Culture and Society
In the Willimasian construct, ‘culture’ and ‘society’ are two intertwined, complex big conceptions. Here in this chapter, I’ve determined to do the follow-up of them both on a step-by-step basis. In “The Idea of Culture,” Raymond Williams makes a strong point of “the intimate and complex relations between ideas and the other products of man’s life in society”
(245). Unquestionably, Williams’ emphasis has already shed light on the inseparability of culture and society. And it is this inseparability I intend to deconstruct. That is, my task has hereby become twofold: I shall find out what culture can do to society, and vice versa. First, Williams seems to give a sketchy answer: culture has to be explored in a societal context.
Then Stuart Hall, from a broader perspective, does a further pursuit of this assertion:
First…it was in the cultural and ideological domain that social change appeared to be making itself most dramatically visible. Second…the cultural dimension seemed to us not a secondary, but a constitutive dimension of society. (This reflects part of the New Left’s longstanding quarrel with the reductionism and economism of the base-superstructure metaphor.)…The New Left therefore took the first faltering steps of putting questions of cultural analysis and cultural politics at the center of its politics. (”The “First” New Left: Life and Times,”
25-6)
Hall has taken a critical stance in reviewing the New Left’s culturalism. In the simplest sense, Hall has depicted a relational interaction between culture and society. Roughly speaking, this is the inseparability of culture and society. Furthermore, Hall has pointed out that culture is a constitutive component of society, whose change is sure to be perceived culturally. For Hall, this is the New Left’s trailblazing (,not necessarily successful though, in Hall’s opinion) effort to challenge “the reductionism and economism of the base-superstructure metaphor” of vulgar Marxism. Hall’s observation of the New Left’s or Williams’ culturalism could be summed up in this way: instead of being a determined factor of the superstructure, as it used
to be seen in vulgar Marxism, culture in fact serves as a constituting force of society, and vice versa; that is, the correlation between culture and society should immanently be inter-constitutive.
What Hall gives us is an overview of the New Left’s culture-and-society interface. As far as I am concerned, it is an enabling process for us to characterize Williams’ cultural materialism. When Hall speaks of the constitutive nexus of both culture and society, it should be noteworthy that Williams, as a critical New Leftist, has gained such an insight into this nexus, evolving it into a theory of ‘cultural production.’ First of all, Williams redefines the word ‘production’ on a social level:
But then this same point is highly relevant to the actual process of “mental” labor.
Even if we retain, at this point, his [Marx’s] categorical distinction between
“material” and “mental” labor(overriding…the diverse social and historical conditions within which this distinction is variably practiced and theorized), it soon becomes clear, from historical evidence, that the productive forces of
“mental labor” have, in themselves, an inescapable material and thus social history. (What I came to say, 211, italics mine)
By and large, in his cultural materialism Williams articulates that culture is a material product of social machinery. This is what society does to culture! Paul Jones, in his Raymond Williams’s Sociology of Culture, believes this quoted passage to be “Williams’s most explicit declaration of the conception of cultural productive forces that is quite crucial to his mature sociology of culture” (19). First, Williams has posited two modes of production, which Jones has worked into Table 1 (50):
Forces of production, i.e. labor plus these
varying means of production Relations of production
General Means of ‘general’ production Capital/labor (initially)
Cultural Means of cultural production, including means of communication
Relations of cultural production, including
‘formations’
Indeed, the significance of Table 1 lies in Williams’ problematization of the distinction between “mental and material labor,” which attracts constant social and historical attention in various contexts. First, Jones has emphasized that by no means should this distinction be rigidly hard and fast. ”For Williams it is a matter of determinate conjunctural analysis, whether the relation between social and cultural reproduction is one of correspondent homology…,asymmetry, or symmetry ” (51).1 That is, in Jones’ opinion, Williams’ distinction does not undermine the inter-constitutive relationship between culture and society, now that he stresses the commonalities between social and cultural reproductions, believing the two forces to be “common but differentiated processual dynamics” (50). Besides, even Williams himself also indicates ‘the social history’ of mental labor. In such a case, it is our preliminary conclusion that Williams still targets materiality of culture even if it is a result of mental labor, rather than propose an arbitrary, overall blurring of this distinction. For him, this materiality seems like an inescapable answer to the complex process of cultural production.
Next, we should get to the other crucial question: what does culture do to society? For Williams, culture constitutively impinges upon society equally needs to be treated:
A cultural phenomenon acquires its full significance only when it is seen as a form of（known or unknown）general social process or structure…there is no a prior distinction between the necessary and the contingent, the “social” and the
“cultural,” the “base” and the “superstructure.” (Marxism and Literature, 105-6)
Williams views culture as a significant in-built component of society. That is, culture, such a social product of materiality, may well acquire an internally structural influence on society.
1 In addition, Jones, with respect to Table 1, has chosen the perspective of Williams’ attitude towards the problematic, vulgar Marxism metaphor of base/superstructure. He believes that Williams has redressed the faults with this metaphor, rather than undercut it. “For we still have the original categories of the metaphor , as well as Williams’ culturally specified versions…The determinant role of the ‘the base’ over formal superstructure in any general sense is thus supplanted by the relation between what have now been constituted as two sets of productive forces and relations：culture and ‘social’(or ‘general’).” See Jones, 50.
This is how Williams obliterates the distinction between “the “social” and the “cultural,” the
“base” and the “superstructure.”
By now, my twofold task is completed: Williams impugns the rigid one-way connection of the base with the superstructure and replaces this connection with a mutually constitutive relationship between culture and society. This is also what Hall praises Williams for: a crowning achievement of modifying the traditionally Marxian base/superstructure model.2 At this point, I have highlighted and explored some register of Williams’ cultural materialism, including culture, society, and materiality. Of course, as I have stated, the register comprises crucial factors of the Willimasian process of cultural production. Thus, as I intend to remodulate Yeats’ dramatic voice of unity at the vocal tract of culture, it readily becomes my top priority to introduce the very register into the realm of Yeats’ dramatic culture. And in the course of this introduction, these key words of culture, society, and materiality are my points of dialectical leverage. To be more exact, what I’m seeking to do is to find practical applications of Williams’ cultural materialism in the context of Yeats’
dramatic culture. First, I have mentioned in Chapter I that Yeats’ intention of founding the Irish theater is to create the unity of culture. Yeats has firmly stated:
All my life I have longed for such a country [that is, a country with Unity of Culture], and always found it quite impossible to evoke without having much belief in its real existence as a child has in that of the wooden birds, beasts, and persons of his toy Noah’s ark. (Plays and Controversies, 434)
Here, Yeats has first envisioned his childlike prospect of Ireland, “a country with Unity of Culture.” Most of all, for Yeats this prospect always has a chance to materialize, as long as Irish people’s confidence in it can be inspired. In addition, Yeats is convinced that either this
2 On the other hand, György Márkus has saliently critiqued Williams’ model of cultural and social reproductions.
He is convinced that this paradigm fails to address the specificity of cultural objects with cultural meanings. He thinks that “their emphasis…falls predominantly and one-sidedly, upon social institutions which pertain to the sphere of culture…not on the social relations constituting the realm of culture as such.” See György Márkus,
“Marxism and Theories of Culture.” Thesis Eleven 25: 99.
materialization or this inspiration has to hinge upon the power of the theater. Here are more details: in terms of such a theater, Yeats has painted this picture with his imagination: on the slopes of the Acropolis was a theater, as the core of the civilization and the center of the community life. Pisistratus had created this ideal theater with the deliberate intention of unifying the city-state of Athens. His practical means was through the tragic contests performed annually at the Festival of Dionysus. Following this plan, the Theater of Dionysus became a religious temple, which transformed Athenian myths and rituals into art forms in order to raise Athens’ cultural level and create their sense of communal identity (Fergusson, The Idea of a Theater, 15).
Flannery bears witness to Yeats’ plan to pattern the Irish theater on Yeats’ own vision of Theater of Dionysus; in particular, Yeats’ wants the Irish theater to fulfill a similar intention:
Thus we see the dream of Yeats defined: nothing less than the re-creation of society and theater in the image of the greatest society and theater in the history of Western civilization; nothing less than the creation of an Irish Athens, and an Irish Theater of Dionysus where a Unity of Being and Unity of Culture might be effected…(66)
Obviously, Yeats hasn’t merely premeditated an imitation of the Theater of Dionysus. What he actually desires is a ‘package deal!’ That is, he wishes the Irish theater to consummate the objective of unifying his fellow Irish people; afterwards, Ireland may be the modern version of Athens, in whose society a Unity of Being or a Unity of Culture might be a possibility. Looking at the larger picture, we may even say that it is Yeats’ idealized blueprint of his utopian Ireland.
Of course, there will be an arduous process if this blueprint is to be realized, and most important of all, Yeats has determinedly counted on theater for facilitating this process, for in Yeats’ mind, the Irish theater is a model of Irish people’s national institutions to reverence, or national success to admire (Autobiographies, 493).
Up to now, culture and society, the two elements of the Williansian equation of cultural
production have been contextualized by the Yeatsian dramatic philosophy of unity. And above all, when Yeats talks of creating a unity of Irish culture, he has inevitably launched into a process of cultural production. Let me posit a more Williamsian rendition of this case scenario.
Williams believes that culture is a product of the social machinery. Hence, as Yeats has founded the Irish theater for the purpose of creating a unity of culture, he simultaneously occupies the position of a ‘cultural producer,’ and the Irish theater qualifies as a part of the social machinery, or a social institution. Perhaps the time has ripened to inspect Yeats’ theatrical products of unity by this criterion. Yeats’ early play, The Shadowy Waters, typifies this case. In this play, Dectora is stolen from King Iollan by the adventurer Forgael. Eventually, Dectora and Forgael consummate a union. Taylor perceives the characterization, “Forgael represents reason or mind seeking death and the life of the spirit beyond, while Dectora represents the human will in its search for the force and passion of physical life.” Above all, he perceives Yeats’ plan for this play to be “a merging or melting of opposites” (48), namely, a theatrical instantiation of Yeats’
equation of unity. That is, when Dectora recites about her union with Forgael at the end of this play, this is precisely what the audience is expected to be instilled into:
DECTORA: And I am left alone with my beloved,
Who cannot put me from his sight for ever.
We are alone for ever, and I laugh,
Forgael, because you cannot put me from you (The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, 479-82)
In Yeats’ dramatic vision, the union of Dectora and Forgael is an effectuation of his equation of unity, and this effectuation supposedly contributes to the unity of culture in Ireland. That is, it is when the audience watches this scene of union when the social influence of the theater will be exercised most efficiently, which, in Yeats’ opinion, ought to be instrumental in making possible the unity of culture.
We have seen the implementation of the Yeatsian equation of unity. I think it’s time for the
operation of the Williansian equation of cultural materialism in the very same context. Here the operative complexity shouldn’t be overestimated, now that two main elements, society and culture, have manifested themselves. Rather, my emphasis is consequential; that is, once this Williamsian equation is put into operation, materiality will be an outcome that will undeniably be taken for granted. Materiality, by a Williamsian extrapolation, will forcibly work its way into the fabric of Yeats’ theatrical unity of culture. It enables us to shift our focus to materiality, whenever we have to view Yeats’ dramatic production of cultural unity.
First, Williams’ cultural materialism legitimizes my comparison of Yeats’ Irish theater to a social machine. And this giant social machine is powered by capitalism, of which Williams has never sought a total negation. On the contrary, he, to a certain extent, even privileges this word to be part of legacy of traditional Marxism:
…because there was an industrial revolution there must have been industrial poetry…It would seem a reasonable deduction from a very simple version of economic determination, that since the decisive phenomenon was the advent of capitalism, there should be capitalist poetry. (Politics and Letters, 144)
Based on ‘a very simple [,or traditional] version of economic determination,’ Williams acknowledges the workings of capitalism, determining how it dictates a new trend of poetry. I think Williams’ point is a ‘chain reaction,’ or literary developments triggered by capitalism.
In addition, Williams’ point may be placed in a social context: either the industrial revolution or capitalism must occur in society before it can impinge on literature. That is, sociality of them both has to be self-evident, and so is that of literature! Williams accentuates sociality of culture, which provides a solid basis for materiality. From this perspective, capitalism and materiality should, at least partially, be synonymously interchangeable. It simply causes our dialectical veer to the capitalism of Yeats’ theater.
In 1904, a well-to-do British lady, Annie E. F. Horniman, generously donated the Abbey Theater to be the operation base of the Irish drama. In his Behind the Scenes, Adrian
Frazier describes Horniman as a lady “proud of the mercantile virtues of Low Church petty capitalists.” In the eyes of other Irishmen, she seems to possess certain spiritually demeaning commercial characteristics (, a statement she has never quite confessed to, though!) (157). In addition, in 1907 Yeats had already gotten £7,000 out of Horniman (purchase of theatre, actor salaries, subsidies for tours of England), by no means was it quite enough for him (155).
Even when Horniman was disillusioned about the Abbey Theater, she still told Yeats to "hold tight to the remembrance that he could always claim her help"; if he needed more cash, she would find a way to send it (165). Horniman’s subsidies of the Abbey Theater could be accounted for variously.3 However, as Frazier chronicles Horniman’s financial support, he is in fact corroborating this simile: if the Abbey Theater is Yeats’ flagship in his crusade of the Irish dramatic movement, then it definitely floats in the ocean of capitalism or materiality.4
All these have simply provided us with another angle of viewing Yeats’ dramatic creation of a cultural unity: it is actually a product of materiality from a social institution. In other words, it leads to our re-evaluation such Yeatsian plays as Deirdre, where Yeats has implemented his philosophy of unity more cleverly and sophisticatedly.
David R. Clark, in his “Deirdre: The Rigor of Logic,” states:
The whole play has been a tragic chess game in which each player followed the rules sacred to him: Conchubar sovereign pride, Fergus statesmanly good-faith, Naoise heroic honor and Deirdre the laws of love. In a sense the finish was determined before the start…The stage movement…follows that of pendulum.
3 A main reason for Miss Horniman’s financing the Abbey Theater is her infatuation with Yeats, which can be proven by her jealousy or resentment of Maud Gonne. For example, on December 10, 1906 when she wrote to Yeats, she sounded like a lover green with envy, speaking of their conversation about Mrs. MacBride, or Gonne
“You naturally made no remark when I said that Mrs. MacBride got what she deserved when she came to the theatre. In a case like that your silence is quite right—you know that it is true but of course you object to saying so…so I'm not at all cross & trying not be sad & I certainly will not worry you, for I have my own dignity to consider.” See A. E. F Horniman. Letters to Abbey Theatre directors and to W. B. Yeats, 1903-11. National Library of Ireland, ms. 13068.
4 In addition, Miss Horniman is not only the financier of the Abbey Theater but also an influencer of it. That is, she has quite direct bearing over dramatic products of the Abbey Theater. For instance, on February 16, 1910, she wrote Yeats, asserting that anything pertaining to the theater “concern[s] my property and as such [are] my business and I ought [to be] considered.” In a way, it confirms Williams’ idea how capitalism affects literature. On the other hand, considering Horniman’s identity as a Briton, it more or less renders Yeats’ inclination of Anglicization accountable. See the Horniman Papers at the National Library of Ireland, ms. 13068.
(111)
What Clark has articulated is the four major opposites, which constitutes the main action of this play. In Deirdre, as we can see first, Fergus displays his faith in Conchubar:
FERGUS: If Conchubar were the treacherous man you think, Would you find safety now that you have come Into the very middle of his power,
Under his very eyes? (354-7) And Conchubar bases his betrayal on his kingly pride:
CONCHUBAR: Do you think that I Shall let you go again, after seven years Of longing and of planning here and there, And trafficking with merchants for the stones That make all sure, and watching my own face That none might read it? (589-94)
Afterwards, Naoise maintains his honor:
NAOISE: And do you think That, were I given life at such a price, I would not cast it from me? O my eagle!
Why do you beat vain wings upon the rock When hollow night’s above? (604-8)
Why do you beat vain wings upon the rock When hollow night’s above? (604-8)