Marxism: Williams (Lexicon)

Question 1

Epochal / Historical analysis

Answer 1

In epochal analysis, “a cultural process is seized as a cultural system, with determinate dominant features: feudal culture or bourgeois culture or a transition from one to the other” (121)
it is necessary to recognize complex interrelations of movements and dominance

Question 2

Dominant

Answer 2

dominant culture

Williams doesn’t really define dominant culture, but he discusses it in relation to residual and emergent culture.

In general (from outside source)– a dominant culture is one that is able, through economic or political power, to impose its values, language, and ways of behaving on a subordinate culture or cultures

Question 3

Residual

Answer 3

something different from the ‘archaic’

has been formed in the past, but is still active in cultural process

ex) In contemporary English culture: *organized religion is mostly residual
* idea of rural community

Question 4

Emergent

Answer 4

new meanings, values, practices, relationships are continually being created

ex) the emergence of a working class as a class in 19thC England

Question 5

Structures of feeling

Answer 5

Refers to the different ways of thinking that are vying to emerge at any one time in history
It appears in the gap between the official discourse of policy and regulations, the popular response to official discourse, and its appropriation in literary and other cultural texts