Cultural Materialism

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Cultural Materialism

• Danny Chen

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Outline

• Definition
• 1. Historical context
• 2. Theoretical method
• 3. Political commitment
• 4. Textual analysis
• Further definition
• Differences from New Historicism

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Definition

• Politicised form of historiographythe study of
  historical material (includes literary texts)
  within a politicised framework, and this
  framework includes the present which those
  literary texts have in some way helped to shape
  (by Graham Holderness)
• It combines an attention to
• 1. Historical context
• 2. Theoretical method
• 3. Political commitment
• 4. Textual analysis
• (Jonathan Dollimore and Allan Sinfield)

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Historical context

• Allow the literary texts to recover its
  histories which previous kinds of study have
  often ignored
• Involve relating the plays to the phenomenon as
  enclosures and the oppression of the rural poor,
  the state power and the resistance to it

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Theoretical method

• The break with liberal humanism and the absorbing
  of the lessons of structuralism,
  post-structuralism and and other approaches which
  have become prominent since the 1970s.

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Political commitment

• Influenced by Marxism and feminist perspectives
• The break from the conservative-Christian
  framework which hitherto dominated Shakespeare
  criticism

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Textual analysis

• Locates the critique of the traditional
  approaches where it can not be ignored
• To make theory not to just be an abstract kind,
  and to practice it on canonical texts which
  continue to be the focus of massive amounts of
  academic and professional attention, and which
  are prominent national and cultural icons

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Further definition

• Cultureall forms of culture (like television,
  popular music , movies and fiction)
• Not to limit itself to high culture forms (like
  Shakespeares play)
• Materialismthe opposite of idealism (Idealists
  believe that high culture represents the free and
  independent play of the talented individual mind
  , on the contrary, Materialists think thathigh
  culture cannot transcend the material forces and
  relations of production)

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Further definition

• Culture is not only simply a reflection of the
  economic and political system, but nor can be
  independent of it
• Raymond WilliamsStructure of Feelingmeanings
  and values as they are lived and felt (to be
  often antagonistic both to explicit systems of
  values and beliefs and to the dominant ideologies
  within a society)

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Differences from New Historicism

• More optimistic about the possibility of change
  and is willing to see literature a a source of
  oppositional values
• Use the past to read the present
• Reveal the politics of our society by what we
  choose to emphasis or suppress of the past

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Differences from New Historicism

• New Historicismmen and women make their own
  history but not in the conditions of their own
  choosingpolitical pessimism
• Cultural Materialismconcentrate on the
  interventions whereby men and women make their
  own history--- political optimism

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Questions

• Is Cultural Materialism based on the cultural
  evolution or the economic development?
• The concern of Cultural Materialism is to convert
  the ideologies of hegemony in the society or to
  break the class system?
• Whats the differences between Cultural
  Materialism and Marxism?