Raymond Williams through Sri Lankan eyes

Continued from November 4

Said is successful in highlighting the way that the colonies had a palpable impact on British society and how the narrative discourse of English novels was inflected by it. Williams downplays this aspect. As one astute commentator has remarked, ‘a tone of understatement and paradox governs his description of British fiction in which emigration functions thematically as the point marking the novel’s dissolution, by which is meant the characters whose lives were not compatible within the system were ;put on the boat.’

Williams interprets this pattern as a simple strategy for resolving the conflict between personal ethic and social experience, while at the same time obviating any further questions of either the ethnic or the experience.

The effect of such an interpretation, however, is that colonial territories remain without material presence or substance. The colonies as the actual place impinging on the lives of these poor characters in powerfully direct, immediate ways cannot be accommodated to Williams’ location of dramatic conflict in the self-delusion of characters; the colonies are turned into a vanishing point, the symbolic space for dissolving all problems that cannot be solved at home.’

Edward Said, of course, takes the opposite tack. So the inability of Williams to take into consideration the full implications of colonies for British fiction, their narrative discourse and projected social vision is one limitation.

The other is that Raymond Williams has not been successful in weaving in the problems of colonialism into his theoretical frameworks and modes of analysis. This is indeed a theoretical issue. He has been the most perceptive in discussing the social discourses surrounding the production of literary texts, the social basis of conventions, the complex interplay between country and city, the ramifications of culture, the interplay between base and superstructure, the role of ideology and so on.

However, he was not able to bring in the complexities of colonialism into his theoretical frameworks and protocols of analysis in any detailed and cogent way. Hence, when we as Sri Lankan writers and readers look up to Raymond Williams for guidance and inspiration we need to keep in mind this glaring omission that initiates his work.

The problem with Raymond Williams is not that he was unaware of the importance of or underestimated the power of culture and imperialism. It is just that he was unable to explore deeply the necessary and manifold interconnections that exist between them. In other words, he paid scant attention to the notion of culture as produced by the forces of imperialism and colonialism and how it found articulation in literary texts.

This is indeed a telling omission in his critical writings on the English novel.It is against this background that we have to examine the relevance of Raymond Williams for literary studies in Sri Lanka. Novels of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad and E.M. Forster are regularly taught in our universities and higher seats of learning.

To be continued