Cultural Materialism
Danny Chen
Outline
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Definition
1. Historical context
2. Theoretical method
3. Political commitment
4. Textual analysis
Further definition
Differences from New Historicism
Definition
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Politicised form of historiography—the study of
historical material (includes literary texts) within a
politicised framework, and this framework includes
the present which those literary texts have in some
way helped to shape (by Graham Holderness)
It combines an attention to:
1. Historical context
2. Theoretical method
3. Political commitment
4. Textual analysis
(Jonathan Dollimore and Allan Sinfield)
Historical context
Allow the literary texts to “recover its
histories” which previous kinds of study
have often ignored
 Involve relating the plays to the
phenomenon as enclosures and the
oppression of the rural poor, the state
power and the resistance to it
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Theoretical method
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The break with liberal humanism and
the absorbing of the lessons of
structuralism, post-structuralism and
and other approaches which have
become prominent since the 1970s.
Political commitment
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Influenced by Marxism and feminist
perspectives
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The break from the conservativeChristian framework which hitherto
dominated Shakespeare criticism
Textual analysis
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Locates the critique of the traditional
approaches where it can not be ignored
To make theory not to just be an abstract
kind, and to practice it on canonical texts
which continue to be the focus of massive
amounts of academic and professional
attention, and which are prominent
national and cultural icons
Further definition
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Culture:all forms of culture (like television,
popular music , movies and fiction)
Not to limit itself to “high” culture forms (like
Shakespeare’s play)
Materialism:the opposite of idealism (Idealists
believe that high culture represents the free and
independent play of the talented individual mind ,
on the contrary, Materialists think thathigh
culture cannot transcend the material forces and
relations of production)
Further definition
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Culture is not only simply a reflection of
the economic and political system, but nor
can be independent of it
Raymond Williams—Structure of
Feeling:meanings and values as they are
lived and felt (to be often antagonistic both
to explicit systems of values and beliefs
and to the dominant ideologies within a
society)
Differences from New Historicism
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More optimistic about the possibility of
change and is willing to see literature a a
source of oppositional values
Use the past to “read” the present
Reveal the politics of our society by what
we choose to emphasis or suppress of the
past
Differences from New Historicism
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New Historicism:men and women make
their own history but not in the conditions
of their own choosing—political pessimism
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Cultural Materialism:concentrate on the
interventions whereby men and women
make their own history--- political optimism
Questions
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Is Cultural Materialism based on the
cultural evolution or the economic
development?
The concern of Cultural Materialism is to
convert the ideologies of hegemony in the
society or to break the class system?
What’s the differences between Cultural
Materialism and Marxism?