Cultural Materialism
Cultural materialism is a theory in cultural
studies that traces its origin to the work of the
Welsh left-wing (neo-Marxist) literary critic,
Raymond Williams (1921 - 1988). He
introduced this theory in his book, Marxism and
Literature (1977). Williams describes cultural
materialism as “a theory of the specificities of
material, cultural and literary production within
historical materialism." Historical materialism
argues that influential members of society
control the material condition of social
institutions.
Williams's attempt to find the relationship
between language, literature, historiography,
communications, feminist theories, political
science and other disciplines led to the
emergence of what is called, Cultural Studies in
the 1980s.
Cultural Studies embraces a wide array
of perspectives such as media studies, social
criticism, anthropology, and literary theory. It
analyzes the rapidly expanding global culture
industry that includes a variety of categories of
culture like entertainment, advertising,
publishing, television, film, computers and the
Internet and scrutinizes the decreasing margins
of difference between these realms of
expression and the politics and ideology that
make contemporary culture possible.
Cultural materialism views culture as a
productive process connected to the class-
based inequalities that pervade society. Cultural
materialism makes use of the already existing
theoretical critiques of the relationship between
culture and power, especially the writings
of Italian neo-Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci
(1891 – 1937) and the critical theory of the
Frankfurt School devoted to the study of
modern culture.
The theory of Cultural materialism
employs the past to "read" the present,
revealing the politics of our society by what we
choose to emphasise or suppress the past.
Cultural Materialism views arts, especially
literature, more as a product of social life at a
particular point of time in the past rather than a
matter for present "consumption."
"Cultural Theory" also known as "literary
theory", or "critical theory," is a set of concepts
and assumptions by which we explain or
interpret literary texts. A "theory" is the body of
ideas and methods we use in the practical
reading of literature. Theories do not bring out
the meaning of a work, but theories reveal what
literature can mean; they provide us with a
perspective, a lens, principles or tools with
which we can have a certain understanding of
the text, especially unconscious elements of the
text.
Cultural theory explains how a text is
more the product of a culture than an individual
author and in turn how those texts help to
create the culture. Culture and cultural products
play the ideological role of legitimizing the
status quo through the promotion and
justification of certain values, assumptions, and
worldviews while at the same time
marginalizing others who do not fit in the
mainstream. Hence the study of race, class,
and gender are important in critical theory.
Artists and writers internalize ideological
constructions in which they live and work and
therefore their works are always a reflection of
those political and social power structures. In
the term, "cultural materialism" "materialism"
signifies the opposite of "idealism." In "idealism"
high culture represents the free and
independent play of the talented individual
mind. On the contrary, "materialism" holds that
culture cannot transcend the material forces
and relations of production. Culture is neither
simply a reflection of the economic and political
system nor is independent of it.
Culture is a crucial site of human struggle
quite contrary to the capitalist view that culture
emerges out of leisurely intellectual class. That
is to say, culture is not simply an affirmation of
the “inner life,” or “subjectivity,” but an outcome
of general social development.
10. The emphasis on historical context
undermines the traditional view that literature
had transcendental qualities - common,
universal values, Exploring a text’s historical
context reveals the processes employed by
power structures, such as the church, the state
or the academy, to disseminate ideology.
According to Cornel West, an American
black social philosopher and theologian,
Williams taught us how to think historically
about cultural practices or in other words, how
to approach political matters with a subtle
cultural materialist orientation. Cultural
materialism enabled Bible scholars to
understand the subaltern culture that shaped
the New Testament message.
