Scan barcode
dee9401's review against another edition
3.0
A great book, especially for an introduction to terms like culture and hegemony (before moving on to Gramsci's Prison Diaries which is harder to get into).
kylefwill's review against another edition
5.0
"The mistake, as so often, is in taking terms of analysis as terms of substance. Thus we speak of a world-view or of a prevailing ideology or of a class outlook, often with adequate evidence, but in this regular slide towards a past tense and a fixed form suppose, or even do not know that we have to suppose, that these exist ad are lived specifically and definitely, in singular and developing forms. Perhaps the dead can be reduced to fixed forms, though their surviving records are against it."
alexlanz's review against another edition
He read Marx in the German so you know you can trust him.
ladyaisha's review against another edition
4.0
First of all, I HATE Marxism! :)
That being said, this book is an excellent intro to Marxist theory in literary and cultural studies. A lot of the concepts discussed by Williams are extremely helpful to any student attempting a study of literature or culture under hegemony. Although I have to say, he's very focused on cultural hegemony based on social class, if you want a discussion of foreign hegemony, you'll have to look elsewhere.
That being said, this book is an excellent intro to Marxist theory in literary and cultural studies. A lot of the concepts discussed by Williams are extremely helpful to any student attempting a study of literature or culture under hegemony. Although I have to say, he's very focused on cultural hegemony based on social class, if you want a discussion of foreign hegemony, you'll have to look elsewhere.
meeners's review
5.0
brilliantly illuminating - would recommend to anyone. at the heart of williams' argument is a stress on language as activity (active practice rather than static, separated fact). this may seem self-evident but williams shows how muddled it can all get once you move out into the territory of "literature" and a certain tendency to separate the forms from the social process. the real contribution of a marxist theory of literature would be to prove that they can never be separated from each other: form is "inevitably a relationship," embedded in and constitutive of processes that are at once social, historical, and material.
It is the special function of theory, in exploring and defining the nature and the variation of practice, to develop a general consciousness within what is repeatedly experienced as a special and often relatively isolated consciousness. For creativity and social self-creation are both known and unknown events, and it is still from grasping the known that the unknown – the next step, the next work – is conceived.
It is the special function of theory, in exploring and defining the nature and the variation of practice, to develop a general consciousness within what is repeatedly experienced as a special and often relatively isolated consciousness. For creativity and social self-creation are both known and unknown events, and it is still from grasping the known that the unknown – the next step, the next work – is conceived.
More...