雷蒙德·威廉斯的文化唯物主义思想探析

On Raymond Williams' Thought of Cultural Materialism

雷蒙德·威廉斯作为伯明翰学派的领军人物,在文化研究领域有颇多建树。他从文化实践的视角重新界定文化的概念,将文化作为整体的生活方式,将文化看做是基础性的物质力量,而不是看做观念的上层建筑。其最突出的贡献是提出了文化唯物主义的范式。威廉斯的文化唯物主义思想,一方面丰富了历史唯物主义的文化理论,批判了教条化的经济决定论,阐释了文化的辩证法;另一方面,由于仅仅局限于文化分析,忽略了文化的意识形态问题和政治经济学基础,导致其滑向泛文化主义的泥潭,在某种程度上背离了历史唯物主义。

Raymond Williams as leader of Birmingham School,contributed much in the field of cultural studies. From the perspective of cultural practice,he defined the culture concept as a whole way of life,and culture was seen as the basic material strength,but not as the concept of superstructure. The most prominent contribution of Williams is to put forward the paradigm of cultural materialism. On the one hand,Williams＇ cultural materialism enriches the cultural theory of historical materialism,criticizes the doctrine of economic determinism,and explains the culture of dialectics; on the other hand,it is just limited to cultural analysis. In addition,it ignores the problem of the cultural ideology and the political economic base,and thus slides into the mire of pan culturalism. To a certain extent,it is deviated from the historical materialism.