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Raymond Williams Part Two explained by Kalyani Vallath

We have already talked about Williams' early works Culture and Society, "Culture is Ordinary" and The Long Revolution.

 Now, his later works.

Communications
In 1962, Williams' fascinating book Communications was published. It studies the different forms of communication in Britain in the 1960s, namely, printing, photography, film, radio, television and computers. Why does he do that? To show how the various forms of communications continually conduct and negotiate reality (thus debunking the idea that reality is something that already exists).

The Country and the City
The Country and the City was published in 1973. Here Williams examines the twin concepts of the countryside and the city that were prevalent in England from the 16th century. Why would he do that? To show how these concepts came to symbolize social and economic changes under industrialization and capitalism.

Keywords
The book Keywords (1976) takes up fundamental concepts and categories of culture and analyzes their history and development.

Marxism and Literature
Another seminal work by Williams, Marxism and Literature, came in 1977. In this study of Marxist criticism, Williams analyzed the concepts of ideology, hegemony, base and superstructure, and introduced his theory of Cultural Materialism.

 Now, what is Cultural Materialism?
Cultural Materialism is a method of criticism that is rooted in Marxism and stresses the interactions between cultural artefacts (like language and literature) and their historical contexts (socio-political, economic factors). Cultural Materialism understands Culture as a "productive process" rooted in the material means of production and its ideology. 

 Well, you know Shakespeare is a very important author in English literary history. He is the canon. What made Shakespeare the canon?Cultural Materialists like Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (in books like Political Shakespeare) have examined how dominant hegemonic forces appropriate certain important and canonical texts (like Shakespeare) in order to make us accept certain cultural values rather than others.

Cultural Materialism is the British counterpart of the American New Historicism; and the former is more political in its outlook than the latter.

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