On Catherine Gallagher's Critique of Raymond Williams Author(s): Stanley Aronowitz Reviewed work(s): Source: Social Text, No.

30 (1992), pp. 90-97 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466468 . Accessed: 05/03/2013 14:46
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On Catherine Gallagher'sCritiqueof RaymondWilliams

STANLEY ARONOWITZ

CatherineGallagher's critiqueof RaymondWilliams's conceptof culture his long, is formalist. She has shownhe made categoryerrorsthroughout effort to clarifythisslipperyidea. He buttedagainst stone oftentortured, and frequently walls. Williams lapsed into messy formulations changed his mind.That his was an incomplete projectgoes without saying.But the simple factis thathe was, by Gallagher's admission,theleading figurein Cultural Studies, not what has become a major intellectualmovement, only in GreatBritainand theUnited States,but in Latin Americaas well. If you believe the movement is worthdeveloping,Williams's lapses can be forgiven,even appreciated. For what counts is not, as Gallagher so contends it is, whetherhe got it right; indeed, we are conforcefully to demned make new visions and revisionsof the notionof cultureto the is likely to save us fromthis formulation end of our days. No definitive matters is that Williams task. What managedto bringus an inch sisyphean forwardfromthe conceptionaccording to which culturesignified"civiand as opposed to the practices that anthropologists lized" formation banalities mark common the that otherethnographers study everyday life. In order to fullygrasp the depthof his contribution to our collective one would have to place his idea of culturein history, to understanding see how he effecteda break with the past. This I propose to do, for to dwell on his categorymistakesmisses the point. 1 It will take more thana generation to overcome the overwhelming identification of theconceptof "culture"withits traditional usages: Art,high and popular which, in both instances,present themselvesas artifacts, - what NorbertElias representations;and as bildung, self-formation calls the "civilizing process." In the latterdefinition, cultureis the end of the natural socialization afforded the of the aristo children product a or an act of volition birthright tocracy by individuals,commonly but notalways of middle-classoriginswho through educationor exposure more than a of the canonical artworksand acquire passing knowledge 90

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mannersof WesternCivilization. In which case the habits of the aristocracyare more widely disseminated. Of course, the mavens of "high culture"- de Tocqueville, Arnold,in the20thcentury Ortegay Gasset and, in a moreleftcritique(leftbecause to advanced capitalism)Thorstein it linksculturaldegradation Veblen,the School and especially the neo-trotskyist intellectuals of the Frankfurt 1930s and 1940s grouped around the key American literary-political journal of the period,Partisan Review- were by no means uncriticalof of "culture."The middleclass tendedto treat middle class appropriations this acquistion as merelyanotherpossession, like a suit of clothes to be themiddleclass wornon Sundaysor wheninvitedto dinner.Accordingly, tailorshighcultureto its own degradedtaste.Indeed, alongside Adorno's more celebrated excoriationof popular music and jazz as nothingmore thancommercial(or, moreexactly,industrialized) productsof theCulture well has left us a less but he known, perhapsmoreapposite,work Industry "midcult."In his sociological inveson whatDwight MacDonald termed the to shows Adorno degree whichthemiddleclass audience for tigations music "classical" manages to reduce it through patronageof music orIn and a Adorno shows how thehigh record word, companies. ganizations in an industry, musical canon is transformed albeit one whose audiences are suffusedwithpretension. The typical major orchestrarepertoireconsists in an evolved "top forty"list derived, in the main, fromthe romanticperiod which begins and his middle quartetsand ends with withBeethoven's thirdsymphony Sibelius and RichardStrauss.When 20thcentury music is performed, the names of Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy and Copeland dominate the program. Only the most adventurous conductors- Stokowski, Maazel, Bernsteinand, more recently, Slatkin risk performing the contemporary the of Carter and late Shostakovich say, Henze, Messaien, Boulez, pieces much less the minimalists such as Terry symphonies, Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and JohnAdams all of whomremainoutside the canon and are obliged, despite theirpublic recognition, to arrange,mostof thetime, halls to play theirworks. of Culture,and the seats Today, the museumsare packed withtourists of concerthalls in major music marketsfilled by an audience forwhom is chieflya social event. There is a certain revival of the performance bookselling,aftermore thana decade of decline duringwhich hundreds of stores went out of business. But the shelves of the stores, located reveal whattheCriticalTheoristhas mainlyin suburbanshoppingcenters, reason to abjure: in additionto theplethoraof how-toand pop psychology works thatare the bread and butterof these stores, thereis a veritable exposion of the literary analogue of People magazine, biographiesof the rich and famous.Except forthe steadycrop of novels written by and for women, many of which were inspired, directly or indirectly,by the

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these images. At the same moment two marxist intellectuals, E.P. Thompsonand RaymondWilliams, were drivenby bothpolitical convictionand their own experienceto offer moretheoretically informed studies and workingclass culture. of, respectively, workingclass history

oftheofferings most arederived either from feminist the New movement, of adventure, YorkTimes'sBest Seller list or are worksin the genres and especially sciencefiction, theHarlequin romance novels. detective, - paperback Needlessto say,the"literature" section versions ofcanoni- is thesmallest of thestore. cal works subdivision for class consumer Thisis theimageofculture themiddle that hasbeen in historical so amply described andcritical work sincethe19th century. Recall thatTocqueville made littledistinction betweenthe fiction designedforthemiddleclass readerand whatlaterbecameknownas WhileMacdonald a century laterwas (1960), morethan "massculture." note the division labor to of within theculture obliged industry, dependoftheaudience anditsaspiration toa certain ingon theclass membership version of bildung, forcritics of thehighcultural thedistincpersuasion tionbetween masscult and midcult was too subtleto mediate the gulf between and"low" (theproducts of tin-pan stuff) "high"(their alleyand television and everything else directedtowarda largeraudience). in thejudgement ofsuchmajor critics as Adorno andClement Moreover, was no question of positing theexistence of a (1939) there Greenberg For them, the surviving elements of thepopular truly popularculture. werelongago absorbed intomassculture. All ofthisbefore 1960.ThencameHoggart's Uses ofLiteracy (1957), whosecentral was however that embattled and contested point by massmediated elements of working class culture notonlysurvived culture, world war but two in remained bore beyond strong precisely aspectsthat littleimmediate resemblance to artifacts suchas works of painting and literature. introduced the idea of culture as a moral Hoggart Tacitly, in everyday life but represented situated as world-view. In an system said thatUses was essay published nearly twenty yearslater, Hoggart to counter a widespread beliefamongintellectuals that workcomposed waslittle more than a culture ofdeprivation. ForHoggart ingclass culture therewere characteristic attitudes and beliefsamongworking class beliefin"liveandletlive"(tolerance); thepersistence of people:a strong to live in thepresent with no real "Sundaybest"clothes;their tendency sense of tradition; of working class life and,of course,theinstitutions suchas thepubthat workers demarcated from other classes. influential theairofnegativity Hoggart's immensely argument against that marked outsider of the in life theworking class judgements everyday was morethanthe intervention districts of a professor withLaborite sentiments whoseown experience as a childand whosefamily tiespersuadedhimthata graveinjustice had beendone in theperpetuation of

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of the working evolution class movement and tracedthe simultanous 19th In culture at the turn of the own he class his words working century. "the of the to substantiate attempts people, degreeto agency working in whichtheymade history, Of this discourse, consciously." course, com"consciousness" is understood as an essentialsocial and cultural thatwe cannotunderstand class ponentof class: "For I am convinced from unlesswe see itas a socialandcultural formation, arising processes whichcan onlybe studied work as they themselves outovera considerin social able historical formation is expressed period."This cultural civil organizations as muchas literature and theletters, clubs, unions, moreconventional records of publicmeetings sources and theother and ofworking documents. narrative classhistory is,consequentThompson's in theworking ly,richin thedetailsof communication amongmilitants class movement as muchas it is concerning eventsthatled to decisive anddevelopments. disruptions It was up to Williams to theorize theincipient movement that cameto andevenArnoldian within theLeavisite mode (1956), remained basically of moral its and criticism, analytic politiliterary notwithstandingstrong cal concerns. But withThe Long Revolution (1961) he begana twenty to provide a solid conceptual basis fora newapproach. Peryeareffort movein thisworkwas to "define culture as a haps themostimportant wholewayof life"(Williams thecon1979,p. 135) thereby obliterating culture and society. "and" between This strategic moveintrojunction duced intosocial and cultural thesignificance in the of culture theory sense,thatis, thewaysin whicheveryday life-rituals, anthropological of cultural constitutive formainstitutions, were, art, alongside practices tion.Although is right tocall attention tothecategory mistakes Gallagher from that emanate Williams's disdain ofabstraction, it was his insistence on thepertinence ofpractices wereordinarily that viewedoutside culture thatinspired thegeneration that elaborated Cultural Studiesafter 1965. Of course, work had been earlier with this suffused dimension, Hoggart's never butonlyimplicitly. AndHoggart considered theinstitutions of the labourmovement, as partof working class culture. In unions, especially neverextended to the category of fact,his understanding consciously as thecore uponwhichcultural is constructed, formation alpractices in contemporary of Uses concern thebestparts what terms would though be named "discursive" that be considered workmight practices distinctly (1971) and laterAlthusser, ing class. On theotherhand,like Gramsci
Williams significantly broadened the scope of the concept of cultureto embraceits materializations. And,althoughhe neveremployedthephrase 1971), it was plain thatthe project of "ideological apparatus"(Althusser culturalstudies connoteda shiftnot only away froman exclusive preocbe knownas culturalstudies. His own earlier work,Cultureand Society

Class (1963) Thompson's monumental Making of theEnglish Working

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cupation with art and civilization but also toward forms of institutionalization. 2 Gallagher's critiqueof Williams reduces to two points:by substituting "culture" for "society" Williams altogetherloses the specificityof the Put analytically, Williamsconflatesthesubjectand the conceptof culture. object in a way that makes the object disappear. In her view this is evidentwhen the notionof cultureas "a whole way of life" particularly is later amended and somewhataltered by Williams in his Sociology of if cultureis defined Cultureto mean "signifying practices."Accordingly, as anything having to do withsymbolicexchange, thatis, what is comthe two senses of culture monlycalled "meaning,"then,taken together, offered by Williams lead to confusion. The sub-text of Gallagher's argument is thatin his effort to overcome thebinaryof artand material Williams has surrendered theobject practice outside us to whichour ideas correspond.Gallagher implicitly criticizes Williams forrefusinga realist epistemologyas the basis fora theoryof culture in which a referent outside practice is held to be the necessary of requirement any possible knowledge. While she does not explicitly endorse thecategory"society,"she is plainlyunhappywiththebroad use of cultureto span representation and materialpracticesthatin Williams's earlier workremainedoutside the subject. Needless to say, Williams spent nearly a quarter centurytryingto resolve thisdilemma.Togetherwithhis colleagues, especially theCentre Cultural Studies at Birminghamfor which he was a for Contemporary and inspiration, he determined, I think,that constantreferent correctly culture is not entirely encompassed by art, artifact,or those representationsthathave been hegemonicallyvalorized as "civilization" - in partbecause of thepalpable problemthistraditional interpretation poses forthepossibilityof subaltern culturalformation thatis post-folkloric. At the same time, unsatisfiedby the persistenceof the base/superstructure he workedwithina play of alternative gulf in orthodoxmarxisttheory, formulations thatcould satisfactorily overcome,if not entirely overturn, the limitationsof elements of the scientific world view, such as the and causality.That his workremainedrelentcategoriesof determination in discursive the of efforts wake lessly by manyof thenextgeneration - to producea marxist Eagleton and PerryAnderson notablyTerry theory of cultureon thebasis of analyticcategoriesfrom whichexperiencecould be properly was takenas a shortcoming untilhis thefinal that, interpreted, decade of his life,markedhimamong theyounger as a worthy generation thoughhopelesslyoutmodedprecursor. Finally,withMarxismand Literatureand Sociology of Culturehe enteredthemurky watersof "theory"but

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failedto shedelements ofempiricism andespecially historicism that had his earlier marked writings. In Williams'swordshe was trying to figure out howto articulate the twomeanings ofculture: "itbecamea noun of 'inner' process specialized in 'intellectual toitspresumed life'andthe'arts'.Itbecamealso agencies in a nounof general processspecializedto its presumed configurations culture is seenas "constitu'wholewaysof life'." In thelatter instance, 1977 18-19)Thus,itcannot be understood tivesocial process"(Williams, as a category ofthesuperstructure within ofdetermination theframework Thisconclusion all ofWilliams infrastructure. bytheeconomic permeated it is not workin the last fifteen yearsof his life and in consequence, hisownscepticism abouttheeffectivity ofbase/superdifficult to discern ofknowledge and as well as itspremises, thereflection structure theory of in thecorrespondence themselves truth, theory grounded epistemologiand notunexpectedly, he was unableto cal realism.At thesame time, And alternative. this is the undeniable of a generate satisfactory strength of The of the confusion and food Gallagher'scritique. example money with his notion of cultural revealstheproblem materialism. It residesin an inadequate of the function of the understanding sign. Whichis not to claim thatWilliamsbecamea thoroughgoing posthe was plainly influenced structuralist. However, bystructuralist linguistics and the epistemological claims for languageand discoursethat as far it.Williams never went informed as, say,Laclau andMouffe (1987) for whom the "social" is impossible preciselybecause, following In place of the human relations are interpellated Foucault, by discourse. a "subjectposition" conscioussubjecttheysubstitute whoserulesconwhich discourse takes Williams thespacewithin stitute place. In contrast, neveradoptedthepositionthatlanguage/discourse radicallydisplaces He remained ofpracticeconhuman convinced that thenotion agency. an effective to both materialism stitutes mechanistic (ascounterweight sociatedwithsome versions of marxist the that orthodoxy emphasized the economic of determination infrastructure cultural, by "already given" andpolitical andidealism whileinsisting on which, ideological practices) theactiveside of cultural lost sightof all but thesignifying practices, subject. In whatis perhaps his mostpowerful andarticulated statement of his on Languagein Marxism Wilownposition, and Literature, thechapter hismost "dialectical" the liamsdisplays ofall cultural writings, showing asfrom the passivity degreeto whichhe wishesto separatehimself theSaussurian ofboth sociated with structural andChomskyan linguistics
varietiesbut at thesame timedeclares that"language is material"and the Williams makes plain his own adherenceto a sign active. In thischapter, in which relations between various aspects of the social totality concept are indeterminate in advance.

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3
seemedto agreeon theconventional Letters distinction (1979) Williams if andcultural even he between economic refused the inference relations, ofhisinterrogators that theformer determined thelatter. in Nevertheless, he was drawn to a that "cultural context, ineluctably position production was material"(1979: that leadstothis:"Becauseonce 139),a perspective cultural is itself social and material, then thisindissolubility production of thewholesocial processhas a different theoretical clas[than ground sical marxism.] It is no longer based on experience, buton thecommon of therespective character So whatwe have processesof production." is a productivist of here within a broad in which culture conception theory materialproduction loses its exclusive connection to what may be as "physical" described need.Thus,production ofvarious kinds together constitutes thewholesocialprocess whosedeterminations arecontingent noton a priori buton historical circumstances. metaphysical categories This accountof Williams'smaterial of thetheory reconstruction of culture is entirely consistent withthemarxist ambition to bracket episfrom social and cultural but not withthe actual discourse, temology of what Marxcalled in thefirst thesis on Feuerbach thevulgar practices ofmaterialism tendencies heldtheobjecttobe not that onlyontologically butsemantically of discursive independent practices by whichit is apstands with those whom for this propriated. Tacitly, Gallagher proposition remains theground oftheorizing. The secondargument, which than a third ofGallagher's occupiesmore deals with Williams's belated effort to paper, separate everyday objects and processesthatare practices thatsignify and thosethat culturally is right whenshe objectsto Williams's don't.Surely Gallagher example of food,which does signify more thanitsmaterial and money, function, whichin his view is merely an instrument of exchange with or no little demonstrates that is symbolic significance. Gallagher easily money overcodedin cultural terms as wellas possessing material In fact, attributes. how inconsistent this distinction is within Gallagher demonstrates Williams's cultural which wouldhavetomaintain that there are no theory clearlinesbetween thematerial andcultural of anyobject. significations In context, theelaborate ofthis deconstruction inGallagher's example textservesto buttress hermainargument. The reasoning goes like this: Williams is thevirtual founder of cultural If she has shown studies. that hisconception ofculture is inconsistent andevenconfused, then we may concludethatcultural studieshas notyet foundits proper theoretical
foundation.It remains in its infancy,a practice withoutan adequate concept. That culturalstudiesrequiresmoretheoretical explorationand elaboraissues posed in Williams's own tion,especially withrespectto theknotty In the interviewswith New Left Review published as Politics and

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in thiscritique is thedirection is clearly However, texts, suggested right. and others have On the other that Williams many which rejected. precisely Williams was plainlyon the of his project, thedefects hand,whatever and hisidea of evenmore than track. Moreover, Thompson Hoggart right of for the was as material culture emergence responsible practice largely in and American movement and is perhaps themost what exciting original ofideas: a series is more than Cultural Studies universities. British Today, and of intellectual constituted itis a historically practices institupanoply is onlynowbeginning to makeitself of which tionalsites,theinfluence felt.
Books 1976 Continuum totheSociology Introduction Adomo,Theodor, ofMusic,New York, inLeninandPhilosophy, New York, andIdeological StateApparatuses" Louis,"Ideology Althusser, ReviewPress,1972 Monthly New York, 1971 Prison International Publishers, Notebooks, Gramsci, Antonio, Partisan 1939 GardeandKitsch," "Avant Review, Clement, Greenberg, the American inDwight "Mass CultandMidcult" Grain, MacDonald, MacDonald,Dwight, Against Da Capo Press,1978 New York, and NewYork, Oxford andLiterature, Marxism 1977;Politics Press, Williams, University Raymond, Letters, London, NLB, 1979

Bibliography

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