The halls of angst: culture and materialism

The halls of angst: culture and materialism

Abstract
This dissertation is dedicated to problematising Raymond Williams’s seminal work on Cultural Materialism and the institution that emerged from it. The first chapter proper makes various claims: while Culturalism became institutionalised in the academy it has never been popularly assimilated and idealism remains the common currency; the concept of “whole culture” belies the reality that elitism is entrenched; while culturalism touted a “slow revolution,” capitalism has gone from strength to strength; the latter-day institutions of Culturalism generally are apolitical or devoted, merely, to identity politics within capitalist culture; the sociological and philosophical premises of Culturalism are dubious and dogmatic. The next chapter, then, analyses the underpinnings of Marxist materialism and the problems with it from Continental and Analytical philosophical perspectives—apropos the latter, this section focuses also on the Body-Mind problem. The final chapter considers several alternatives to reductive materialism before calling for the provisional acceptance of a “post-materialism.” Several hypotheses are also identified that might be subjects of future research. The primary material consulted is diverse, including Williams as well as Marx, Hegel, and German idealism, though mainly their modern expositors, including: Slavoj Žižek, Terry Eagleton, Ernesto Laclau, Catherine Belsey, Jacques Derrida, the from the Analytic tradition.