BOOKS
.149
phenomena. Neverth,eless certain . usually
unspo~en a~sumpli()ns
about them have been agreed. on, and despite all. the .talk
rahout
changes in manners and morals. and in the structure of social power,
these assumptions have been of the most conservative nature.
~ot
only that-the idea of "our culture" has become the rationale of a
profound quietism and inner despair.
.
One of the common assumptions is that the national life has
settled into its mold and that we will not in the future see any r.e.ll,l
changes in our political, social, and
m~rallife. Rat:hl!I'~
we
will~~IJ;tinue to relive, with increasing self-knowledge, certai? classic situa,–
tions which, as we look back over our history, we can 'see ipu.strated
by our manners, codified in our Constitution, aI].d dra.IJ.latized in
our. literature. Another
ass~ption
is that despite ..<!lax;ming ·reports
from psychiatrists the American character is stable/Fhe American
is
seen as a divic:ied man who contains within himself thedialectif:al
contradictions of American life, but whereas
~is
dividedness once
drove him to radical
partisan~hip
or heroic activity, he
ha~
now
learned to manipulate and balance his self-contradictions and thus
to render them static and benign. As a part of this conservative tend–
ency, the fascination with "our culture" has resulted in the slow
absorption of radical ideas 'of all sorts into a Sargasso Sea of cul–
tural, so<;iological, and psychiatric symbolisms, where they .have
been lovingly drowned. Hence cultural inquiry .has lost its
intellec~
tual and reformist content and has become a mode of
aes~eticism
or linguistics and symbol-seeking, shading off into introspection and
mysticism, or at best a stoic resignation. From one point of view
"culture" now often seems to be what radical critics
ha~e alw~y~
suspected it was: a set of attitudes and moral injunctions whose
hidden purpose is to reconcile mankind to the status quo, though
perhaps improving its manners and increasing its .self-knowledge.
What we have forgotten is that culture is a continuing process, a
way of changing, or it is nothing.
Raymond. Williams' valuable book provides us with a much
needed opportunity to reconsider these .ma,tters, ·even though .his
field of observation
is
ahnost purely British. His mainpurpose .is to
q-ace·the meanings of the word
~Ccu1ture'~.
fr.oJn .the time of Edm),lnd
