3 short answer essay questions

Base and Superstructure 131

,word "determine". There is, on the one hand, fi'om its theological inheritance, 'the notion of an external cause which totally predicts or prefigures, indeed totally , antrols a subsequent activity. But there is also, from the expeIience of social prac-Base and Superstructure; e, \e a notion of determination as setting limits, exerting pressures. l 'J1tzl Now there is clearly a difference between a process setting limits and

whether by some external force or by the mternal laws of a partIcular Marxist Cultural Thea ')1; and that other process in which a subsequent content is essentially ;1'>'. prefigured, predicted and controlled by a pre-existing external force. Yet it is fair to

Ssiy, looking at many applications of Marxist cultural analysis, that it is the secondRaymond ; ';,sense, notion of prefiguration, prediction or control, which has often explicitly .- impliCItly been used.

Superstructure: Qualifications and Amendments Any modern approach to a Marxist tlleo of ul . . .. proposition of a determining base and must begm by conSIdering The term of relationship is then tlle first thing that we have to examine in tllis pro- theoretical point of view this is not . a c: etelmm From a strictly tf 'i position, but we have to do tllis by going on to look at the related tenns tllemselves.

' III tact, W heIe we rrught cho b' '-." .. 1 ' ft would be in many ways preferable if ld b . ose egm. /f " ':.. .;.:.. "$uperstIucture" (Uberbau) las had most attentIon, In common usage, a er Marx, originally was equally central equally wthe egm from a ProPOSItIon which "": ", acquired a main sense of a unitary "area" within which all cultural and ideological . ,au entIc namely th . , ,,;, . , •• bemg determines consciousness. It is n t th th e that Social .). activities could be placed. But already in Marx himself, in the later correspondence each other or are in contradiction B toth at, e PropOSItIOns necessarily den}'l'" of-Engels, and at many points in the subsequent Mar-xist tradition, qualifications with its figurative element with its's u PlOfPOsfixltIOn of base and made about tlle determined character of certain superstructural activities. The

· ,uggestIon 0 a ed and definite spatI'al I . I' d f alifi . h d d ·th d I .. 'th li' d 'thship, constItutes, at least in certain hand ' . . re first tan 0 qu catIon a to 0 WI e ays m tIme, WI comp catIons, an WI able version of the other propOSl'tI'O Y s, vthery and at tImes . " certain indirect or relatively distant relationships. The simplest notion of a super-

n. et m e transl . . - . "ZiS and in tlle development of mainstre M ' . tIon from Marx to ,;g structure, which is still by no mearlS entirely abandoned, had been the reflection, tlle mining base and the determined su a: arxtsm the proposition .of the imitation or the reproduction of the reality of the base in the superstructure in a key to Marxist cultural analysis, p (structure as been commonly held to be the' more or less direct way. Positivist notions of reflection and reproduction of course

It is important as we try to analy thi ' . directly supported this. But since in marlY real cultural activities tllis relationship relationship which is involved to s awar'e that the term carmot be found, or cannot be found witllOut effort or even violence to the material theoretical complexity. The f IS of great linguistic or practice being studied, the notion was introduced of delays in time, the famous ism was inhetited from idealist and es and even more of ''1: lags; of various teclmical complications; and of indirectness, in which certain kinds of man, It is significant that it is in one II, of the world and -: ., "t activity in the cultural sphere - philosophy, for example were situated at a greater received propositions that Marx us th liS amId ar,mversIons, his contradictions of, :" -, i" distance from the primary economic activities, That was the first stage of qualification . es e wor r "';, w lich be . ,tIon, "determines" (the usual but not' 'bl G comes., m of the notion of superstructure: in effect, an operational qualification. The second ana opposing an ideology that had been' u:v e therman word IS bestzmmen). He is;. stage was related but more fundamental, in that the process of the relationship itself t, , mSlS ent on e power of cert' fi 'd I" , ., .,'man, or, m Its secular version on an ab d . , orces outsl e'<," was more substantIally looked at. This was the land of reconSIderatIon which gave own Proposition explicitly tllis and stract . lise to the modern notion of "mediation", in which something more than simple own activities, Nevertheless the p", ....;' ul tlle ongm determmatIon m men's· ':;; reflection or reproduction indeed something radically different fi:om either reflec-

, cu.uc ar story and contIn' f th • -,' to remind us that there are within 0 d' . 0 e term serves . tion or reproduction - actively occurs. In the later twentietll century there is the

. ,r mary use - and this IS tru f f th ' •maJor European languages _ quite diffi 'bl ' e 0 most 0 e . notion of "homologous structures", where tllere may be no direct or easily apparent erent POSSI e meatllngs and l'mplicatI' f ;- imil" d ainl tl ' lil fl . d 'b thons 0 ' ,f. s arIty, an cert y no ling ce re ectIon or repro uctIon, etween e super-

structural process and the reality of the base, but in wllich tl1ere is an essential homology or correspondence of structures, which can be discovered by analysis.

From Raymond Williams, "Base and superstructure in Marxist Cultural theory," In Problems in This is not tl1e same notion as "mediation", but it is the same kind of amendmentMatC1'ialisn1 a1zd Culture: Selected Essaj'S, pp, 31-49. London: Verso and NLB, 1980, in that the relationsllip between the base and the superstructure is not supposed to

132 Raymond Williams Base and Superstructure 133

be direct, nor simply operationally subject to lags and complications and indirectnesses, \I. .. for we find ourselves forced to looIc again at the ordinary notion of "productivebut that of its nature it is not direct reproduction. _'4 fOrces". Clearly what we are exanuning in the base is primalY productive forces. YetThese qualifications and amendments are important. But it seems to me that What some very crucial distinctions have to be made here. It is true that in Ius analysis ofhas not been looked at with equal care is the received notion of dle "base" (Basis capitalist production Marx considered "productive work" in a very particular andGrt/-ndlage). And indeed I would argue that the base is the more important ; specialized sense corresponding to that mode of production. There is a difficultto look at if we are to understand the realities of cultural process. In many uses of "-d, passage in the G1'1t1'Zd1'isse in which he argues that while the man who makes a pianodle proposition of base and superstructure, as a matter of verbal habit, "the base" has come to be considered virtually as an object, or in less crude cases, it has been r is a productive worker, dlere is a real question whether dle man who distributes thet. piano is also a productive worker; but he probably is, since he contributes to theconsidered in essentially uniform and usually static ways. "The base" is the real social .' realization of surplus value. Yet when it comes to the man who plays the piano,existence of man. "The base" is the real relations of production corresponding to a l<: whether to himself or to others, there is no question: he is not a productive workerstage of development of the matedal productive forces. "The base" is a mode of at all. So piano-malcer is base, but pianist superstructure. AI; a way of consideringproduction at a particular stage of its development. We malce and repeat proposi- .. cultural activity, and incidentally the economics of modern cultural activity, this istions of this kind, but the usage is then very different fl:om Marx's emphasis on very clearly a dead-end. But for any theoretical clarification it is clucial to recognizeproductive activities, in particular structural relations, constituting the foundation of that Mar"X was there engaged in an analysis of a particular kind of production, that isall odler activities. For while a particular stage of dle development of production can capitalist commodity production. Within his analysis of this mode, he had to give tobe discovered and made precise by analysis, it is never in practice either uniform or the notion of "productive labour" and "productive forces" a specialized sense ofstatic. It is indeed one of the central propositions of Marx's sense of history that primary work on materials in a form wIuch produced commodities. But dlis hasthere are deep contradictions in the relationships of production and in the con- narrowed remarkably, and in a cultural context very damagingly, fi'om his moresequent social relationships. There is therefore the continual possibility of the dynamic central notion of p1'odlJctive !m'ces, in which, to give just brief reminders, the mostvariation of dlese forces. Moreover, when these forces are considered, as Marx always important thing a worker ever produces is himself, himself in the fact of dlat kind ofconsiders them, as the specific activities and relationships of real men, they mean Iaboui, or the broader historical emphasis of men producing themselves, themselvessomething very much more active, more complicated and more contradictory than and their history. Now when we talk of the base, and of primary productive forces,the developed metaphorical notion of "the base" could possibly allow us to realize. it matters velY much whedler we are refening, as in one degenerate form of this

proposition became habitual, to primary within the terms of capitalisteconomic relationships, or to the primary production of society itself, arld of menThe Base and the Product;ve Forces themselves, dle material production and reproduction of real life. If we have the broad sense of productive forces, we look at the whole question of the base differ-So we have to say that when we talk of "the base", we are talking of a process and endy, arld we are then less tempted to dismiss as superstr'uctural, and in that sense asnot a state. And we cannot ascribe to that process certain fixed properties for merely secondary, certain vital productive social forces, which are in the broad sense,subsequent translation to the variable processes of the superstructure. Most people from the beginning, basic.who have wanted to malce the ordinary proposition more reasonable have concen-

trated on refining the notion of superstructure. But I would say that each term ofthe proposition has to be revalued in a particular direction. We have to revalue Uses of Totality"determination" towar-ds the setting oflimits and the exertion of pressure, and awayfrom a predicted, grefigured and controlled content. We have to revalue "super- Yet, because of the difficulties of the ordinary proposition of base arld superstruc-structure" towards a related range of cultural practices, and away from a reflected, ture, there was an alternative and very important development, an emphasis ptimarilyreproduced or specifically dependent content. And, clucially, we have to revalue associated with Lulcacs, on a social "totality". The totality of social practices was "the base" away from the notion of a fixed economic or technological abstr-action, opposed to this layered notion of base and a consequent superstructure. This con- and towards the specific activities of men in real social and economic relationships, cept of a totality of practices is compatible with the notion of social being detelmin- containing fundamental contradictions arld variations and therefore always in a state ing consciousness, but it does not necessarily interpret this process in terms of a base of dynamic process_ and a superstr·ucture. Now the larlguage of totality has become common, and it is It is worth observing one further implication behind the customary definitions. indeed in marlY ways more acceptable than the notion of base and superstructure. "The base" has come to include, especially in certain twentieth-century develop- But \\rith one very important reservation. It is velY easy for the notion of totality toments, a strong and limiting sense of basic industry. The emphasis on heavy indus- empty of its essential content the original Marxist proposition. For if we come to saytry, even, has played a certain cultural role. And dus raises a more general problem, that society is composed of a large number of social practices which form a concrete

134 Raymond Williams

social whole, and ifwe to each practice a certain specific recognition, adding only that they interact, relate and combine in very complicated ways, we are at one level much more obviously talking about reality, but we are at another level withdrawing fi"om the claim that there is any process of determination. And this I, for one, would be very unwilling to do. Indeed, the key question to ask about any notion of totality in cultural theory is this: whether the notion of totality includes the notion of intention.

If totality is simply concrete, if it is simply the recognition of a large valiety of miscellaneous and contemporaneous practices, then it is essentially empty of any content that could be called Marxist. Intention, the notion of intention, restores the key question, or rather the key emphasis, For while it is true that any society is a complex whole of such practices, it is also true that any society has a specific organ- ization, a specific structure, and that the principles of this organization and structure can be seen as directly related to certain social intentions, intentions by which we define the society, intentions which in aU our experience have been the rule of a particular class. One of the unexpected consequences of the crudeness of the basel superstructure model has been the too easy acceptance of models which appear less crude - models of totality or of a complex whole - but which exclude the facts of social intention, the class character of a particular society and so on. And this reminds us of how much we lose if we abandon the superstructural emphasis altogetller. Thus I have great difficulty in seeing processes of art and thought as supersnllctural in tlle sense of the formula as it is commonly used. But in many areas of social and political thought - certain kinds of ratifying tlleory, certain kinds of law, certain kinds of institution, which after all in Marx's original formulations were very much part of the supersn'ucture - in all that kind of social apparatus, and in a decisive area of political and ideological activity and construction, if we fail to see a supersn'uctural element we fail to recognize reality at all. These laws, constitutions, theories, ideo- logies, which are so often claimed as natural, or as having universal validity or significance, simply have to be seen as expressing and ratifying the domination of a particular class. Indeed the difficulty of revising the formula of base and superstruc- ture has had much to do ,vith the perception of many militants who have to fight such institutions and notions as well as fighting economic battles - that if tllese institutions and their ideologies are not perceived as having tllat kind of dependent and ratifying relationship, if'tlleir claims to universal validity or legitimacy are not denied and fought, then the class character of the society can no longer be seen. And tIlls has been the effect of some versions of totality as tlle description of cultural process. Indeed I think we can properly use the notion of totality only when we combine it with that other crucial Marxist concept of "hegemony".

The Complexity of Hegemony

It is Gramsci's great contribution to have emphasized hegemony, and also to have understood it at a depth which is, I think, rare. For hegemony supposes the existence of something which is truly total, which is not merely secondary or superstructural,

Base and Superstructure 135

like the weak sense of ideology, but which is lived at such a depth, which saturates dIe society to such an extent, and which, as Gramsci put it, even constitutes the substance and limit of common sense for most people under its sway, that it cor- responds to tlle reality of social experience very much more dearly than any notions derived from the formula of base and superstructure. For if ideology were merely some abstract, imposed set of notions, if our social and political and cultural ideas and assumptions and habits were merely tlle result of specific manipulation, of a kind ofovert training which might be simply ended or withdrawn, then the society would be very much easier to move and to change tllan in practice it has ever been or is. This notion of hegemony as deeply saturating the consciousness of a society seems to me to be fundamental. And hegemony has tlle advantage over general notions of totality, that it at the same time emphasizes the facts of domination.

Yet there are times when I hear discussions of hegemony and feel that it toO, as a concept, is being dragged back to the relatively simple, uniform and static notion which "superstructure" in ordinary use had become. Indeed I think that we have to give a very complex account of hegemony if we are talking about any real social formation. Above all we have to give an account which allows for its elements of real and constant change. We have to emphasize that hegemony is not singular; indeed tllat its own internal structures are highly complex, and have continually to be renewed, recreated and defended; and by tlle same token, that they can be continually challenged and in certain respects modified. That is why instead of speaking simply of "the hegemony", <La hegemony", I would propose a model which allows for tllis kind of variation and contradiction, its sets of alternatives and its processes of change.

For one thing that is evident in some of the best Malxist cultural analysis is dlat it is very much more at home in what one might call epochal questions than in what one has to call historical questions. That is to say, it is usually very much better at distinguishing the large features of difterent epochs of society, as commonly between feudal and bourgeois, than at distinguishing bet,\,veen different phases of bourgeois society, and different moments within these phases: that true historical process which demands a much greater precision and delicacy of analysis than tlle always striking epochal analysis which is concerned with main lineaments and features.

The theoretical model which I have been trying to work with is this. I would say first that in any society, in any particular period, tllere is a cenn"al system of practices, meanings and values, which we can properly call dominant and effective. This im- plies no presumption about its value. All I am saying is that it is central. Indeed I would call it a corporate system, but this might be confusing, since Gramsci uses "corporate" to mean the subordinate as opposed to the general and dominant elements of hegemony. In any case what I have in mind is the central, effective and dominant system of meanings and values, which are not merely absn"act but which are organized and lived. That is why hegemony is not to be understood at the level of mere opinion or mere manipulation. It is a whole body of practices and expecta- tions; our assignments of energy, our ordinary understanding of the nature of man and of his world. It is a set of meanings and values which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for

.. 136 Raymond Williams ""J t

most people in the society, a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas of their lives. But this is not, except in the operation of a moment of abstract analysis, in any sense a static system. On the contrary we can only understand an effective and dominant culture if we understand the real social process on which it depends: I mean the process of incorporation. The modes of incorporation are of great social significance. The educational institutions are usually the main agencies of the trans- mission of an effective dominant culture, and this is now a major economic as well as a cultural activity; indeed it is both in the same moment. Moreover, at a philo- sophical level, at the tlUe level of theory and at the level of the history of various practices, there is a process which I call the selective tradition: that which, within the terms of an effective dominant culture, is always passed off as «the tradi tion", «the significant past". But always the selectivity is the point; the way in which fi'om a whole possible area of past and present, certain meanings and practices are chosen for emphasis, certain other meanings and practices are neglected and excluded. Even more clUciaUy, some of these meanings and practices are reinterpreted, diluted, or put into forms which support or at least do not contradict other elements within the effective dominant culture. The processes of education; the processes of a much wider social training within institutions like the family; the practical definitions and organization of work; the selective tradition at an intellectual and theoretical level: all these forces are involved in a continual making and remalang of an effective dominant culture, and on them, as experienced, as built into our living, its reality depends. If what we learn there were merely an imposed ideology, or if it were only the isolablc meanings and practices of the lUling class, or of a section of the ruling class, which gets imposed on others, occupying merely the top of our minds, it would be - and one would be glad - a very much easier thing to overtlu'ow.

It is not only the depths to which this process reaches, selecting and organizing and interpreting our experience. It is also that it is continually active and adjusting; it isn't just the· past, the dry husks of ideology which we can more easily discard. And this can only be so, in a complex society, jf it is something more substantial and more flexible than any abstract imposed ideology. Thus we have to recognize the alternative meanings and values, the alternative opinions and attitudes, even some alternative senses of the world, which can be accommodated and tolerated within a particular effective and dominant culture. This has been much under-emphasized in our notions of a superstructure, and even in some notions of hegemony. And the under-emphasis opens the way for retreat to an indifferent complexity. In the prac- tice of politics, for example, there are certain truly incorporated modes of what are nevertheless, within those terms, real oppositions, that are felt and fought out. Their existence Within the incorporation is recognizable by the fact that, whatever the degree of internal conflict or internal variation, they do 110t in practice go beyond the limits of the central effective and dominant definitions. This is true, for example, of the practice of parliamentary politics, though its internal oppositions are real. It is true about a whole range of practices and arguments, in any real society, which can by no means be reduced to an ideological cover, but which can nevertheless be properly analysed as in my sense corporate, if we find that, whatever the degree of

Base and Superstructure 137

internal controversy and variation, they do not in the end exceed the limits of the central corporate definitions.

But if we are to say this, we have to think again about the sources of that which is not corporate; of those practices, experiences, meanings, values which are not part of the effective dominant culture. We can express this in two ways. There is dearly something that we can call alternative to the effective dominant culture, and there is something else that we can call oppositional, in a true sense. The degree of existence of these alternative and oppositional forms is itself a matter of constant historical variation in real circumstances. In certain societies it is possible to find areas of social life in which quite real alternatives are at least left alone. (If they are made available, of course, they are part of the corporate organization.) The existence of the possibil- ity of opposition, and of its articulation, its degree of openness, and so on, again depends on very precise social and political forces. The facts of alternative and oppositional forms of social life and culture, in relation to the effective and domin- ant culture, have then to be recognized as subject to historical variation, and as having sources which are velY significant as a fact about the dominant culture itself.

Residual and Emergent Cultures

I have next to introduce a further distinction, between residual and e11ttcrg(mt forms, both of alternative and of oppositional culture. By "residual" I 'uean that some experiences, meanings and values, which cannot be verified or cal;not be expressed in terms of the dominant culture, are nevertheless lived and practised on the basis of the residue - cultural as well as social of some previous social formation. There is a real case of this in certain religious values, by contrast with the very evident incorporation of most religious meanings and values into the dominant system. The same is true, in a culture like Britain, of certain notions derived from a rural past, which have a very significant popularity. A residual culture is usually at some dis- tance from the effective dominant culture, but one has to recognize that, in real cultural activities, it may get incorporated into it. This is because some part of it, some version of it - and especially if the residue is from some major area of the past - will in many cases have had to be incorporated if the effective dominant culture is to make sense in those areas. It is also because at certain points a dominant culture cannot allow too much of this land of practice and experience outside itself, at least \'Vithout risk. Thus the pressures are real, but certain genuinely residual meanings and practices in some important cases survive.

By "emergent" I mean, first, that new meanings and values, new practices, new significances and experiences, are continually being created. But there is then a much earlier attempt to incorporate them, just because they are part - and yet not a defined part - of effective contemporary practice. Indeed it is significant in om' own period how very early this attempt is, how alert the dominant culture now is to anything that can be seen as emergent. We have then to see, first, as it were a temporal relation between a dominant culture and on the one hand a residual and on the other hand an emergent culture. But we can only understand this if we

138 Raymond Williams

can make distinctions, that usually require very precise analysis, between residual- incorporated and residual not incorporated. It is an important fact about any par- ticular society, how far it reaches into the whole range of human practices and experiences in an attempt at incorporation. It may be true of some earlier phases of bourgeois society, for example, that there were some areas of experience which it was willing to dispense with, which it was prepared to assign as the sphere of private or artistic life, and as being no particular business of society or dle state. TIns went along with certain kinds of political tolerance, even if the reality of that tolerance was malign neglect. But I am sure it is true of the society that has come into existence since the last war, that progressively, because of developments in the social character of labour, in the social character of communications, and in the social character of decision, it extends much further than ever before in capitalist society into certain hitherto resigned areas of experience and practice and meaning. Thus the effective decision, as to whether a practice is alternative or oppositional, is often now made widlin a very much nan'ower scope. There is a simple theoretical distinc- tion between alternative and oppositional, that is to say between someone who simply finds a different way to live and wishes to be left alone with it, and someone who finds a different way to live and wants to change the society in its light. This is usually the difference between individual and small-group solutions to social crisis and those solutions which properly belong to political and ultimately revolution- alY practice. But it is often a velY narrow line, in reality, between alternative and oppositional. A meaning or a practice may be tolerated as a deviation, and yet still be seen only as another particular way to live, But as the necessaty at'ea of effective dominance extends, the same meanings and practices can be seen by the dominant culture, not merely as disregarding or despising it, but as challenging it,

Now it is crucial to any Marxist theory of culture that it can give an adequate explanation of the sources of these practices and meanings. We can understand, from an ordinaty historical approach, at least some of dle sources of residual mean- ings and practices. These are dle results of earlier social formations, in which certain real meanings and values were generated. In the subsequent default of a particular phase of a dominant culture, there is dlen a reaching bade to those meatlings and values wInch were created in real societies in the past, and which still seem to have some significance because they represent areas of human experience, aspiration and adnevement, which the dominant culture under-values or opposes, or even cannot recognize. But our hardest task, dleoretically, is to find a non-metaphysical and non- subjectivist explanation of emergent cultural practice. Moreover, part of our answer to this question bears on the process of persisten!;e of residual practices.

Class and Human Practice

We have indeed one source to hand from the central body of Marxist dleory. We have the formation of a new dass, the coming to consciousness of a new dass. TIns remains, widlOut doubt, quite centrally important. Of course, in itself, this process of formation complicates any simple model of base and superstructure. It

Base and Superstructure 139

also complicates some ofthe ordinary versions of hegemony, although it was Gramsci's whole purpose to see and to create by organization that hegemony of a proletarian kind wInch would be capable of challenging the bourgeois hegemony. We have dlen one central source of new practice, in the emergence of a new dass. But we have also to recognize certain other kinds of source, and in cultural practice some of these are velY important. I would say that we can recognize them on the basis of dlis proposition: that no mode of production, and dlerefore no dominant society or order of society, and therefore no dominant culture, in reality exhausts the full range of human practice, human energy, human intention (tins range is not the inventory of some original "human nature" but, on the contraty, is that extraordinary range of variations, bodl practised and imagined, of which human beings are and have shown themselves to be capable). Indeed it seems to me that dns emphasis is not merely a negative proposition, allowing us to account for certain things which happen outside the dominant mode. On the contrary, it is a fact about dle modes of domination that tlley select from and consequently,exdude tile full range of actual and possible human practice. The difficulties of human practice outside or against tile dominant mode are, of course, real. It depends very much whether it is in an area in wInch the dominant class and the dOminatlt culture have an interest and a stalee, If the interest and tile stalee at'e explicit, many new practices will be reached for, and if possible incorporated, or else extirpated with extraordinary vigour. But in certain at'eas, there will be in certain periods practices atld meanings wInch are not reached for. There will be areas of practice and meaning wInch, almost by definition from its f)wn limited character, or in its profound deformation, the dorninant culture is unable in any real terms to recognize, TIns gives us a bearing on the observable difference between, for example, the practices of a capitalist state and a state like the contem- porary Soviet Union in relation to writers. Since from dle whole Marxist tradition literature was seen as an important activity, indeed a crucial activity, the Soviet state is very much sharper in investigating areas where different versions of practice, different meanings and values, are being attempted and expressed. In capitalist practice, if dle dling is not malcing a profit, or if it is not being widely circulated, dlen it can for some time be overlooked, at least wIllie it remains alternative. When it becomes oppositional in an explicit way, it does, of course, get approached or attacked.

I am saying dlen dlat in relation to the full range of human practice at anyone time, tile dominant mode is a cons,cious selection and orgatlization. At least in its fully formed state it is conscious. But there are always sources of actual human practice which it neglects or excludes. And these can be different in quality from the developing and articulate interests of a rising dass. They can include, for example, alternative perceptions of others, in immediate personal relationships, or new per- ceptions of material atld media, in art and science, and within certain limits these new perceptions can be practised. The relations between dle two kinds of source - the emerging class and either the dominatively excluded or the more generally new practices - are by no means necessarily contradictory. At times dley can be very close, and on the relations between them much in political practice depends. But culturally and as a matter of theory the areas can be seen as distinct.

140 Raymond Wiffiams

Now if we go bade to the cultural question in its most usual form - what are the relations between art and society, or literature and society? - in the light of the preceding discussion, we have to say first that dlere are no relations between literat- ure and society in that abstracted way. The literature is dlere from dIe beginning as a practice in the society. Indeed until it and all odler practices are present, the society cannot be seen as fully formed. A society is not fully available for analysis until each of its practices is included. But if we malce dlat emphasis we must make a corresponding emphasis; that we cannot separate literature and art from other kinds of social practice, in such a way as to malce them subject to quite special and distinct laws. They may have quite specific features as practices, but they cannot be separated from the general social process. Indeed one way of emphasizing dus is to say, to insist, that literature is not restricted to operating in anyone of the sectors I have been seeking to describe in dlis model. It would be easy to. say, it is a familiar rhetolic, that literature operates in the emergent cultural sector, dlat it represents the new feelings, the new meanings, the new values. We might persuade ourselves of dus dleoretically, by abstract argunlent, but when we read much literature, over the whole range, without the sleight-of-hand of calling Literature only that wmch we have already selected as embodying certain meanings and values at a certain scale ;

of intensity, we are bound to recognize that the act of Wliting, dIe practices of discourse in writing and speech, the malcing of novels and poems and plays and theolies, all this activity talces place in all areas of the culture.

Literature appears by no means only in the emergent sector, which is always, in £act, quite rare. A great deal of writing is of a residual kind, and this has been deeply true of much English literature in the last half-century, Some of its fundamental meanings and values have belonged to the cultural acmevements of long-past stages of society. So widespread is d1is fact, and the habits of mind it supports, that in many minds "literature" and "the past" acquire a certain identity, and it is then said that there is now no literature: all that glory is over. Yet most writing, in any period, including our own, is a form of contribution to the effective dominant culture. Indeed many of the specific qualities of literature - its capacity to embody and enact and perform certain meanings and values, or to create in single particular ways what would be otherwise merely general truths - enable it to fulfil this effective function .'!:: with great power. To literature, of course, we must add dIe visual arts and music, iii; and in our own society the powerful arts of film and of broadcasting. But the f 'C' general theoretical point should be clear. If we are looking for the relations between literature and society, we cannot either separate out this one practice fi'om a formed body of other practices, nor when we have identified a particular practice can we

< give it a uniform, static and alustolical relation to some abstract social formation. The arts of writing and the arts of creation and performance, over their whole range, are parts of the cultural process in all dIe different ways, the different sectors, that I have been seeldng to describe. They contribute to dIe effective dominant culture and are a central articulation of it. They embody residual meanings and values, not all of which are incorporated, though many are. They express also and significantly some emergent practices and meanings, yet some of these may eventually be incor- porated, as dley reach people and begin to move them. Thus it was very evident in

Base and Superstructure 141

the sixties, in some of dle emergent artS of performance, that the dominant culture reached out to transform, or seek to transform, them. In this process, of course, the dominant culture itself changes, not in its central formation, but in many of its articulated features. But then in a modern society it must always change in this way, if it is to remain dominant, if it is still to be felt as in real ways central in all our many activities and interests.

Critical Theory as Consumption

V\That then are the implications of this general analysis for the analysis of particular works of art? Tms is dle question towards which most discussion of cultural theory seems to be directed: the discovelY of a method, perhaps even a methodology, through which particular works of art can be understood and described. I would not myself agi'ee that this is the central use of cultuial dleory, but let us for a moment consider it. What seems to me velY strildng is dlat nearly all forms of contemporary critical theory are dleories of That is to say, dleyare concerned with understanding an object in such a way that it can profitably or correcdy be con- sumed. The earliest stage of consumption theory was dIe theory of "taste", where the linlc between the practice and dIe dleory was direct in dIe metaphor. From taste dlere came the more elevated notion of "sensibility", in which it was the consump- tion by sensibility of elevated or inSightful works dlat was held to be the essential practice of reading, and critical activity was then a function of dus sensibility. There were. then more developed theories, in the 1920s with 1. A. Richards, and later in New Criticism, in wmch dIe effects of consumption were studied direcdy. The language of dIe work of art as object then became more overt. "V'ilhat effect does this work ('the poem' as it was ordinarily described) have on me?" Or, "what impact does it have on md", as it was later to be put in a much wider area of communica- tion studies. Naturally enough, the notion of the work of art as object, as text, as an isolated artefact, became central in all these later consumption theories. It was not only that the practices of p1'oduction were dlen overlooked, though this fused with dIe notion that most important literature anyway was from the past. The real social conditions of production were in any case neglected because they were believed to be at best secondruy. The tme relationsmp was seen always as between the taste, the sensibility or the training of dle reader and this isolated work, dus object "as in itself it really is", as most people came to put it. But the notion of the work of art as object had a further large theoretical effect. If you asle questions about the work of art seen as object, they may include questions about the components of its produc- tion. Now, as it happened, dlere was a use of the formula of base and superstl1.tcture wluch was precisely in line with this. The components of a work of art were dIe real activities of the base, and you could study dIe object to discover these components. Sometimes you even studied the components and then prOjected the object. But in any case the relationship that was looked for was one between rul object and its components. But this was not only true of Mru-nst suppositions of a base and a superstructure. It was true also of various kinds of psychological theory, whedler in

142 Raymond Williams

the form of archetypes, or the images of the collective unconscious, or the myths and symbols which were seen as the C011ltpOnents of particular works of art. Or again there was biography, or psycho biography and its like, where the components were in the man's life and the work of art was an object in which components of this kind were discovered. Even in some of the more rigorous forms of New Criticism and of structuralist criticism, tlns essential procedure of regarding the work as an object which has to be reduced to its components, even if later it may be reconstituted, came to persist.

Objects and Practices

Now I think tlle true crisis in cultural theory, in our own time, is between this view of tlle work of art as object and the alternative view of art as a practice. Of course it is at once argued that the work of art is an object: tllat various works have survived from the past, particular sculptures, pru·ticular paintings, particular buildings, and these ru'e objects. This is of course true, but tlle same way of tllinlcing is applied to works wInch have no such singular existence. There is no Hawtlet, no B1'oti1ers Ka1I amaZOJ7, no WutlJe1'i1tg Heigltts, in tlle sense that there is a particular great painting. There is no Fifth SY111tp110ny, there is no work in the whole area of music and dance and pelformance, wInch is an object in any way comparable to those works in the visual arts which have survived. And yet the habit of treating all such worles as objects has persisted because this is a basic theoretical and practical presup- position. But in literature (especially in drama), in music and in a very wide area of the performing arts, what we permanently have are not objects but notations. These notations have then to be intelpreted in an active way, according to the particular conventions. But indeed this is true over an even wider field. The relationship between the maleing of a work of art and its reception is always active, and subject to conventions, which in themselves are forms of (changing) social organization and relationship, and this is radically different from tlle production and consumption of an object. It is indeed an activity and a practice, and in its accessible forms, altllough it may in some arts have the chru'acter of a singular object, it is still only accessible through active perception ruld interpretation. This malces the case of notation, in arts lilce drama and literature and music, only a special case of a much wider truth. What this can show us here about the practice of analysis is tllat we have to brealc from the common procedure of isolating the object and then discovering its com- ponents. On the contrru), we have to discover the nature of a practice ruld then its conditions.

Often tllese two procedures may in part resemble each other, but in many other cases they are of radically different leinds, and I would conclude with an observation on the way this distinction bears on the Marxist tradition of the relation between primary economic and social practices, and cultural practices. If we suppose that what is produced in cultural practice is a series of objects, we shall, as in most current forms of sociological-critical procedure, set about discovering their compon- ents. Within a Marxist emphasis these components will be from what we have been

Base and Superstructure 143

in the habit of calling the base. We then isolate certain features which we can so to say recognize in component Im'm, or we ask what processes of transformation or mediation these components have gone through before they arrived in this accessible state.

But I am saying that we should look not for tlle components of a product but for the conditions of a practice. When we find ourselves looleing at a particular work, or group of works, often realizing, as we do so, their essential community as well as tlleir irreducible individuality, we should find ourselves attending first to tlle reality of their practice and the conditions of tlle practice as it was then executed. And from this I think we ask essentially different questions. Talce for example tlle way in which, an object "a text" - is related to a genre, in orthodox criticism. We identify it by certain leading features, we then assign it to a larger category, tlle genre, ruld then we may find the components of tlle genre in a particular social history (although in some variants of criticism not even that is done, ruld the genre is supposed to be some permanent categOl), of the mind).

It is not that way of proceeding that is now required. The recogxntion of tlle relation of a collective mode and an individual project and these are the only categOlies that we can initially presume - is a recognition of related practices. That is to say, the irreducibly individual projects particulru' works are, may come in experience and in analysis to show resemblances which allow us to group tllem into collective modes. These are by no means always genres. They may exist as resemb- lrulces within and across genres. They may be the practice of a group in a period, ratller tllan the practice of a phase in a genre. But as we discover the nature of a .. particular practice, and the nature of the relation between an individual project and a collective mode, we find that we are analysing, as two forms of the same process, both its active composition and its conditions of composition, and in eitller direc- tion this is a complex of extending active relationships. This means, of that we have no built-in procedure of tlle leind which is indicated by the fixed chru'acter of an object. We have the principles of the relations of practices, witllin a discoverably intentional orgrulization, and we have the available hypotheses of donlinant, residual and emergent. But what we are actively seeIcing is the true practice which has been alienated to an object, ruld the true conditions of practice - whetller as literary conventions or as social relationships wInch have been alienated to components or to mere background.

As a general proposition this is only rul emphasis, but it seems to me to suggest at once the point of break and tlle point of departure, in practical and theoretical worle, witlnn an active and self-renewing Marxist cultural tradition.

Note

1 For a furdler discussion of the range of meanings in "determine" see Raymond Williams, J(c:f/P01'ds (London, 1976), pp. 87-91.