33 P16en33 2020121506283980

Cultural Materialism
New Historicism: “The historicity of the text and the texttuality of

history.”
The phrase was coined by Stephen Greenblatt around 1980. Other practitioners
are J.W. Lever. Jonathan Dollimore.
Cultural materialism is a method based on the parallel reading of literary and

non-literary texts, usually of the same time period. It refuses to privilege literary
text. It is no longer a matter of literature maintaining the foreground and history
the background, instead it is a matter of literature and history occupying the same
area and given the same weight. Reading all of the textual traces of the past,
fiction or non. It places the literary text within the frame of a non-literary text.
A historical anecdote is given, relating the text to the time. Context is

replaced by “co-text”, that is an interrelated non-literary text from the same time
period.
Differences between old and new historicism:
Old historicism is hierarchical, with literature being the “jewel,” and history the
background. New historicism is Parallel readings, no more hierarchy.
Old historicism is a historical movement. It creates a historical framework in
which to place the text. New historicism is a historicist movement. New
historicism is interested in history as represented and recorded in written
documents—history as text. The word of the past replaces the world of the past.
The aim is not to represent the past as it really was, but to present a new reality
by re- situating it.
New Historicism focuses on the way literature expresses-and sometimes

disguises-power relations at work in the social context in which the literature was
produced, often this involves making connections between a literary work and other
kinds of texts. Literature is often shown to “negotiate” conflicting power
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interests. New historicism has made its biggest mark on literary studies of the
Renaissances and Romantic periods and has revised motions of literature as
privileged, apolitical writing. Much new historicism focuses on the marginalization
of subjects such as those identified as witches, the insane, heretics, vagabonds,
and political prisoners.
Cultural materialism is “a politicized form of historiography.” Raymond

Williams coined the term Cultural Materialism. Jonathan Dollimore and
Allen Sinfield made current and defined Cultural materialism as “designating a
critical method which has four characteristics:
Historical Context: what was happening at the time the text was written.
Theoretical Method: Incorporating older methods of theory—Structuralism, Post-
structuralism etc.
Political Commitment: Incorporating non-conservative andnon-Christian
frameworks—such as Feminist and Marxist theory.
Textual Analysis: building on theoretical analysis of mainly canonical texts
that have become “prominent cultural icons.”
Culture: What does this term mean in the context of Cultural Materialism?
Culture in this sense does not limit itself to “high culture” but includes all forms of
culture like TV and pop music.
Materialism: Materialism is at odds with idealism. Idealists believe in the
transcendent ability of ideas while materialist believe that culture cannot
transcend its material trappings. In this way, Cultural Materialism is an offshoot of
Marxist criticism. History, to a cultural materialist, is what has happened and what
is happening now. In other words, Cultural Materialists not only create criticism of
a text by contextualizing it with its own time period, but with successive
generations including our own. Cultural Materialism bridges the gap between
Marxism and Post-Modernism.
Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams added to the outlook of Cultural Materialism by employing
“structures of feeling.” These are values that are changing and being formed as we
live and react to the material world around us. They challenge dominant forms of
ideology and imply that values are organic and non-stagnant.
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Cultural Materialism embraces change and gives us different (changing)
perspectives based on what we chose to suppress or reveal in readings from the
past.
Shakespeare is one example of how Cultural Materialism can change our
point of view, and even our values, in regard to past texts. Many Cultural
Materialist have challenged the fetishistic relationship conservative Britain has
with Shakespeare.
"Raymond William's term for the theory of culture he develops in the course of a
long dialogue with Marxism, and which ascribes a central importance to the role of
structures of feeling. Williams is critical of the base/structure model so often
used by Marxists to analyze cultural phenomena on the grounds that it makes, for
example, the literature dependent, secondary and superstructural, or subsumes it
into the wider category of ideology. Cultural Materialism stresses that culture is a
constitutive social process which actively creates different ways of life. Similarly,
signification or the creation of meaning is viewed as a practical material activity
which cannot be consigned to a secondary lever or explained in terms of a primary
level of economic activity. Consciousness itself is not a reflection of a basic or
more material level of existence, but an active mode of social being. Williams is
also critical of the technological determinism of theorists such as Mcluhanwho
argues that communications media have independent properties that impose
themselves automatically ('the medium is the message'). He does not deny that the
function of the media is determined, but insists that its determination is social and
always bound up with sociocultural practices."
Differences
Differences Between New Historicism and Cultural Materialism
New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have a significant overlap. In fact the
main difference is politics. There are three main differences:
1. Cultural Materialists concentrate on the the interventions whereby men and

women make their own history, where New Historicists focus on the the power of
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social and ideological structures which restrain them. A contrast between political
optimism and political pessimism.
2. Cultural Materialists view New Historicists as cutting themselves off from

effective political positions by their acceptance of a particular version of post-
structuralism.
3. New Historicists will situate the literary text in the political situation of its own
day, while the Cultural Materialists situate it within that of our own.

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Cultural Materialism

New Historicism: “The historicity of the text and the texttuality of

Cultural materialism is a method based on the parallel reading of literary and

A historical anecdote is given, relating the text to the time. Context is

Differences between old and new historicism:

New Historicism focuses on the way literature expresses-and sometimes

Cultural materialism is “a politicized form of historiography.” Raymond

1. Cultural Materialists concentrate on the the interventions whereby men and

2. Cultural Materialists view New Historicists as cutting themselves off from

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