Structures of Feeling and Traces of Time

With these words, Raymond Williams summarised one of the central themes in his work. This theme can be identified as a continual interest in the social and historical genesis of cultural innovation, of changes in cultural forms and practices. He saw these unplanned, yet at the same time willed, new directions and departures as, unless simply modish and hyped-up as alluring novelties, often presenting a challenge to established, accredited ways of providing images and accounts of existing social institutions and relations. While accepting that various critical distinctions have to be made among them, what seemed most to interest Williams were those new directions and departures which are made in the teeth of what serves to legitimate existing social conventions and practices, and of what functions in ways supportive of vested interests, in different areas of social and cultural life. Williams’s concern was not only to examine the results of cultural innovation and change, but also to analyse the historically specific processes by which innovation and change come about. Although much of his literary and cultural analysis concentrates on problems of form, Williams’s own approach was anti-formalist. His mode of enquiry was always more historical and sociological in orientation, seeking to understand the ‘lived’ interconnections between cultural texts and practices and structures of social interaction and organisation.