature of these attempts and advocated, quite rightly in my judgment, a form of cultural criticism. Raymond Williams’ writings should enable us to think more deeply, and in a more focused way, about the advantages and disadvantages of cultural criticism.