Marxism and

Literature
RAYMOND WILLIAMS

Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents
OXfORD
Crut
' It IIIrthtn the UnIwnity"i ob;Ktiw of and f<houdon by publullln& III

Strut. OxfOrd on 6D' Oxford Uniwnily Pnm ;Ia MpMlm.ntorow. Uniwnily Q(0xf0rd. In l'Hfum. scholarship.
Oxford Ntw f orl!; AdleftS ,o\udbn6 8uIgItok Bosod 8uenot Ai.ra capeTown Cheruui D.l.m5.m:inl Delhi AortIKt HOfIalor.; IsunbuJ IWadII loIukoOty -'lumMi Puis SIohuio Tokyo TofwIIO wilh ilUOCiittod COlflpanin in It.old"n Odor<! I. a 1lI tbt l;lC and in
CI Oxford

Introduction
I. Basic Concepts 1. Culture 2. Language 3. Literature 4. Ideology II. Cultural Theory 1. Base and Superstructure 2. Determination
11 21 45 55 75 113 90 95 101 lOB 11 5 121 128 136 145 151 158 165 173 180 186 192 199 206 213 218

UW markO(OKford IJclwtslty Pt-eu OII\H counll'iH

,,",IS 1971

FiJ'$1 publbhfd 1m Fint IUlle<! ill an Oxford Univcnily I'fest

1977

All ",1'11$ merved. No p,lrt ollhis publiution JlUy be rt'prOdIKed.. $toJ\'d in a rdri .... al or transmitted. In any fonn or by any means, ... Ilhollllhc prior pennilJion ill wntiJII of Ox!or<l I'rm. o. a.v:pf'Q$ly 1""'lIIillo:<l by law. with the ' '"Proeuphi(S O"4htl orprUl.lItiotl. EO'lllirift COhO!mlllS R!produ.:lion OUIJ"X the ICOpeoftbe above shOlJ td be ""nlto the . igt>U Deputtneflt. Oxford l"ru.I:.at thcaddrusabove
You mil.! not cirwlale thiJ book la inyOlile. bindlnrOf to"'f. and you mull Ihil unw COft<l.tion 0fI any

3. Productive Forces
4 . From Reflection to Mediation

Bnti.h Libm yClllalogllill3 In Publka.ion Diu D<lta , yai'able cataloging In Publlnlion Dna WiUWnI, bymond. MaOliJrn and int roduction.) 1, COmmunications and \ir('r;lIlun'. L Tille. 801 PN51 ISBN 1)...19-876061_2
20 19 II

Typifi cation and Ho mology Hegemony Traditions , Ins titutions. and Formations Dominant , Residual. an d Emergent 9. Structures of Feeling 10. The Sociology of Cu ltu re
5. 6. 7. 8.

Printc:d in

!I.riuIn by

(.0;0:. Wyman l1d.

l ead I...!, krbhin'

Ill. Literary Theory 1. The Multiplicity of Writing 2. Aesthetic and Other Situations 3. From Medium to Social Practice 4. Signs and Notations 5. Conventions 6. Genres 7. Forms 8. Authors 9 . Alignment and Co mmitment 10. Creative Practi ce

Booklist and Abbreviations Index

Structu res of Feeling

129

9.

Structures of Feeling

rn most description and analysis, culture and society are expressed in an habitual past tense. The strongest ba rrier to the recognition of h uman cultural activ it y is this immed iate an d regular conversion of experience in to fini shed What is defen-

sible as 8 procedure in i:O US(.; i Q ll S assumptions man y actions can be

ended, Is ha bitually , not

tJ

produced
look into its centre of this procedu re, to possible past its edges , we can u nde r-

"

!!,Qciai is always pa st. in-th e senSe that it is always we r have indeed tofind o ther terms for the und eniable experience or. - ' ii!?l2n!Y tne temponil present. die realizatio n of ah js ably ph ysical. within which we ma indeed discern and - acknowledgifinstitUtfo ns. onnatIOii'S: position s. but not alwa s as11Xed'1ffiKlU'Cts"7d products. n en the speial is tho. C>;:p J iClt Uie known relationsh ips . institutions. formations. positions-all that is ptesent and moving. all that escapes or seems to e scape from ilie fixed and the explicit and known. is grasped and defined as tho personal : this, here, now alive . active. su bjective'. T ere 1S another rcialeddT..,tioction . As though t is descri bed, in the sa me habitual past tense, it is ind eed so (Jifferent. in its explicit and fini shed forms. from much or evell anything that we can presentl y recognize as thinking, that we set aga inst it more active. more flexible, loss-'Singular terms-consciousness. experie nce. feeling-an d th en watch even th eso dra wn towards

stand, in new ways, that se paration of the social from the per.sonal w hich is so powerftil ana-direc ti ve a cultllr'ill m ode. If the _

....:

fixed. fin ite. reced ing form s. Th e poi nt is especia ll y relevant to works of art. wh ich reall y are. in on e sen se. explici t and fini shed forms-actual objects i n the visual ar ts. objectified con ventions and nota tions (semantic figu res) in literature. But it is not onl y that. to complet e thei r in herent process, we have to make them present, in specifica lly active 'readings ' . It isa lso that the making oi art is never itself in the past fen se. It is always a formative process, wi thin a specific p resent. At different moments in h istory.an d in significa ntly different ways, the rea lity and even the primacy of such presences and such processes, such d iverse and yet specific actuali ties. have been powe rfully asse rted an d reclaimed, as in practice of course they are a U the time lived . But they are then often asserted as forms themselves, in contention with other known forms: the subjective as distinct from the objecti ve; experience fro m belief; feeling from tho ught ; the immediate from th e ge neral; th e persona l from the social. The undeniable po wer of two great modern ideologica l systems- the 'aesthetic' and the psych ological' - is. ironically. systematica lly derived from these senses of instance and process, where experience , immedia te feeling, and then subjectivit y and personality are newly generalized and assembl ed. Again st these 'personal' form s, tho id eologica l systems of fi xed social generality, of ca tegorica l products. of absolute formati on s. are relatively powerless. within their speci fi c dimension. Of one domi na nt st rain in Marxism. with its habitual abuse of th e 'su bjective' and the 'personal'. th is is especially true. Yet it is th e reduction of th e social to fixed forms that remains thcoaslcem5"r. Mirx often said this, an d som cMaixistsquote ways. before retu rnin g t o fi xed forms, The mistake. as so often. is in takin g term s of analysis as terms of substance. Thus we spea k of a world-view or of a preyailing class outlook, oft en with adeq uate evidence. but in this regular sIfde-fowirds a past tense and 8 fixed form s uppose , or even do notkDow tha't we have sU'J1PQse . that these exist and are li ved specifically and definitively, in si ngu lar and developing forms. Perhaps the d ead ca n be redu ced toJixed forms. surviving records are agains t it. But t e living will_ reduced , at least in the first person ; li ving third pe rsons may be different. All the known complexi ties, the experienced ten sions. shifts, and uncertainties. the in tricate forms of unevenness and confu sion . are agai nst the terms of the reduction and soon . by

to

130

Marxism and Literature

Structures of Feeling

131

extension , again st social analysis itself. Social forms are then often ad mitted for generali ties bu t debarred, contemptuously. from any possibl e r elevance to this immed iate and actual s ignificance of bein g. And from th e abstractions formed in their tu rn by this act of debarring-the 'human imagina tion', the 'human psyche '. the 'unconscious ', with their 'functions ' in art and in myth and in dream- new and displaced forms of social analysis a nd ca tegoriza tion , overrid ing all speci fi c social conditions, arc then more or less ra pidly developed . Social form s arc ev idently more recognizable when they are

articulate and explicit. We have seen this in the range from

institutions to formations and traditions. We can see it again in the ran ge from dominant systems of belief a nd edu ca tion to influential systems of explanat ion a nd argumen t. All these have effecti ve pr esence. Man y are form ed and deli berate, and some Bre quite fixed . Bu t when they have all been identi fied they are not a w hole inventory even of social consciousn ess in its sim plest sense. For they becom e social conscious ness onl y when

they are li ved, acti vely, in real relationships, and mOreover

relationships w hich are more than systematic exchanges between fi xed uni ts. Indeed just because all consciousness is social , its processes occur not only between bu t wit.hin the relationship and the related. And this_ practical consciousness is always more than a handlin g of fi xed forms and u nits. There is frequent tension between the received interpretation and practical ex perience. Where this tens ion can be made di rect and explicit, or w here som e alternative interpretation is available, weare still with in a dimension of relati vely fi xed form s. Bu t the tension is as oft en an unease, a stress, a displacement. a latency: the moment of consciou s comparison not yet come, often not even coming. And comparison is by no mea ns the only process, though it is powerful and important. There are th e experiences to w h ich the fi xed forms do not s pea k at all, which indeed they do not recogn ize. There are important mixed experien ces, where the available meaning would convert part to all, or a ll to part. An d even w here form and response can be fo und to agree, without a pparent difficulty, there can be qualifications, reserva tions, ind ica tions else wh ere: w hat the agreement seemed to settle but still sounding elsewhere. Practical consciousness is almost always different from official cOnsciousness, and this is not only a matter of relative freedom o r control. For practical

conscious ness is what is actually bein g lived , and not onl y what it is thought is being li ved. Yet the actual alternative to the received and p roduced fi xed forms is not silence: not the a bsence , the unconscious, which bourgeois cu ltu re h as mythi. cized. It is a kind of feeling and thinking which is indeed social and material, but each In an embryonic pha se before it can become full y articulate and defin ed exchange . Its relations with the already articulate and defin ed are then exceptionally complex. This process ca n be directly observed in the h istory of a language. In spite of su bstantial and at so me levels decis ive con tin uities in grammar and voca bu lary, no generation spea ks quite the sa me language as its predecessors. The difference ca n be defined in terms of additions, deletions, and m od ifications. but these d o not exhaust it . What rea lly cha nges is something Quite general, over a wide range, and the description tha t often fits the change best is the literary term 'style', It is a general ch ange, ratherth an a set of deli berate choices, yet choices ca n be deduced from it, as \\"ell as effects. Similar kinds of change can be obser ved in manners, dress, build ing, and othersimilarforms of of social life. It is''30 open question - that is to say, a specific historical questions- whether in an y of these cha nges this or that group has bee n dominant or in fluen tial, or whether they are the result of much m ore general interaction. For what we nre definin g is a particular qu_ al ity of social experience and relationship, historically distinct from other pa rticular qual iti es, which gives the sense of a generation or of a period. The relations between th is quality and the other specifying historical maT'ks of changing institutions, formations, and beliefs, and beyond these the changing socia l and economic relations be tween and within classes, are aga in an open Qu estion: that is to say, a set of specific h istorica l questions. The method ological con seq uence of such a definition , however, is that the speCific qualitative changes are not assumed to be epi phenomen a of changed institut ions. formation s, and beliefs, or merely secon dary evidence of ch anged social and economic relations between a nd within classes. At the sa me time they are from the begi nning taken as social ex perience, ra ther than as ' personal' experience or as the merely s uperficial or inCidental 'small change' of society. They are social in two ways that distinguish th em from reduced senses of the social as the institutional and

set

rI
132

Marxism and Literalur,e

Structures of Feeling

133

.r 1" _.:-::

; '.
J

. :

':t

the formal : first. in thai they they are being lived this is obvious; when they have been lived it is they are emergent o r pre-emergcnt, they do not have to await classification, or they palpable pressu.res and set effechve bmlts on expen ence and on

still their substantial characteristic): second, in that although

',;X
"

Such changes can be d efined changes in stf}J.2t.!!m{p]feel. ing',' The term is difficult . but 'feeling' is chosen to emphasize a 'distinction from morc formal concepts of 'world-view' or 'ideology'. It is not only th at we must go beyond formally h?ld and systematic beliefs, though of course we have always to IOclude them. It is that we are concerned with meanings and va lues as they are actively live d and felt , and th e r elations between these and formal or systematic beliefs are in practice variable (including histori cally variable), over a range from formal assent with private di ssent to the more nuanced interaction between selected and interpreted beliefs and acted and justified experiences. An alternative definition would bo stmctur.es.-Df....cxpcrience: in one sense the better and wider word, but with the difficulty that one of its senses has that past tense which is the most Important obstacle to recognition of the area of social experience which is being defined. We are talking about characteristic clements of impulse, restraint, and tone; s peCifically affective elements of consciousness and relationships: not fee ling against thought , but thought as felt and feelin g as thought: practical consciousness of a present k ind, in a living and interrelating continuity. We are then defining these elements as a 'stru cture ': as a set, with s pecific internal relations, at once interlocking and in tens ion. Yet we are also defining a social experience which is still in process, often indeed not yet recognized as social but taken to be private, idi osyncratic, and even isolating, but which in analysis (though rarely otherwise) has its emergent, connecting, and dominant characteristics, indeed its specific hi erarchies. Thesea re often more recognizable at a later classtage, when they have been (as often happens) sified. and in many cases built into insUtu1:ions and formatiqns. BY-Thai time case is different; anew structure of feeling will usually already have begun tol orm, in the lr)Je present. then, a 'structure of feeling ' is a cwtural hypothesis, actually derived from attempts to understand such

action.

"elmnants-and their connectjons in a generation or period, and needing always to be returned, interactively, to such evidence. It ISinit ially Jess s imple than moro formally suuctured hYPQtheses of the social. but it is more adequate to the actual range of cultural evidence: historicaUy certainly, but even more(whereit matters more) in our present cultural process. The hypothesis has a special relevance toart and literature , where the true social content is in a significa nt number of cases of this present and affective kind, which cannot without loss be reduced to beliefsystems. institutions , or explicit general relationships, though it may include a ll these as lived and experienced, with or without tension , as it also eVidently includes elements of social and material (physical or natural) experience which may lie beyond, or be uncoverod or imperfectly covered by, the elsewhere recognizable systematic elements. The unmistakable presence of certain elements in art which are not covered by (thou gh in one mode they ma y be reduced to) other formal systems is the true source of the s pecializing categories of 'the aesthetic', 'the arts', and 'imaginative literature'. We nood , on th e o ne hand. to acknowledge (and welcome) the specificity of these elements-specific feelings , specific rhythms-and yet to find ways of recog nizing their specific kinds of sociality, thus preventing that extraction from social experience which is conceiv able only when social experience itself h as been categorically (and at root historicaUy) reduced. We are then not only con cerned wi th the restoration of social content in its (ull sense, that of a generative immediacy. The idea of a structu re of feeling ca.n be specifically related to th e evi dence of forms and conventions-semantic figures-which, in art and litorature, are often among the very first indications that such a new structure is formin g. These relatio ns will be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters, but as a matter of cultural theory this is a way of defining forms and conventions in art and literature as inalienable elements o( a social material process: not by derivation from other social forms and pre-forms. but 8S social forma tion of a specific kind which may in turn be seen as the artiqllation (ofte n the only fully available articulation) of structures of feeling which as living processes are much more widely experienced. For structures of feeling can be defined as in solution , as distinct from other social semantic formations

-----

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Marxism and Literature

Structures of Feeling

135

which have been p recipitated and are more eV idently and more imm ed iately available. Not all art. by a ny m ea ns, relates to a contem porary structure of feelin g. The effecti ve formations of m ost actual 8rt relate to already manifest socia l formations. dominant o r residual, and it is primarily to emergent formations (though often in the form of modifica tion or disturbance in older forms) that the structure of feeling. as so lu tion relates. Yet this speci fi csoiution is never mere flux. It is a structured formation which, beca use it Is althe very ed ge of semantic availability, has many of the characteristics of a pre-formation. until specifi c articulations-new semantic figures- are d iscovered in ma ter ial practice: oft en. as it happens, in relatively isolated ways, which are onl y later seen to compose a significa nt (orten in fact minority) generation; this often, in turn, the generation that s ubstantially connects to its s uccessors. It is thus a specifi c structure of particular linkages, particular emphases and press ions. and . in what are orten its mos t recogni za ble form s, and co nclusions. Early Victorian pa rticular d eep id eology, for exampl e, spec::ified the exposu re ca used by poverty or by debt or by ill egitimacy as social failure o r deviation; the con temporary structure of feelin g, meanwhile. in the new semantic fi gures of Dick.ens. of Emily Bronte, and others, spec ified exposure and isolation as a general cond it ion, and poverty, debt, or illegiti macy as its oonnecting instances . An alternative ideology, relating such exposure to the natu re of the social order, was only later generally form ed: offerin g expJana lions but now at a red uced tension: the social explanation fully admitted. the intensity of exper ienced fea r and shame now d is persed a nd generali zed. The exa mple reminds us, fin all y. of the oomplex rela tion of differe ntiated structures offeeling to differentiated classes. This is historica lly very variabl e. In England between 1660 and 1690. for exampl e. two structures of feeling (a mong the defeated Puri tans and in the restored Court) can be readily d is tingu is hed, though neither, in its literature and elsewhere, is reducible to the id eologies of these groups orto their formal (in fa ct compl ex) class rela tions. A t times the emergence of a new structure of feeling is best related to th e rise of a class (England , 170060); at other times to contradiction, fracture, or mutation with in a class (England. 1780-1830 or 1890-1 930) , when n form ation appea rs to break. away from its cla ss norms, though it retains its
I

substantial affili ation, a nd th e tension is at once lived and articulated in radica lly new se ma ntic fi gu res. Any of these examples requi res detai led substantiation, bu t wha t is now in q uestion. theoretica ll y. is the hypothesis of a mode of social formation, ex pli cit and recognizable in specific kinds of art. which is distinguisha ble from other social and semantic formations by its articulation of p resence.