Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

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However, his ideas became increasingly influential in the 1950s and 1960s, and especially in the 1970s with the publication, in 1971, of an English translation of selections from the Prison Notebooks. Cultural theorists interpret the traditional and the normative as oppressive,as something that should be constantly analyzed opposed and challenged. Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain is exceptionally well written, lucid, and well organized—and simultaneously accessible and sophisticated, both in its own internal argumentation and in its rendering of often complex and difficult debates.

Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain - De Gruyter

Tracing the development of British cultural Marxism from beginnings in postwar Britain to the emergence of British cultural studies at Birmingham, this book shows this history to reflect a coherent intellectual tradition, one that represents an implicit and explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar British Left. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. Nonetheless, it has also been useful for some mainstream scholars who tend, themselves, to be sympathetic to Marxist thought. T]he first comprehensive history of British cultural Marxism conceived as a coherent intellectual tradition.Right-wing culture warriors will go on employing the expression “cultural Marxism” (or “Cultural Marxism”) in a pejorative way, attaching it to dubious, sometimes paranoid, theories of cultural history. To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.

Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain - Duke University Press

P. Thompson to those of Perry Anderson, Barbara Taylor, Raymond Williams, Dick Hebdige, and Stuart Hall, Dworkin examines the debates over issues of culture and society, structure and agency, experience and ideology, and theory and practice. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

In that historical and social context, the modern academic discipline of cultural studies emerged within the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham (hence the common references to a “Birmingham School” of cultural critique). Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases.

Project MUSE - Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain

Stuart Hall, who became the centre's director in 1968, developed his seminal Encoding/Decoding model of communication here. Schroyer describes the work of the Frankfurt School in analysing the contemporary “culture industry” (including philosophy, social theory, art, music, and literature) and contemporary manifestations of social institutions such as the state and the family. After its first director, Richard Hoggart, departed in 1968, the centre was led by Stuart Hall (1969–1979). The same scholarship that supports Schroyer’s analysis, for example, gives a degree of superficial credibility to the likes of Lind, Buchanan, or Breivik. The book deserves to become a standard work of reference to the major intellectual developments relevant to cultural studies during this period.The Birmingham CCCS approach to culture and politics evolved from a complex moment within British post-war history: the rise of the anti-Stalinist New Left; the promotion of adult education in Britain after World War II; the "Americanization" of British popular culture and the growth of mass communication in the decades after 1945; the growing multiculturalism of British society; and, the eventual influence within British academia of new critical methods like semiotics and structuralism. Here, Raymond Williams became a leading figure, drawing on both Marxist theory and established forms of British literary criticism, especially that of F.