Marxism and Literature RAYMOND WILLIAMS-suonmoN pure su KS a song ro 0 IPH ane uote a0 pun ay Bun BM Jo AONENTON ee, ee smo po 80.205 eu, OF Saye jo smn “6 tious poe eos eraod “2 sworyniog pom saon#0 Omen, fom ASojouoy pue wonsouTdAL "eu dps an opment oy won>opry wo SaaS ‘eared asnanposd etcieeege r k004 | aed m macnn tenon S¥ojo0pI “y ammo coon ‘miro “t vine oT ‘vorpmpost, ‘squequog|. Structures of Feeling Jn most description and analysis, culture and society are expres ted in an habitual past tense. Tho strongest barir tothe recog ition of human cultural activity i this Immediate and regular Conversion of experience into inished products. Wha is defen bible a6 e procedure in conscious history, where on certain soumptions many actions can be definitively taken as having ‘ded. isbebitualy projected, not only into tho always moving Substance of the past, but into contemporary life, in which felationehips, insitutions and formations ia which we ao stil Sctively involved are converted, by this procedural mode, into formed stholes rather than forming and formative processes ‘Analysis is then contted on relations between these produced institutions, formations, and experience, so that now, asin that produced past, only the fxed axpllet forms exist, and living Dresonce It always, by definition, receding. "When we bogin to grasp the dominance of this procedure, to ook ino Its cetre sod if posetble past its edges, we can under. stand, in new ways, tt separation ofthe social from the per Sonal which is so powerful and directive a cultural mode. I the focal is always past, n the senso that iis always formed, we hhave indeed to find other torms forthe undeniable experience of the present not only the temporal present, the realization ofthis tnd thie instant, but the specificity of present being the inaien- bly physical, within which we may indeed discern and Scknowledge institution, formations, positions, btnot always fs fixed products, defining products. And then ifthe social isthe fixed and explici—the known relationships, insitutions, for. trations, positions—all that is present and moving, all thet ocapes or seems to escape from the fed and the explicit and the Enown, ls grasped and defined es the personal: this, here how alive activ, aubjoctive “Thero is another related distinction. As thought is descxibed, in the same habitgl past tense, tis indeed so different, in its tsplictond finished forms, from much oreven anything that we ‘can presently recognize as thinking, that we set against it more fective, ‘moro flexible, les. singular terms—consciousness, txperience, foling--and then watch oven these drawn towards Structures of Feeling 129 fixed, finite, receding forms. The point is especially relevant to works ofa which wally ao, in one sonse, explicit and finished forms—actual objects in ho visual ats, objectifiod conventions and notations (semantic figures) in Iiterature, But tis not only that to complote their inherent process, wo have to make them ‘reson, inspocifcaly active readings lisalsothatthemaking, Sf artis never ital in th past tense It is always a formative process, within specific present. At different moments in hse ‘ory, and in significantly different ways, the eallty and even the primacy of sch presencee and such processes, ach diverse and Yyet specific actualities, have beon powerfully asserted and Foclaimod, es in practice ofcourse they aroall the time lived. they ae then often assorted as forms themselves, in contention with other known forms: the subjective as distinct from the ‘bjective; experience from belief; feeling fom thought; the Immediate from the general the personal from the socal. The undeniable power of two great modern ideological =ys- tems—the ‘aesthetic’ and the ‘psychological, ironically, systematically derived from these senso of instance and pro: oss, where experlence, immediate feeling, and thon subjectv. lity and personality aze newly generalized and assembled, ‘Agelnst these ‘porsonel forme, tho ideological systems of fixed social generality, of catogorical products, of ebsoluto forma- tons, ee relatively powerless, within thelr specific dimension, Of ose dominant strain in Marcism, with its habitual abuse of the ‘subjctve" and tho ‘prsonal’, this is especially tru. ‘Yetit isthe reduction ofthe socal to fixed forme that remains the basic err. Mare often said this, and some Marxists quote ‘lm, tn fied ways belore returning to fxed forms. The mistake, 1850 often, i in aking terms of analysis os terms of substance ‘Thus wo spesk of world-view or fe provaling ideology orof@ class outlook, often with adequate evidence, but inthis gular Slide towards past tonse and e fixed form suppose, or even do ot know that we have fo suppose, thet these eat and re lived Specificelly and definitively in singular and developing forms, Perhaps the desd can be reduced to fixed form, though the surviving rocords aro against i. But th living will not be ‘oducod, atleast in the first person; living third persons may be Aiferent,Allthe known complexities, theexperienced tensions, shifts, and uncertainties, the intricate forms of unevenness and Confusion, ae against the tems of the reduction and soon, by