Chapter 9: New Historicism and Cultural materialism

By King Meera -
You no longer privilege only literary texts - you begin to recognize and appreciate other texts, such as annals, rituals, fashion etc, since they are also part of the era. There is no more foregrounding of certain texts over others, and there is equal importance given to co-texts. New Historicism opposes the exclusively text-based approach. There is no more isolation. Texts cannot exist in a vacuum.

New Historicism borrows heavily from Marxism, as with the the proposition that every text is rooted in social relations, factoring power struggles, and material conditions of life.

Stephen Greenblatt started this; he first used the term.

Here's some ppt points:
  • parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts
  • reaction to text-only approach which placed literature in a vacuum; it was a recovery of the referent
  • textuality of history and historicity of texts: texts and co-texts
  • old historicism saw history as objective, unchanging and which can be recovered easily
  • new historicism sees it as subjective, only understood through representation, not intact, not unchanging, since every historian has his own story. We don't know the absolute truth (perhaps it doesn't exist)
Old historicism:
  • history as an objective record - stable, linear, recoverable (narrative of facts) - since the past is fixed, neutral, recoverable
  • literature is a reflection of the historical world
vs New historicism:
  • a historicist movement
  • history as represented and recorded in a text - historical events irrecoverably lost
  • information replaces reality
  • WORD of the past replaces WORLD of the past
* history and texts are interdependent
* literature not only reflects but shapes the world, and history, for you
* literature constructs a world for you

Relationship between history and textuality:
  1. History not background to texts - they are interdependent
  2. Literary texts not only reflect an age's themes and contexts (milieu) but also shapes the same
  3. Literature is not as an effect of historical contexts - it informs, contributes to, and constructs contexts
<^> <^> <^>
Culture and Ideology

New historicists 
 - material conditions of power (Marxist)
 - cultural forms linked to material conditions
 - culture of a period

Upper class tries to perpetuate their status by the way texts are written about them. The statement "history is all about power" talks about history written from the victorious people's point of view and how historians' records are stories of the powerful and powerless.

This is where discourse comes in. Discourse is a speech act, that employs a particular type of language, depending on the social context. (*) special course of language can be connected to a social context or social practice

Discourse OF:
everything has its way of describing what is language, eg. discourse of science, discourse of journalism etc [how they define knowledge (using jargon)] [discourses of disciplines]

Discourse ON:
defining a particular aspect from the viewpoint of different elements, eg. discourse on blindness: we can talk about how blind people in the past were, how the medical field sees them, blind characters in literature etc
In one topic, how different fields describe/represent a particular aspect - the options are many

Knowledge is is interpretation for you. Through discourse you control power.

 Michael Foucoult - power is neither constructive nor destructive, depends on the party using it.
He was a French philosopher; he talks about history in terms of power.
  • power - complex of forces that produces what happens (not a mere tool of repression) - power depends on the person using it, and whether s/he is using it for good or bad
  • language - power; the way you speak to a superior and to a subordinate is different
  • discourse and practice constitute power
Discourse is a language practice; language employed in social context (law, medicine, religion etc). It is a cluster of claims to knowledge.
  • we can access only discourse not truth
  • statements and claims through which language is constructed
  • knowledge <---> power
<^> <^> <^>
Cultural Materialism

  • a politicized form of historiography, which is the way you chart history across a time period
  • explains/observes the difference between how Shakespeare's work was received in his age and how it's received now, in the 21st century
  • the reception of a text is also important in cultural materialism as opposed to only how it is constructed, which is the focus of New Historicism
  • there is no such thing as higher and lower culture. All boundaries that apply to such distinctions are removed. Every culture is equally important; the voices of dissent are also recognized; all "marginalized" voices get representation
  1. historical commitment: must understand your present w.r.t. your past - see them together. So for texts, we study the conditions of production and reception across a time period
  2. theoretical understanding: cultural materialism is influenced by structuralism, post-structuralism; maintains the subject position of reader
  3. political commitment: power struggle, oppositional voices represented
  4. textual analysis: cultural materialism is not an abstract body of theory; theory is only seen as it applies to texts
  • New Historicism originated in America; it is the study of historical material within a politicized framework
Dollimore and Sinfield: Proposed four characteristics of Cultural Materialism

1. Historical Context
  • Formalists rejected historical context
  • dehistoricized study of literature ignores recovery (through production and reception) of history
  • no historical or sociological blindness in studying texts
  • specific conditions of production and reception of texts studied
2. Theoretical Method
  • structuralist and post-structuralist criticism
  • break from liberal humanism
  • (i) dual emphasis on textual history and textualization of history - textualization of history and historicity of of texts w.r.t. reception also - reading across disciplines
  • (ii)discourses cut across texts
  • (i) & (ii) - cross-cultural context
3. Political Commitment
  • departure from conservative Christian framework
  • embraced Marxist, Feminist ideologies
  • attention to questions of power, marginalization
4. Textual Analysis
  • focus not merely on producing abstract theory
  • application of theory to analyze literary texts
  • critiques derived from close readings of texts
Raymond Williams: 
  • Structures of feelings (lived experience) => discourse
  • values as lived and felt
  • antagonistic to explicit values, oppose dominant ideology
CULTURE is:
  1. Culture with a capital C: specific cultural artefacts and practices
  2. A way of living: like the IT culture, the brain drain etc
  3. A process of development: a progression through a period of time

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