^CLAMS'-
l>Otfiil*-*
oC*
Division and connee tion:
Raymond Williams and the literature of displacement
John McLaren
It has been said that Raymond Williams spent his life trying to
escape from the shadow of F.R.Leavis. In truth, there are great
si mi 1 ar i ties between their car&er^>. Each returned to Cambridge
after experiencing the brutality and divisions of war, each found
Cambridge dominated by
the
sons of the families who had
ruled
England for generations, and each sought to redress
the
balance
by produc ing a radically new way of studying English- But there
the similarities end.
Leavis had grown up in Cambridge, where his father had
a
music shop opposite the gates of Downing, emblazoned with signs
that read "Leavis is Music". When he became a member
of
the
universi ty, albei t at first on its margins, he started to create
a new kind of ruling elite, one d istinguished by the quality
of
its thought and feeling rather than by its breeding. Williams,
by contrast, came to Cambridge not from England but from Wales,
and retained the quality not just of a combatant but of an
J- »
outsider. Leavis, for all his concern with the origins of
1iterature in the common life and speech of the communi ty,
finally endorsed a form of academicism which excluded the greater
W i 1 1 i a m s worked c o n s t a n t l y to break down s u c h b o u n d a r i e s ,
tpoth by insisting on the truth and value of common experience,
and on the necessity for an education which would empower common
people to control their own experience- Even when he became a
don, a distinguished Professor and Fellow, Williams' continued to
speak through his work as an outsider. His work continued to
give a voice to the colonised classes and peoples from which his
own success had displaced him. He continued to resist any notion
of an elite.
From his first book, New Bearings in Enq1ish Poetry (London,
1932), Leavis tried to incorporate such contemporaries as Eliot
and, later, Lawrence in an English tradition which was wider and
more humane than the rationality of fashionable intellectualism
or the cruder discourses of power. Williams, on the other hand,
with his first book, Culture and Soc iety (London, 19 58) ,
challenged the whole concept of a tradition as a guarantee or
criterion of excellence. Similarly, while Leavis through
Scrutiny maintained standards of humanity detached from politics,
Williams involved himself editorially in a journal, Poli tics and
Letters, specifically designed to bring the two fields together.
Yet, for all the difference in the direction it took,
Wi11iams's work is grounded in two radical qualities that he
took from Leavis's teaching. In Modern Tragedy (London, 1966) he
extends Leavis's awareness of the relationship of literature to
the whole life of the communi ty by showing how the nature of
In T h e E n g l i s h Novel ( L o n d o n , 1 9 7 0 ) and T h e City and the
Country (London, 1973) he examines Leavis's perception of the
d isintegration of modern life. But whereas Leavis considered
this disintegration a necessary consequence of industrial ism and
urbanization, Williams from the outset recognized that these new
conditions couId be as much liberating as con fining. He conceived
his own work as contesting Leavis's posi tion ( 'Seeing a Man
Running', in Denys Thompson (ed.), The Leavises, Cambridge,
1984). The Enq1ish Novel shows how the language embodies
energies which not only dissolve old forms of society and
behaviour, but also create new forms and possi bilities of thought
and feeling . The City and the Country looks beneath the
conception of an earlier, organic society to show both the
oppression it concealed and the use to which it has been put to
defleet criticism of the present away f rom ac tion and into
nostalgia- Williams identified the way the conception of a
tradition had itself become an instrument of suppression.
It is this recognition which makes Williams's work useful to
the study of new worId literatures in English. These are all
literatures of displacement, both in the sense that the authors
have been displaced in or from their native country and culture,
and in the sense that the language they use is itself displaced
from its native England. These literatures take three forms,
according to the nature of the displacement. On the one hand,
there is the literature written in English by Indians, Aborigines
Dr Maoris, who have been displaced in their native countries by
W e s t I n d i a n , w r i t t e n in E n g l i s h by p e o p l e doubly d i s p l a c e d , both
from their ancestral country and from their languages. Finally,
there a,re the settler 1 i teratures of the displaced Europeans of
America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Yet, despite
these essential differences, all of these 1iteratures face the
same problem of establishing their legitimacy against the English
literature they must subvert in order to affirm the legitimacy of
the experience of their own people. Williams's emphasis on
culture as contestation, and on literature as the ground where we
build new traditions, where we produce the new material
structures of thought and feeling which sustain and direct our
lives, offers a means of understanding these new 1iteratures and
the experience they alternatively express or contain. As he has
emphasized from The Long Revolution (London, 1961) through to
Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977), this form of production
does not belong to the artist alone, but is the function of "the
creative activity of the human mind as such" (Long Revolution,
p.25) .
The notion of tradition has been destructive to both the
production and the understanding of new world 1iteratures. It
suggests a metropolitan standard to which everything else must
conform, and devalues experience which does not fit this model.
It appears in metaphors of growth and development, which suggest
that 1iterature — and, indeed, other forms of expression 1 ike
film — in every country must grow from infancy through
adolescent rebellion to a maturity of deracinated
international ism - It serves a lso to conceal the real J. ties of
r e l a t i o n s h i p s b e t w e e n the m e t r o p o l i t a n c e n t r e s and c o l o n i a l or
postcolonial economies, and thus distorts the history of the
metropolitan cultures themselves. By excluding from its concerns
the people, at home and abroad, whose labour produced the
structures of imperial ism and whose 1ives were sacrificed to its
progress, the dominant tradition of English literature falsifies
the history of England.
In his nove1 Second Generation (London, 1964) Williams
explores the task facing the intellectual in a post-colonial
industrial society. His protagonist, Peter Owen, works his way
through to the point where he recognizes that his task is to
clear away the rubble of deception where he finds himself, in
England. By refusing the neo-colonial seductions of embroiling
himself in other peoples' struggles, he 1 eaves them with their
integrity - At the same time, he finds his own freedom by
abandoning the intended academic career which one part of Oxford
offers him, and instead taking his learning back to the other
part of Oxford, the motor-works where his father and unc1e have
had jobs for thirty years and which provides the productive base
on which the games and rituals of the academic world depend.
A quarter of a century after its publication, this ending of
the novel in the return of the intellectual to work with his
hands appears romantic, and it is significant that Williams did
not choose this path himself, although he shared the background
and origins of the Owen family- The book is important, however,
d i s p l a c e m e n t and d i v i s i o n w h i c h d i m i n i s h e s the 1ives of both
Peter Owen and his p a r e n t s . 1t s h o w s , on the o n e h a n d , the way
the long struggle of Peter's father as a committed unionist
reduces his capacity to live his full humani ty, and thus thwarts
the hopes once he Id for organized 1abour:
For ironically, the worst men in the party were the ones
like Harold w h o had s o m e h o w got t h r o u g h . They bore all the m a r k s of that u n a c k n o w l e d g e d c o n t r a c t . When they put on the b u s i n e s s l i k e g l a s s e s , and the dark suit and the f a m i l i a r way with p a p e r s , they lost, almost a l w a y s , their own rea1 v a l u e s , but still had the n a r r o w n e s s , the suspic ion, the c r i p p l i n g lack of any real e d u c a t i o n . To 1ook back over these y e a r s w a s to realize how swiftly and s i l e n t l y the idea Df a new p o l i t i c s had been changed and dragged b a c k . W h a t e v e r their o r i g i n s , the men of the a g e n d a s and the a c c o m m o d a t i o n s were back in c o n t r o l . (p.94)
Similarly, however, Peter Owen recognizes the delusions of the
supposedly committed academic in the person of Arthur Dean, to
whom Peter's mother turns in search of the fulness of life neither
her husband Harold nor her domestic duties can offer. She a 1 so
comes to recognize that that understanding Dean appears to offer
is itself built on a lie, a separation from the experience of
others:
In part, at least, it must be the result of his work- Every
kind of job shaped a m a n , and s o m e t i m e s c r i p p l e d him. She tried to think of A r t h u r ' s real s i t u a t i o n . To know m o r e , almost a l w a y s , than the p e o p l e who c a m e to him, if on 1y b e c a u s e he had been he had been learning it l o n g e r . To have to mark p e o p l e , and g r a d e them, summing them u p , through the re1 axed c o n v e r s a t i o n a 1 t e a c h i n g , as p o s s i b l e f i r s t s , poor s e c o n d s , s t r a i g h t t h i r d s . And then to k n o w , from sheer r e p e t i t i o n and the o b i i g a t i o n to c o r r e c t , the m o s t common e r r o r s so guickly that they were hardly even e r r o r s but the expected material he must work w i t h . N o n e of this couId be easily set a s i d e in the rest of his l i f e , w h e r e he m i g h t be wrong and in any c a s e had to deal with his e q u a l s . The p l e a s a n t e r he w a s , the m o r e easily and t a c t f u l l y he m a d e a 1 l o w a n c e s , the m o r e i n t o l e r a b l e the r e l a t i o n s h i p b e c a m e .
T h e O w e n s ar& all displaced p e o p l e . They have no t r a d i t i o n to
sustain them, so they must start where they are. For the mother,
this is a return to her family, to her own people. For Peter, it
is the motor-works, but he does not start there from the same
point a his father had, for he carries with him both his father's
experience and his own learning. He has the potential to change
the system which dominates their lives because, returning from a
Wales which offers him a past but cannot give him a present, he
has recognized in the image of the motor traffic and the industrial
works which finally sustain it an image of the system which
denies people wholeness, allowing them to live only in fragments
Df time:
There was an obvious strangeness in the fact of traffic. The
a p p r o a c h i n g h e a d l i g h t s , the amber i n d i c a t o r , the high bulk of a lorry: these w e r e the facts with w h i c h c o n s c i o u s n e s s
had to d e a l . Dipping his own h e a d l i g h t s , as a line of c a r s p a s s e d , he remembered a d e f i n i t i o n of c o n s c i o u s n e s s , in the report of an e x p e r i m e n t : its e l e m e n t s w e r e flashing l i g h t s , r e a c t i o n s , learned s i g n a l s , learned p a t t e r n s . He remembered his own s t r a n g e n e s s , but also his s e n s e of renewal and d i s c o v e r y , when he had gone with Gwyn into High W o o d , and the common light had grown through the d a r k n e s s . But n o w , passing h o u s e s along the road, the occasional g l i m p s e of a lighted room _—— a woman getting up to draw the c u r t a i n s , a child a l o n e at a piano -- c a m e through in the s e p a r a t e f ield: m o m e n t a r i l y f1 ashed on a s c r e e n , within the s h a p e of the lighted w i n d o w . A s in the t r a f f i c , m o s t people were known in t h e s e isolated i m a g e s , with a quick d e c i s i o n on r e l e v a n c e to o n e s e I f , in the rapidly c h a n g i n s e r i e s .
And y e t , c o l l e c t i v e l y , this network w a s the r e a l i t y ; h e r e , and here o n l y , w a s a s o c i e t y c o n f i r m e d . Beyond the traffic w a s the w o r k s and its n e t w o r k , itself o p e r a t i n g w i t h i n the s a m e kind of e x p e r i e n c e . An ex traordinary p r i o r i t y had been given to i t , in the e c o n o m y and the s o c i e t y . T h i s w a s n o r m a l l y u n d e r s t o o d as the priority of the m a c h i n e , but it w a s no longer only t h i s . What w a s central now w a s the fact of the t r a f f i c : its kind of s i g n a l , its inheren t v i s i o n s of w h a t p e o p l e w e r e like and the w a y s to r e a c t to them. E v e r y o n e k n e w , in a private w a y , how much w a s left o u t , by these familiar d e f i n i t i o n s , yet s t i l l , in common p r a c t i c e , they seemed daily m o r e a b s o l u t e and m o r e r e l e v a n t . T h i s was the network by w h i c h the society lived, and through w h i c h it moved and commun icated. The r e s t , i n e r a d i c a b l y , was p r i v a t e . ( p p . 2 3 3 - 3 4 9 ) .
As he explains to his supervisor, another renowned but hollow
radical, the on 1y way to overcome the divisions is to enter the
network of people's lives, to red iscover and activate the
connections, and so empower them to make their own history:
"- - - The connections are deeper than we ever suspec ted:
between work and living, between f a m i l i e s , between c i t i e s . You s u r r e n d e r e d by breaking the c o n n e c t i o n s , or by letting them a t r o p h y . We shall try not to do t h a t , in this g e n e r a t i o n ; We shall ho Id to the connee tions and ride our h i s t o r y . " (p.253)
In thus resolving to ride his own history rather than to play the
academic game, Peter discovers his own freedom. Later, he
symbolically offers- the same freedom to Okoi, the African leader
to whom he is introduced at a party and whom he refuses to use as
an object of his own radical ambitions, as a substitute for
dealing with his own situation.
Williams's novel is in itself a form of new literature, a
work which deals with people displaced by industrialism from
their origins and separated f rom control over their lives by the
class system. In rejecting an academic career — at least for
t r a d i t i o n , c h o o s i n g instead the m o r e d i f f i c u l t task of making his
own. This is the choice facing any writer in a new literature,
in the writing of displaced people. The reality of their
si tuation is displacement and division, from themselves, from
their own people and from the centres of political, economic and
cultural power. The temptation -- demonstrated all too often in
the politics as wel1 as the writings of new nations in Africa and
elsewhere -- is to join these centres, to become part of the
dominan t culture.
S.C.Harrex and Guy Amirthanayagam, in the introduction to
Dnly Connect , their collection of work from new world
literatures, (Adelaide and Honolu1u, 1981) start from T.S.Eliot's
proposition that all writing belongs within a single tradition,
and his definition of this tradition as being the literature of
Europe since Homer. They point out, however, that Eliot and
Pound themselves quickly moved to Asian traditions in their
attempt to remedy what they saw as the collapse of European
cultural standards. Harrex and Amirthanayagam find in the
writing of the east a necessary mirror to the Europe which had
purported to colonise these supposedly backward cultures.
These authors suggest that the continuing problem of post
colonial writers is to restore the sense of home. This cannot be
achieved by returning to the past, for that is irrevocably 1ost.
Raja Rao's protagonist in The Serpent and the Rope wanders
between India and Europe in search of the timeless Brahmin, but
very tip of India w h e r e the w a t e r s of three w o r l d s m i n g l e . Witi
Ihimaera and D.S.Long, in the introduction to their anthology of
Maori writing, Into the World of Light (Auckland, 1982) describe
the identity the Maoris derive back through the legends of the
long canoes through to the mythical beginnings of Maui, the ocean
and the people, but Ihimaera, in his collection The New Net Goes
Fishing (Auckland, 1971), describes how this tradition must be
remade in the urban lives of Maoris today. With much more anger,
Kevin Gilbert introduces inside Black Australia (Ringwood, 1988),
his col lection of Aboriginal writing, with an account of the
crimes against his people which separate them from their land and
their past. None of these writers can rest in a tradition; they
are all determined to start from the present to make tradition
anew.
This remaking of tradition, taking possession of the
text and revealing its meanings for readers today, is the
continuing aim of Williams's work, in literary and social
criticism and in the fiction in which he remakes the text of the
lives of the people displaced by the industrial revolution and by
the education system it generated. He escapes the shadow of
Leavis by rejecting the project of placing the literary work, and
using the literary work instead to place the reader, or rather to
empower readers to make their own place in their world, to
establish their own connections. This is a task he shares not
only with writers of displacement, but also with teachers of a
generation displaced by a post-industrial and post-colonial
It is e a s y , p a r t i c u l a r l y in a d e p e n d e n t c u l t u r e like
Australia, for literary studies to become merely another form
of alienation — from family, from the community, from society.
Even when successful, they can become justa form of compensatory
activity. It is more difficult, but more important
particularly when governments ars? attempting to harness all
education to national rather than communi ty obj ectives — to
design literary studies which will enable students to appropriate
literature for their own use — or, to use Williams's own
phrase, to engage them in literature as an emancipatory
ratherthan either an acculturingor a compensatory activity. If
they ar& to find the liberation described by Peter Owen, they
must learn to resist rather than appreciate the power of word and
text so that they can use this power to free themselves from its
![4,4′ Difluoro 2,2′ [imidazolidine 1,3 diylbis(methylene)]diphenol](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==)