In Raymond Williams short but rich selection of his book Marxism and Literature, “Dominant, Residual, and Emergent,” we find a fascinating essay that both explains how dominant social structures maintain their dominance, while at the same time other social groups and in fact individuals can contradict or subvert those cultures.

In short, his main ideas of importance are right in the title. There are dominant, residual, and emergent parts of any cultural group. Interestingly enough, while dominant is the most powerful shaping force as obviously indicated by the name, it does not get its own section of the essay, but is mostly shown as the sort of cultural mass that he pokes at with his other types of culture. Dominant culture oversees the whole essay, without ever being explained outright. I suppose Williams thought readers would have enough cultural awareness to understand the dominant group in their own cultures without direct explanation. It is valid that the reader’s dominant culture, clearly visible through practices and ideas they themselves are immersed in require no broad explanation. In our case consumerism and a focus on individuality are two examples that I would consider part of the dominant in American culture. Williams does however, clearly explain the other two ideas, residual and emergent.

He spends one section describing what ‘residual’ culture actually is. Residual is the influence of old cultural practices on modern societies, consciously or unconsciously. A sort of “residue—cultural as well as social” that is built into the infrastructure of the dominant culture. He goes out of his way to differentiate residual from archaic, archaic being mostly outdated and abandoned cultural practices, residual being certainly active in shaping society, even if it does not come from the dominant culture itself. Williams considers organized religion, rural community, and monarchy three important residual traits of culture. I personally consider the effects of Puritan and Protestant ideals that still shape cultural perceptions in American society today a good example of residual culture.

Another section clearly explains emergent culture as well. It is described as the new cultural ideas and practices that are being created constantly in a society by groups and individuals. These ideas can be dominant themselves, but they can also be alternative or opposing. Alternative would be less confrontational, where as opposition (to the dominant culture) would clearly be more confrontational. Hippie culture sprung to mind when considering examples in American society, though there are of course many examples of emerging cultures, alternative or opposing. Though not an exact fit, I wonder that if this had been written later, Williams would have used subculture or counterculture to describe these terms?

Finally, there is another important section about public versus private in dominant culture, where practices that are not openly of the dominant culture are practiced in private. The dominant culture can do nothing about this, whether or not it approves of these practices. “Therefore no dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all human practice, human energy, and human intention.”

For the most part I have spent this time summarizing the article itself, adding examples that helped me understand the multiple segments that make up Williams perspective of culture. Now, to address things outside the work itself. I was surprised upon finishing to find that Williams was a novelist and literary critic. The paper reminded me of an anthropological text, particularly one of cultural materialism. I wasn’t wrong, it’s just that it was not anthropological, but Williams own creation of literary cultural materialism. I was surprised to find that cultural materialism is both a movement in anthropology and literary studies, and while they both have different important thinkers and inspirations (in anthropology cultural materialism as a sub-field is not Marxian at all) they do share similar ideas, even if their terminology is not the same. I knew that throughout the 80s and 90s anthropology became much more cross-disciplinary, and I’m excited to see this interweaving start to happen even sooner than I expected. I’m also excited by Williams description of dominant cultures being influenced by individual actions and practices, as this is a prominent idea in practice theory a theory that shows how individuals shape their cultural environment through their own agency. Practice theory is also expounded upon by Foucault, another author we will be reading soon, though I don’t know if it will be prevalent in the book we are reading by him.

As to avoid the risk of rambling on about anthropology indefinitely, I shall cut myself off here, but I’m excited to hear other responses to this work from those of us who have been English scholars longer than myself. It felt very familiar to me, at least in the sense of it being an exciting blend of many theories that I was familiar with, and it seems like a very important crossroads in theory that we find ourselves standing at with this work. What did you think of it? How do you think Williams ideas apply to literature? I hardly addressed this at all, having trouble finding literature even discussed in this work. Perhaps it was deep in subtext. I look forward to any responses.