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New historicism and cultural materialism
New historicism
The term 'new historicism' was coined by the American critic Stephen Greenblatt whose
book Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (1980) is usually regarded as
its beginning.
The “New” Historicism which arose in the 1980s reacted against both the formalist view of
the literary text as somehow autonomous and Marxist views which ultimately related texts to
the economic infrastructure. It saw the literary text not as somehow unique but as a kind of
discourse situated within a complex of cultural discourses –religious, political, economic,
aesthetic – which both shaped it and, in their turn, were shaped by it. If there was anything
new about this procedure, it was its insistence, drawn from Foucault and poststructuralism,
that “history” itself is a text, an interpretation, and that there is no single history.
A simple definition of the new historicism is that it is a method based on the parallel reading
of literary and non-literary texts, usually of the same historical period. That is to say, new
historicism refuses (at least ostensibly) to 'privilege' the literary text: instead of a literary
'foreground' and a historical 'background' it envisages and practises a mode of study in which
literary and non-literary texts are given equal weight and constantly inform or interrogate
each other.
Louis Montrose: he defines it as a combined interest in 'the textuality of history, the
historicity of texts'. It involves (in Greenblatt's words) 'an intensified willingness to read all
of the textual traces of the past with the attention traditionally conferred only on literary
texts'. Since these historical documents are not subordinated as contexts, but are analysed in
their own right, we should perhaps call them 'co-texts' rather than 'contexts'. The text and co-
text used will be seen as expressions of the same historical 'moment', and interpreted
accordingly.
New and old historicisms - some differences
(i) The practice of giving 'equal weighting' to literary and non-literary material is the first
and major difference between the 'new' and the 'old' historicism.
(ii) A second important difference between old and new historicisms is encapsulated in the
word 'archival' in the phrase 'the archival continuum, for that word indicates that new
historicism is indeed a historicist rather than a historical movement. That is, it is interested in
history as represented and recorded in written documents, in history-as-text.
Historical events as such, it would argue, are irrecoverably lost. As it were, the word of the
past replaces the world of the past. Since, for the new historicist, the events and attitudes of
the past now exist solely as writing, it makes sense to subject that writing to the kind of close
analysis formerly reserved for literary texts.
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(iii) the influence of deconstruction. New historicism accepts Derrida's view that there is
nothing outside the text, in the special sense that everything about the past is only available to
us in textualised form: it is 'thrice-processed', first through the ideology, or outlook, or
discursive practices of its own time, then through those of ours, and finally through the
distorting web of language itself.
The aim of new historicism is not to represent the past as it really was, but to present a new
reality by re-situating it.
New historicism and Foucault
New historicism is determinedly anti-establishment, conveying the ideals of personal
freedom and accepting and celebrating all forms of difference and 'deviance'. At the same
time, it seems to lose hope of the survival of these in the face of the power of the repressive
state, which it constantly reveals as able to penetrate and taint the most intimate areas of
personal life.
Panopticon
The notion of the State as all-powerful and all-seeing derives from the post-structuralist
cultural historian Michel Foucault whose pervasive image of the State is that of 'panoptic'
(meaning 'all-seeing') surveillance. The Panopticon was a design for a circular prison
conceived by the eighteenth-century utilitarian Jeremy Bentham: the design consisted of
tiered ranks of cells which could all be surveyed by a single warder positioned at the centre of
the circle. The panoptic State, however, maintains its surveillance not by physical force and
intimidation, but by the power of its 'discursive practices' which circulates its ideology
throughout the entire society.
Discourse
Discourse is not just a way of speaking or writing, but the whole 'mental set' and ideology
which encloses the thinking of all members of a given society. It is not singular and
monolithic -there is always a multiplicity of discourses.
A discourse is a social language created by particular cultural conditions at a particular time
and place, and it expresses a particular way of understanding human experience. Although
the word discourse has roughly the same meaning as the word ideology, and the two terms
are often used interchangeably, the word discourse draws attention to the role of language as
the vehicle of ideology.
On the whole, new historicism seems to emphasise the extent of 'thought control' over
societies, with the implication that 'deviant' thinking may become literally 'unthinkable', so
that the State is seen as a monolithic structure and change becomes almost impossible.
Foucault's work looks at the institutions which enable this power to be maintained, such as
State punishment, prisons, the medical profession and legislation about sexuality. Foucault's
'discursive practices' concern the way power is internalised by those whom it disempowers,
so that it does not have to be constantly enforced externally.
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Advantages of new historicism
Firstly, although it is founded upon post-structuralist thinking, it is written in a far more
accessible way, for the most part avoiding post-structuralism's characteristically dense style
and vocabulary.
Secondly, the material itself is often fascinating and is wholly distinctive and fresh in the
context of literary studies.
Thirdly, the political edge of new historicist writing is always sharp, but at the same time it
avoids the problems frequently encountered in 'straight' Marxist criticism.
What new historicists do
1. They juxtapose literary and non-literary texts, reading the former in the light of the
latter.
2. They try thereby to 'defamiliarise' the canonical literary text, detaching it from the
accumulated weight of previous literary scholarship and seeing it as if new.
3. They focus attention (within both text and co-text) on issues of State power and how it is
maintained, on patriarchal structures and their perpetuation, and on the process of
colonisation, with its accompanying 'mind-set'.
4. They make use, in doing so, of aspects of the post-structuralist outlook, especially
Derrida's notion that every facet of reality is textualised, and Foucault's idea of social
structures as determined by dominant 'discursive practices'.
Cultural materialism
A term first associated with marxist critic Raymond Williams that refers to the manner in
which economic forces and modes of production inevitably encroach upon cultural products
such as literary works.
Cultural materialism can be defined as an approach to literature and culture which sees
literary texts as the material products of specific historical and political conditions, whether
one speaks of the moment of production or the reception of the text in particular periods.
A movement in British literary theory that insistently pursues the materialist basis of cultural
phenomena. Alongside textual evidence, cultural materialists pursue all kinds of contextual
evidence in order to try to explain the text as a material object both an object produced at a
particular time, and an object being consumed in the present.
The British critic Graham Holderness describes cultural materialism as 'a politicised form
of historiography'. The term 'cultural materialism' was made current in 1985 when it was used
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by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield as the subtitle of their edited collection of essays
Political Shakespeare.
They define the term as designating a critical method which has four characteristics: it
combines an attention to:
1. historical context: the emphasis on historical context 'undermines the transcendent
significance traditionally accorded to the literary text'. The aim of this aspect of cultural
materialism is to allow the literary text to 'recover its histories' which previous kinds of study
have often ignored.
2. theoretical method: the emphasis on theoretical method signifies the break with liberal
humanism and the absorbing of the lessons of structuralism, post-structuralism, and other
approaches which have become prominent since the 1970s.
3. political commitment: the emphasis on political commitment signifies the influence of
Marxist and feminist perspectives and the break from the conservative-Christian framework
which hitherto dominated Shakespeare criticism.
4. textual analysis: there is a commitment not just to making theory of an abstractkind, but to
practising it on (mainly) canonical texts
'Culture' 'and Materialism'
'Culture' will include all forms of culture ('forms like television and popular music and
fiction'). That is, this approach does not limit itself to'high' cultural forms like the
Shakespeare play.
'Materialism' signifies the opposite of 'idealism'. It means that culture cannot 'transcend the
material forces and relations of production. Culture is not simply a reflection of the economic
and political system, but nor can it be independent of it'.
Raymond Williams: 'structures of feeling'
Cultural materialism takes a good deal of its outlook (and its name) from the British left-wing
critic Raymond Williams.
Williams invented the term 'structures of feeling': these are concerned with 'meanings and
values as they are lived and felt'. Structures of feeling are often antagonistic both to explicit
systems of values and beliefs, and to the dominant ideologies within a society. They are
characteristically found in literature, and they oppose the status quo. The result is that cultural
materialism is much more optimistic about the possibility of change and is willing at times to
see literature as a source of oppositional values.
How is cultural materialism different from new historicism?
Cultural materialism is often linked in discussion with new historicism, its American
counterpart. Though the two movements belong to the same family, there is an ongoing
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family quarrel between them. Political Shakespeare includes new historicist essays, and the
introduction explains some of the differences between the two movements.
(i) Cultural materialism has political optimism, that is, it believes in the possibility of a
change in the present conditions.
New historicism has political pessimism, that is, it believes that when political power
operates in and suffuses so many spheres, the possibility of fundamental change and
transformation may come to seem very remote.
(ii) Cultural materialism is more politically committed than new historicism. Cultural
materialists see new historicists as cutting themselves off from effective political positions by
their acceptance of a particular version of post-structuralism, with its radical scepticism about
the possibility of attaining secure knowledge.
(iii) the new historicist situates the literary text in the political situation of its own day,
while the cultural materialist situates it within that of ours.
New historicism was much influenced by Foucault, whose 'discursive practices' are
frequently a reinforcement of dominant ideology. Cultural materialism, on the other hand,
owes much to Raymond Williams, whose 'structures of feeling' contain the seeds from which
grows resistance to the dominant ideology.
What cultural materialist critics do
1. They read the literary text (very often a Renaissance play) in such a way as to enable us to
'recover its histories', that is, the context of exploitation from which it emerged.
2. At the same time, they foreground those elements in the work's present transmission
and contextualising which caused those histories to be lost in the first place..
3. They use a combination of Marxist and feminist approaches to the text
4. They use the technique of close textual analysis, but often employ structuralist and post-
structuralist techniques, especially to mark a break with the inherited tradition of close
textual analysis within the framework of conservative cultural and social assumptions.
5. At the same time, they work mainly within traditional notions of the canon, on the
grounds that writing about more obscure texts hardly ever constitutes an effective political
intervention.
