Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams | |
---|---|
20th-century philosophy | |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Western Marxism |
Notable students | Terry Eagleton |
Notable ideas | Cultural materialism Mobile privatisation |
Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh
Life
Early life
Born in Pandy, just north of
Williams attended King Henry VIII Grammar School in Abergavenny. His teenage years were overshadowed by the rise of Nazism and the threat of war. His father was secretary of the local Labour Party, but Raymond declined to join, although he did attend meetings around the 1935 general election.[6] He was 14 when the Spanish Civil War broke out, and was conscious of what was happening through his membership of the local Left Book Club.[7] He also mentions the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, originally published in Britain by the Left Book Club.[8]
At this time, he supported the
In July 1939, he was involved in the Monmouth by-election, helping with an unsuccessful campaign by the Labour candidate, Frank Hancock, who was a pacifist. Williams was also a pacifist at this time, having distributed leaflets for the Peace Pledge Union.[10]
University education
Williams won a
At the time, the British government was keen to support
World War II
Williams interrupted his education to serve in the Second World War. He enlisted in the British Army in late 1940, but stayed at Cambridge to take his exams in June 1941, the month when Germany invaded Russia. Joining the military was against the Communist party line at the time. According to Williams, his Communist Party membership lapsed without him formally resigning.[14]
When Williams joined the army, he was assigned to the
Williams took part in the
He was shocked to find that
Adult education and early publications
Williams received his BA from Cambridge in 1946, and then served as a tutor in
In 1946, he founded the review Politics and Letters, a journal which he edited with Clifford Collins and
Between 1946 and 1957, he was involved with the film-maker Michael Orrom, whom he had known in Cambridge. They co-wrote Preface to Film, published in 1954, and Williams wrote the script for an experimental film, The Legend, in 1955. This was rejected in July 1956 and he parted company with Orrom shortly afterwards.[20] He wrote a number of novels in this period, but only one, Border Country, would be published.[21]
Inspired by
Academic career
On the strength of his books, Williams was invited to return to Cambridge in 1961, where he was elected a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.[13] He eventually achieved an appointment in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, first as Reader in Drama (1967–1974), and then as the university's first Professor of Drama (1974–1983).[11][23] He was a visiting professor of political science at Stanford University in 1973, an experience he used to effect in his still useful book Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974).[citation needed]
A committed socialist, he was interested in the relations between language, literature and society, and published many books, essays and articles on these and other issues. Among the main ones is The Country and the City (1973), where chapters on literature alternate with chapters on social history. His tightly written Marxism and Literature (1977) is mainly for specialists, but also sets out his approach to cultural studies, which he called cultural materialism. The book was in part a response to structuralism in literary studies and pressure on Williams to make a more theoretical statement of his position, against criticisms that it was a humanist Marxism, based on unexamined assumptions about lived experience. He makes much use of the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, though the book is uniquely Williams's and written in his characteristic voice. For a more accessible version, see Culture (1981-1982), which develops an argument about cultural sociology, which he hoped would become "a new major discipline".[24] Introducing the US edition, Bruce Robbins identifies it as "implicit self-critique" of Williams's earlier ideas, and a basis on which "to conceive the oppositionality of the critic in a permanently fragmented society".[25]
Concepts and theory
Vocabulary
Williams was keen to establish the changing meanings of the vocabulary used in discussions of culture. He began with the word culture itself; his notes on 60 significant, often difficult words were to have appeared as an appendix to Culture and Society in 1958. This was not possible, and so an extended version with notes and short essays on 110 words appeared as Keywords in 1976. Those examined included "aesthetic", "bourgeois", "culture", "hegemony", "isms", "organic", "romantic", "status", "violence" and "work". A revised version in 1983 added 21 new words, including "anarchism", "ecology", "liberation" and "sex". Williams wrote that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) "is primarily philological and etymological," whilst his work was on "meanings and contexts".[26] In 1981, Williams published Culture, where the term, discussed at length, is defined as "a realized signifying system"[27] and supported by chapters on "the means of cultural production, and the process of cultural reproduction".[28]
Debate
Williams wrote critically of Marshall McLuhan's writings on technology and society. This is the background to a chapter in Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974) called "The Technology and the Society", where Williams defended his visions against technological determinism, focusing on the prevalence of social over technological in the development of human processes. Thus "Determination is a real social process, but never (as in some theological and some Marxist versions)... a wholly controlling, wholly predicting set of causes. On the contrary, the reality of determination is the setting of limits and the exertion of pressures, within which variable social practices are profoundly affected but never necessarily controlled."[29]
His book Modern Tragedy may be read as a response to The Death of Tragedy by the conservative literary critic George Steiner. Later, Williams was interested in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, although he found it too pessimistic about the possibilities for social change.
Last years
Williams joined the Labour Party after he moved to Cambridge in 1961, but resigned in 1966 after the new majority Labour government had broken the seafarers' strike and introduced public expenditure cuts. He joined the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and wrote the May Day Manifesto (published 1967), along with Edward Thompson and Stuart Hall.[30] Williams later became a Plaid Cymru member and a Welsh nationalist.[31] He retired from Cambridge in 1983 and spent his last years in Saffron Walden. While there he wrote Loyalties, a novel about a fictional group of upper-class radicals attracted to 1930s Communism.
Williams was working on
In the 1980s, Williams made important links to debates on feminism, peace,
The Raymond Williams Society was founded in 1989 "to support and develop intellectual and political projects in areas broadly connected with Williams's work".[32] Since 1998 it has published Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism,[33] which is "committed to developing the tradition of cultural materialism" he originated. The Raymond Williams Centre for Recovery Research opened at Nottingham Trent University in 1995.[34] The Raymond Williams Foundation (RWF) supports activities in adult education; it was originally formed in 1988 as the Raymond Williams Memorial Fund.[35] A collaborative research project building on Williams's investigation of cultural keywords called the "Keywords Project", initiated in 2006, is supported by Jesus College, University of Cambridge, and the University of Pittsburgh.[36] Similar projects building on Williams's legacy include the 2005 publication, New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society,[37] edited by the cultural-studies scholars Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris, and the Keywords series from New York University Press including Keywords for American Cultural Studies.[38]
In 2007 a collection of Williams's papers was deposited at Swansea University by his daughter Merryn, a poet and author.[39][40]
Works
Novels
- ISBN 9780701208073.
- ISBN 9780701208080.
- The Volunteers (Reprinted ed.). London: Hogarth. 1985 [First published 1978]. ISBN 9780701210168.
- ISBN 9780701208097.
- ISBN 9780701128432.
- ISBN 9780701128456.
- ISBN 9780701135645.
Literary and cultural studies
- Reading and criticism. Man and Society Series. London: Frederick Muller. 1950. OCLC 443166104.
- Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (Revised ed.). London: Chatto and Windus. 1968 [First published 1952]. OCLC 439658303.
- Williams, Raymond; Orrom, Michael (1954). Preface to film. London: Film Drama Limited. OCLC 982198642.
- OCLC 654385116. – new edition with new introduction
- OCLC 876423987. – reissued with additional footnotes
- Communications (3rd ed.). Harmondsworth, Middlesex: ISBN 9780140208313. – translated into Spanish
- The existing alternatives in communication. Socialism in the Sixties. London: OCLC 81185356. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
- Modern tragedy (Rev. ed.). London: Verso Editions. 1979 [First published 1966]. ISBN 9780860917113. – new edition, without play Koba and with new afterword
- OCLC 264038990.
- May Day Manifesto: 1968 (2nd ed.). Harmondsworth: OCLC 490859142.
- Drama in performance (Rev. ed.). Milton Keynes: ISBN 9780335096589.
- Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (3rd imprint ed.). London: Hogarth Press. 1993 [First published 1961]. ISBN 9780701210281.
- Williams, Raymond, ed. (1973) [First published 1969]. The Pelican Book of English prose. Vol. 2, From 1780 to the present day. Harmondsworth: OCLC 750728593.
- The English novel from Dickens to Lawrence (Reprint ed.). London: Hogarth. 1984 [First published 1970]. ISBN 9780701205584.
- Orwell. ISBN 9780006862277.
- Williams, R. (November–December 1973). "Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory". New Left Review. I (82).
- ISBN 9780851247991. – translated into Spanish and Portuguese
- ISBN 9780140812022.
- George Orwell: a collection of critical essays. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1974. ISBN 9780136477013.
- Williams, Raymond (2003) [First published 1971]. ISBN 978-0415314565. – translated into Traditional Chinese, Italian, Korean and Swedish
- ISBN 9780203124949.
- Axton, Marie; Williams, Raymond, eds. (2010) [First published 1977]. English drama: forms and development: essays in honour of Muriel Clara Bradbrook. Cambridge: ISBN 9780521142557.
- Marxism and literature. Marxist Introductions Series. Toronto: ISBN 9780198760610. – translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Korean
- ISBN 9780860917359.
- Problems in materialism and culture: selected essays. London: ISBN 9781844676637.
- Culture, Fontana New Sociology Series, Glasgow, Collins, 1981. US edition, The Sociology of Culture, New York, Schocken, 1982 – translated into Spanish
- Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio; et al. (1981). William, Raymond (ed.). Contact: human communication and its history. New York: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 9780500012390.
- Socialism and ecology. London: Socialist Environment and Resources Associated. 1983. OCLC 10043180.
- Cobbett. Past Masters series (1st ed.). Oxford: ISBN 9780192875754.
- Towards 2000. Harmondsworth: ISBN 9780140225341.
- Writing in society. London: ISBN 9780860910725.
- Williams, Merryn; Williams, Raymond, eds. (1986). John Clare: selected poetry and prose (1st ed.). London: Methuen. ISBN 9780416411201.
- O'Connor, Alan, ed. (2011) [First published 1988]. Raymond Williams on television: selected writings. London: ISBN 9780415509299.
- What I came to say. London: Cornerstone Digital. 2013 [First published 1989]. ISBN 9781473505032.
- Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism. London: Verso Books. 1989.
- The Politics of Modernism. Against the New Conformists. London: Verso Books. 1989. – translated into Spanish
- Higgins, John, ed. (2001). The Raymond Williams reader. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 9780631213116.
- ISBN 9783039118267.
Short stories
- "Red Earth", Cambridge Front, No. 2, 1941
- "Sack Labourer", English Short Story 1, W. Wyatt, ed., London: Collins, 1941
- "Sugar", R. Williams, M. Orrom and M. J. Craig, eds, Outlook: a Selection of Cambridge Writings, Cambridge, 1941, pp. 7–14
- "This Time", New Writing and Daylight, No. 2, 1942–1943, J. Lehmann, ed., London: Collins, 1943, pp. 158–164
- "A Fine Room to be Ill In", English Story 8, W. Wyatt (ed.), London, 1948
- "The Writing on the Wall", Colours of a New Day: Writing for South Africa, Sarah LeFanuand Stephen Hayward, eds, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990
Drama
- Koba (1966), Modern Tragedy, London, Chatto and Windus
- A Letter from the Country, BBC Television, April 1966, Stand, 12 (1971), pp. 17–34
- Public Enquiry, BBC Television, 15 March 1967, Stand, 9 (1967), pp. 15–53
Introductions
- Seven-page introduction to All Things Betray Thee, a novel by Gwyn Thomas
See also
References
- S2CID 144415843.
- ^ Williams 1979.
- ^ Smith 2008, p. 16.
- ^ Williams 1979, p. 25.
- ^ Williams 1979, p. 36.
- ^ Williams 1979, pp. 31–32.
- ^ Williams 1979, p. 32.
- ^ Williams 1979, p. 31.
- ^ Smith 2008, p. 72.
- ^ Smith 2008, pp. 73–75.
- ^ required.)
- ^ Williams 1979, p. 43.
- ^ Who Was Who. Oxford University Press. 1 December 2007. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
- ^ Williams 1979, p. 52.
- ^ Williams 1979, p. 56.
- ^ Williams 1979, p. 12.
- ^ Smith 2008, p. 359.
- ISBN 978-0-415-08960-9.
- ^ Smith (2008), p. 330.
- ^ Smith 2008, pp. 368–371.
- ^ Smith 2008, Chapter 7.
- ^ My Cambridge, ed. Ronald Hayman, 2nd ed., London: Robson Books, 1986, p. 55.
- ^ J.P. Ward, Raymond Williams, pg. 8.
- ^ Williams 1981, p. 233.
- ^ Robbins, Bruce (1995). "Foreword". The Sociology of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. xi.
- Fontana/Croom Helm. p. 16.
- ^ Williams 1981, p. 207.
- ^ Williams 1981, p. 206.
- ISBN 978-0-415-31456-5. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
- ^ Williams 1979, pp. 371–373.
- ^ "Our History". Plaid Cymru. Archived from the original on 4 September 2012. Retrieved 4 August 2011.
- ^ "The Raymond Williams Society". The Raymond Williams Society.
- ^ "Key Words: A journal of cultural materialism" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 July 2013. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
- ^ "English - Arts and Humanities - Nottingham Trent University". Archived from the original on 25 January 2012. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
- ^ "The Raymond Williams Foundation". Archived from the original on 20 February 2012. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
- ^ "Keywords Project". Keywords.pitt.edu. Retrieved 5 December 2022.
- OCLC 60544256.
- ISBN 9781479822942.
- ^ "CREW". Archived from the original on 5 April 2008.
- ^ "Raymond Williams Society Newsletter" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 October 2011.
Sources
- Smith, Dai (2008). Raymond Williams: a Warrior's Tale. Parthian Books. ISBN 9781905762996.
- Williams, Raymond (1979). Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review. London: New Left Books. ISBN 978-0860910008.
- Williams, Raymond (1981). Culture. London: Fontana Books.
Further reading
Book-length treatments
- Maria Elisa Cevasco, Para ler Raymond Williams (Portuguese of To Read Raymond Williams) São Paulo, Paz e Terra, 2001
- Eagleton, Terry, editor. Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989
- J. E. T. Ethridge, Raymond Williams: Making Connections. New York: Routledge, 1994
- Jan Gorak, The Alien Mind of Raymond Williams. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1988
- John Higgins, Raymond Williams: Literature, Marxism and Cultural Materialism. London and New York, Routledge, 1999
- Fred Inglis, Raymond Williams. London and New York: Routledge, 1995
- Paul Jones, "Raymond Williams's Sociology of Culture: A Critical Reconstruction". London: Palgrave, 2004
- David Lusted, ed., Raymond Williams: Film, TV, Culture, London: British Film Institute, 1989
- Don Milligan, Raymond Williams: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism, Studies in Anti-Capitalism, 2007
- Andrew Milner, Re-Imagining Cultural Studies: The Promise of Cultural Materialism, London: Sage, 2002
- W. John Morgan and Peter Preston, eds. Raymond Williams: Politics, Education, Letters, Macmillan Press, ISBN 978-0-312-08357-1, 1993
- Alan O'Connor, Raymond Williams: Writing, Culture, Politics. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1989
- Alan O'Connor, Raymond Williams. Critical Media Studies. Rowman and Littlefield, 2005
- Tony Pinkney, ed., Raymond Williams. Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, UK: Seren Books, 1991
- Politics and Letters (London, New Left Books, 1979) gives the author's own account of his life and work.
- Dai Smith, Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Tale. Cardigan: Parthian, 2008
- Nick Stevenson, Culture, Ideology, and Socialism: Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson. Aldershot, England: Avebury, 1995
- Nicolas Tredell, Uncancelled Challenge: the work of Raymond Williams. Nottingham: Paupers' Press, 1990. ISBN 0-946650-16-0
- J. P. Ward, Raymond Williams in the Writers of Wales series. University of Wales Press, 1981
- Daniel Williams, ed., Who Speaks for Wales?: Nation, Culture, Identity, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003
- Stephen Woodhams, History in the Making: Raymond Williams, Edward Thompson and Radical Intellectuals 1936–1956, Merlin Press 2001 ISBN 978-0850364941
Articles
- Craig, Cairns, Peripheries, in ISSN 0264-0856
- Phillips, Jacob (January 2021). "Raymond Williams' Reading of Newman's The Idea of a University". New Blackfriars. 102 (1097): 108–122. S2CID 225716339.
External links
- The Raymond Williams Society
- Raymond Williams Archive at Swansea University
- Museum of Broadcast Communications article about Raymond Williams Archived 22 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine
- Maurice Cowling on Raymond Williams
- Selections from Keywords
- Raymond Williams Centre for Recovery Research
- Raymond Williams page at The Literary Encyclopedia
- Raymond Williams Worldcat Identity
- Raymond Williams at 100 Welsh Heroes
- The Raymond Williams Foundation
- Videos of Raymond Williams – Keywords Project – University of Pittsburgh and Jesus College, Cambridge
- The Raymond Williams' book collection is housed at Special Collections and Archives, Cardiff University.