The Deconstructive Practice, Methodological Path, and Significance of Cultural Materialism

Cultural materialism is a theory concerning the material productivity of culture. By treating the base as a dynamic historical process, this theory breaks out of the binary framework of reflection and being reflected between base and superstructure, emphasizing that behind every culture there are material production processes and historical conditions. Thus, culture is transformed from an abstractly suspended concept into a social practice. Cultural materialism advocates analyzing the form of works within the process of meaning production, investigating their social and historical roots; literature, language, writing forms, and electronic communication technologies all fall within its scope of examination. The intervention of cultural materialism in the socio-historical process demonstrates the potential of cultural structures to shape people, life, and even social relations, laying a theoretical foundation for the institutionalization of cultural studies and the historicization of literary criticism.

文化唯物主义是关于文化的物质生产性的理论。该理论通过将基础视为动态历史过程，跳出基础与上层建筑反映与被反映的二元框架，强调文化背后皆有物质生产过程及历史条件，由此，文化得以从抽象悬置的观念扩展为一种社会实践。文化唯物主义主张在意义生产过程中分析作品形式，究其社会历史根源，文学、语言、写作形式、电子传播技术皆在其考察域内。文化唯物主义对社会历史进程的介入，表明文化结构塑造人、生活乃至社会关系的潜能，为文化研究建制化、文学批评历史化奠定理论根基。

The intellectual trajectory of the renowned contemporary British cultural theorist and literary critic Raymond Williams—from "culture is a whole way of life" to "cultural materialism"—has always been concerned with studying the material factors of all cultural systems. Cultural materialism engages in dialogue and interaction with Williams’s cultural-historical writings such as *Modern Tragedy* and *The Country and the City*, placing particular emphasis on the importance of socio-historical context in literary criticism, and thus possesses significant research value and methodological implications. However, although such interaction exists, the specific connections remain unclear. Existing scholarship in the field is still confined to the path of logical argumentation within the theory itself, mostly focusing on the elucidation of its connotations. Comparative studies of Williams’s texts from different periods are insufficient, and research extending from theory to method is relatively scarce. This state of research also confirms Williams’s own research concern, namely, "how to actually apply theoretical propositions to this field." To observe the state of cultural materialism’s methodology, the author proceeds from the problem-consciousness of theoretical application, explores the connection between cultural materialism and *The Country and the City* through their dialogue and interaction, and, taking *The Country and the City* as the focal point, examines the practical application of cultural materialism, probing its methodological path and significance.

英国当代著名文化理论家和文学批评家雷蒙·威廉斯（Raymond Williams，又译雷蒙德·威廉斯）之思想脉络，从“文化是一种整体生活方式”到“文化唯物主义”，其总在研究一切文化系统的物质性因素。文化唯物主义与威廉斯的文化史著述《现代悲剧》《乡村与城市》等存在对话互动，在文学批评中尤为重视社会历史语境的重要性，具有重要的研究价值与方法论意义。然而互动虽有，但具体连结却不甚明朗。学界既有研究仍囿于理论内部的逻辑论证路径，多集聚于内涵阐发，对威廉斯不同时期的文本比较研究发力不足，从理论到方法的拓展研究较为匮乏，这一研究现状亦印证了威廉斯的研究关切，即“如何把理论命题实际运用到这一领域中去”。为体察文化唯物主义方法论之况貌，笔者从理论运用的问题意识出发，于文化唯物主义与《乡村与城市》的对话互动中探究二者的连结，并以《乡村与城市》为中心考察文化唯物主义的运用实践，探赜其方法论路径及意义。

I. Cultural Materialism and *The Country and the City*

一、文化唯物主义和《乡村与城市》

In 1947, Williams published "A Review of the Soviet Literary Controversy" in the journal *Politics and Letters*, revealing his critical stance toward orthodox Marxist literary criticism paradigms and distancing himself from orthodox Marxism through the practice of literary criticism. In *The Long Revolution* and *The Country and the City*, the material factors of cultural systems are prominently emphasized. In *Marxism and Literature*, Williams explicitly proposes the theory of cultural materialism, the core of which lies in critiquing the orthodox Marxist framework of the material base and superstructure. Within this framework, the base is regarded as a general objective reality, while culture, as a reflection of the base, is statically placed in the dark drawer of the superstructure. Williams argues that in the process of transformation from Marx to Marxism, the base was gradually reduced to an absolutely existing object, and the overall social process was replaced by isolated analytical categories such as the material, the economic, and the spiritual. Drawing on Marx’s own words, he finds a way to break through this problem: "To study the connection between spiritual production and material production, it is first necessary to examine this material production itself not as a general category, but from a specific historical form." He proposes that re-evaluating the material base is the way to escape the rut of "the base determines the superstructure." By elucidating that the base itself is a dynamic, historical process, Williams deduces "the variability of the superstructure," thereby establishing the critical stance of the theory of cultural materialism.

1947年，威廉斯在杂志《政治与文学》上发表《回顾苏联文学之争》，显示其对正统马克思主义文学批评范式的批判立场，通过文学批评实践与正统马克思主义拉开距离。在《漫长的革命》《乡村与城市》中，文化系统的物质性因素得到突出强调。在《马克思主义与文学》中，威廉斯明确提出文化唯物主义理论，其核心在于批判正统马克思主义物质基础与上层建筑的架构，在这一架构中，基础被视为一般客观实在，文化则作为基础的反映静置于上层建筑的暗屉中。威廉斯认为，在从马克思向马克思主义转化过程中，基础逐渐被化约为绝对存在的客体，整体社会进程为物质、经济、精神等孤立的分析范畴所替代。他依据马克思所言寻得破题之法，即“要研究精神生产和物质生产之间的联系，首先必须把这种物质生产本身不是当作一般范畴来考察，而是从一定的历史形式来考察”，并提出重新评价物质基础才是跳出“基础决定上层建筑”之窠臼的方式。威廉斯通过阐明基础本身是动态的、历史性的过程，推导出“上层建筑的多变”，从而奠定文化唯物主义理论的批判立场。

Williams recognized that orthodox Marxism needed updating on the path to a comprehensive understanding of culture and social structure. Driven by this recognition, Williams hoped to develop "a research method that can maintain contact with the forms of artistic works and illuminate their structures, studying the forms and relationships of general social life, replacing the formula of base and superstructure with an active concept of mutual determination but unequal forces." This theoretical conception is scattered throughout his writings from various periods, eventually anchoring itself in the theoretical system of cultural materialism in *Marxism and Literature*. "This view, as a theory, has been forming in my mind for many years; it can be called cultural materialism. It is a theory that, within the context of historical materialism, emphasizes the specificity of the material production of culture and literature; it is a Marxist theory." When elaborating on cultural materialism in depth, Williams expands the scope of the theory’s application: "Cultural materialism is a theory of culture as a social and material production process, a theory of the concrete practices and ‘art’ of the social application of the material mode of production, which encompasses language as material ‘practical consciousness,’ various specific writing techniques and writing forms, and even various technologies and electronic communication methods." Its objects of analysis are no longer confined to the literary field; language, writing, communication, and popular culture all fall under the roof of cultural studies. Cultural materialism imbues cultural studies with the vitality of social reality.

威廉斯意识到，在全面理解文化和社会结构的道路上，正统马克思主义需要更新。在这种认识的推动下，威廉斯希冀发展出一种“能够与艺术作品形式保持联系并照亮其结构的研究方法，研究一般社会生活的形式和关系，用一种互相决定但力量不均衡的积极观念来替代基础与上层建筑的公式”。这一理论设想散见于其各时期的著述中，最终在《马克思主义与文学》的文化唯物主义理论体系中定下锚点。“这种观点作为一种理论，已经在我头脑里形成多年，可以称其为文化唯物论。它是一种在历史唯物主义语境中强调文化与文学的物质生产之特殊性的理论，是一种马克思主义的理论”。在对文化唯物主义进行深入阐释时，威廉斯扩展该理论的运用范畴，“文化唯物主义是一种关于作为社会与物质生产过程的文化理论，一种关于物质生产方式的、社会运用的具体实践与‘艺术’的理论，这种物质生产方式涵盖了作为物质性‘实践意识’的语言、各种具体的写作技术与写作形式、甚至各种技术与电子传播方式等”，其分析对象不再囿于文学园地，语言、写作、传播与流行文化皆位于文化研究之廊下。文化唯物主义为文化研究赋予社会现实的生机。

From entering Cambridge, a place that forged boundaries, to moving back to a village near Wales in his later years, the interaction between the country and the city was always a subject in which Williams personally participated. *The Country and the City* originated in 1965 from Williams’s discussion of English country-house poetry. In 1967, he wrote scripts for the BBC, deepening this line of thought, which occupies a transitional stage in his cultural intellectual trajectory. The writing of the book was intermittent; the first half of *The Country and the City* was not completed until 1968. During this period, Williams also successively published works such as *The Fight for Manod*, *May Day Manifesto*, and *Orwell*. In 1970, a visit from the French Marxist cultural critic Lucien Goldmann led Williams to discover that, both in his stance on Marxism and in his emphasis on the materiality of culture, he shared many resonances with continental European Marxist currents—resonances he had previously failed to perceive due to the constraints of the British empiricist tradition. By this point, "by the early 1970s, Williams had approached a clear Marxist perspective." In 1973, *The Country and the City* was finally published. The book contains Williams’s consistent close reading of texts, his attempt to combine scholarship with personal historical experience, and a sharp investigation into the material production of culture. This analytical dimension already flickers with the visage of cultural materialism. Whether it is the overlap in the timing of theoretical development and writing, or the similarity in their analytical paths, there remains room for further exploration of the connection between the theory of cultural materialism and *The Country and the City*.

从踏入剑桥铸就边界之所，至晚年搬回威尔士附近乡村，城乡互动始终是威廉斯躬身参与之题。《乡村与城市》发端于1965年威廉斯对英国宅邸诗歌的讨论。1967年，他为英国广播公司撰写讲稿，深化了这一思想，在其文化思想脉络中处于承前启后的阶段。该书写作时断时续，直至1968年《乡村与城市》前半部分才得以完成。在这期间，威廉斯还陆续发表了《为马诺德而战》《五一宣言》《奥威尔》等作品。1970年，法国马克思主义文化批评家吕西安·戈德曼的造访使威廉斯发现，无论是在看待马克思主义的立场上，还是在强调文化的物质性方面，自己与欧陆马克思主义思潮存在诸多同频共振之处，而此前囿于英国经验主义传统不曾发觉。至此，“20世纪70年代初的威廉斯已经接近一个明确的马克思主义视角”。1973年，《乡村与城市》终得以付梓，书中既有威廉斯一以贯之的文本细读，亦有其将学术与个人历史经验相结合的尝试，还有围绕文化之物质性生产的犀利考察，此种分析向度已然闪烁着文化唯物主义的面影。无论是理论发展与写作时间的重叠，抑或二者分析路径的相似，关于文化唯物主义理论和《乡村与城市》之间连结的阐发都有继续探究的空间。

The theory of cultural materialism originates both from the influence of Marxist theory and from Williams’s derivation from his earlier specific work, namely, his cultural-historical writings. This indicates that among Williams’s many works, there are still hidden connections awaiting elucidation, and the same applies to *The Country and the City* and the theory of cultural materialism.

文化唯物主义理论既源于马克思主义理论的影响，亦源自威廉斯对其前期具体工作，即文化史著述的推导。这表明，在威廉斯诸多论著间，尚有隐秘的连结亟待阐明，《乡村与城市》与文化唯物主义理论亦是如此。

One connection lies in the fact that *The Country and the City* can serve as an example for understanding the theory of cultural materialism. The conception and application of cultural materialism had long been latent in his earlier cultural-historical works. As Williams himself stated, "I am perhaps more aware than anyone of the importance of elucidating difficult concepts with concrete examples; examples of the concept of ‘structure of feeling’ can be found in *Modern Tragedy*, *The Country and the City*, and *The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence*." [1]1 "Structure of feeling" is a key concept developed by Raymond Williams to describe the shared, emergent, and often pre-articulated social experiences and values of a particular historical period, which are distinct from formal ideologies or institutions. However, *The Country and the City* is not only an example for understanding "structure of feeling" but also "represents a different kind of critical practice for Williams, putting into practice his own specialized concepts about viewing literary forms historically." This means both that Williams relies on his own historical experience to understand literary narratives and that it reveals his conception of literature as a production process, where literary forms and conventions have their own histories of change and conflict. The subversion of the literary history of pastoral poetry in *The Country and the City* is the key to cultural materialism moving from concept to practice.

连结之一在于，《乡村与城市》可作为理解文化唯物主义理论的实例。关于文化唯物主义的构思与运用，早已潜伏于其前期的文化史著作中。正如威廉斯所言，“我也许比任何人都更能意识到用具体实例阐发艰涩概念的重要性，有关‘感觉结构’概念的例证可参见《现代悲剧》《乡村与城市》和《英国小说：从狄更斯到劳伦斯》”。但《乡村与城市》不仅是理解“感觉结构”的例证，亦“代表了威廉斯一种不同的批评实践，将他自己关于历史地看待文学形式的专门概念付诸实践”。这既意味着威廉斯以自身历史经验为依托体认文学叙事，亦昭显其将文学视为生产过程的观念，文学形式、惯例皆有其变动冲突的历史。《乡村与城市》对田园诗歌文学史的颠覆是文化唯物主义理论从观念走向实践的关键。

The second connection lies in the fact that *The Country and the City* and the theory of cultural materialism together embody Williams’s rebellion against orthodox Marxism and Cambridge official English culture. In Williams’s writings, “*The Country and the City* and *Marxism and Literature* are often regarded as important works in the tradition of Western Marxist cultural and aesthetic theory”; both emphasize cultural processes, thereby transcending the economic determinism of orthodox Marxism. In an interview with *New Left Review*, Williams mentioned an important clue: “If you look at the implicit relationships among almost all the books I have written, you will find that I have been constantly arguing with what I consider to be official English culture.” When viewed within the long river of Western Marxist cultural theory, *The Country and the City* becomes a footnote for understanding cultural materialism; *The Country and the City* and cultural materialism radiate the brilliance of deconstruction and rebellion from the practical and theoretical dimensions, respectively. Specifically, *The Country and the City* examines literature from the perspective of historical representation, revealing the dislocation between literary narrative and social history, and breaking through the Marxist theoretical framework that treats literature as a vehicle of ideology or as an objective reflection of reality. The deconstruction of the literary history of pastoral poetry in *The Country and the City* shakes the Cambridge official tradition of aesthetic analysis that rejects history and politics, marking Williams’s break with the mainstream Cambridge literary paradigm. Cultural materialism emphasizes the constitutive role of culture in social production and reproduction, a cultural process that is marginalized in orthodox Marxist discourse. Cultural materialism’s critical discussions of literary concepts such as language, form, and convention represent a transcendence of the Cambridge literary tradition.

连结之二在于，《乡村与城市》与文化唯物主义理论共同体现威廉斯对正统马克思主义和剑桥官方英语文化的反叛。在威廉斯的著述中，“《乡村与城市》和《马克思主义与文学》通常被视为西方马克思主义文化和美学理论传统的重要著作”，二者对文化进程的强调，对正统马克思主义经济决定论有所超越。威廉斯在接受《新左派评论》访谈时曾提及一个重要线索，“如果你看一下我所写的几乎所有书籍的隐含关系，会发现我一直在与我认为的官方英语文化进行争论”。当视点位于西方马克思主义文化理论发展长河中，《乡村与城市》成为理解文化唯物主义的注脚，《乡村与城市》与文化唯物主义分别从实践与理论两个维度闪烁着解构与反叛的光辉。具体而言，《乡村与城市》从历史表征视点出发考察文学，揭示文学叙事与社会历史的错位，突破马克思主义理论将文学视为意识形态载体、文学是现实的客观反映等分析界定。《乡村与城市》对田园诗歌文学史的解构，撼动了剑桥官方拒斥历史与政治的美学分析传统，标志着威廉斯与剑桥主流文学范式的决裂。文化唯物主义强调文化在社会生产与再生产中的构成性作用，而这一文化进程在正统马克思主义论述中处于边缘位置。文化唯物主义关于语言、形式、惯例等文学概念的批判性论述是对剑桥文学传统的超越。

The third connection lies in the fact that both *The Country and the City* and the theory of cultural materialism embody Williams’s cautious emphasis on the historical dimension in his cultural criticism. The critical practice of *The Country and the City* is based on the contrast between literary representation and social history, while the theory of cultural materialism takes historical analysis as an important entry point into the texture of the text, thereby rejecting the abstraction of structuralist analytical frameworks. In reviewing *The Country and the City*, Williams mentioned that his analytical approach reflects cultural materialism’s emphasis on history, namely, “in the process of restoring produced literary works to their conditions of production, it reveals that literary methods of representation have social roots, because they are not merely formal means of writing.” Unlike Eagleton’s conception of literature—which treats literature as a mode of production employing various writing conventions and integrates the understanding of these conventions into a systematic theory—Williams’s cultural materialism endows literary works with a closer connection to social history. Thus, literary forms and representational conventions are no longer merely aesthetic constructs pointing to feeling, but have their underlying social order and origins.

连结之三在于，《乡村与城市》与文化唯物主义理论皆体现威廉斯之文化批评观念对历史维度的审慎强调。《乡村与城市》的批评实践基于文学表征与社会历史的错落对照，文化唯物主义理论则将历史分析作为深入文本肌理的重要切口，以拒绝结构主义分析框架的抽象。威廉斯在回顾《乡村与城市》时，曾提及其分析方式体现了文化唯物主义对历史的强调，即“将已生产的文学作品恢复到其生产条件的过程中，揭示了文学表现方法具有社会根源，因为它们不仅仅是写作的形式手段”。不同于伊格尔顿的文学观念——将文学视为一种运用诸种写作惯例的生产方式，并将对这些惯例的认识整合为系统性的理论，威廉斯的文化唯物主义赋予文学作品与社会历史一种更加紧密的关联，因而文学形式、表现惯例不再仅仅作为指向感觉的审美构造，而是有其潜存的社会秩序与源流。

In summary, the connections between *The Country and the City* and the theory of cultural materialism are like subtle threads, yet they have already transcended the confirmatory significance encompassed by footnotes and examples. However, this does not mean forcing a strained comparison or mechanical nesting of the two; rather, it attempts, starting from clarifying the above connections, to explore the methodological path and significance of cultural materialism from a practical perspective by dismantling the argumentation angle and analytical approach of *The Country and the City*.

综上所述，《乡村与城市》与文化唯物主义理论之间的连结形如草蛇灰线，却已然超越注脚、实例所囊括的印证意义。但这并非意味着将二者牵强比附、机械嵌套，而是尝试从厘清上述连结出发，通过拆解《乡村与城市》的立论角度与分析思路，从实践角度探察文化唯物主义的方法论路径及意义。

II. The Deconstructive Practice of Cultural Materialism

二、文化唯物主义的解构实践

In reality, both society and literature have active and conflict-ridden histories. Within literary representation and its literary-historical structures, the actual state of change lies at the margins of literary “continuity” or “tradition” discourse, as static as a landscape or rock. Williams believes that literary tradition often projects a false totality; changes in literary history are seen only as “a series of variations within a static whole, especially variations in time, such as the characteristics of this period and that period, but the ‘and’ is never emphasized.” Williams wants to reproduce complex reality, because, aside from the known literary tradition and literary-historical structures, those obscured groups and excluded voices are trembling beneath the throne of institutions and authority. Cultural materialism is the searchlight entering this complex situation. Although “cultural materialism is Williams’s late self-academic positioning,” the aforementioned connections indicate that cultural materialism as an analytical method was already evident in *The Country and the City*; that is, by examining the production process of literary works, “comparing literary representation with ‘questions of historical fact,’ testing texts until they reveal the distortion of their background by these texts,” and presenting a complex and diverse overall social process in the contrast between literary narrative and historical experience. As a key example and practical application of cultural materialism, the argumentation and analysis of *The Country and the City* underwent a shift from “literature as a reflection of reality” to “literature as a representation of reality.” When reading English country-house poetry, Williams found that the tranquil countryside depicted in the poems was far from his empirical cognition; the “pastoral tradition” lingering in the texts treats poetry as a record of rural life, but literature does not reside in the pavilion of spirit and aesthetics; records of the social-historical process are also developed within it. Besides the pleasant scenery and simple morality, the countryside is also accompanied by the concealment of labor, poverty, and disease, as well as the social relations and power orders that lead to this concealment. The beautiful rural picture is built on the deprivation of the basic rights of villagers; the rural ode, in its chanting, obscures the peasants and their labor process, making room for the connection between capitalist aesthetics and exploitation. Williams breaks through the quiet Eden constructed by writers dependent on the power order, dismantles the “naturalized” barrier of the gentry and aristocracy exploiting the proletariat, and deconstructs the landscape perspective of bourgeois writers and their forms of literary representation; he establishes the concept that “literature is a production,” introduces the voices and perspectives of complex groups beyond the bourgeoisie (such as peasant groups, worker groups, etc.), and repositions laborers and the labor process within rural literary narrative; he deconstructs the mainstream Cambridge literary paradigm through a progressive path of “perspective—form—social relations,” providing an entry point for reshaping the cultural narrative of change and conflict coexisting in the English countryside. The specific process can be explained from three levels: foundation, intermediary, and ultimate purpose.

在现实里，社会与文学都有活跃且冲突的历史。在文学表征及其文学史结构中，变化的实况却处于文学“延续”或“传统”话语的边缘，如风景或岩石般静止。威廉斯认为，文学传统往往投射出一种虚假的整体性，文学史的变化仅被视为“一个静态整体内的一系列变异，尤其是时间上的变异，如这个时期和那个时期内的特征，但‘和’从未被强调”。威廉斯想要再现复杂的现实，因为除却已知的文学传统和文学史结构，那些被遮蔽的群体与被排斥的声音正在体制与权威的宝座下震荡。文化唯物主义则是进入这一复杂情状的探照灯。虽然“文化唯物主义是威廉斯晚期的自我学术定位”，但前述连结表明，文化唯物主义作为一种分析方式在《乡村与城市》中早有体现，即通过考察文学作品的生产过程，“把文学表现与‘历史事实的问题’相比较，对文本进行检验，直到揭示出这些文本对它们的背景之歪曲”，在文学叙事与历史经验的对比中呈现复杂多元的整体社会进程。作为文化唯物主义理论的关键例证与运用实践，《乡村与城市》的立论与分析经历了从“文学是对现实的反映”到“文学是对现实的表征”之转向。威廉斯在阅读英国宅邸诗歌时发现，诗歌描绘的恬静乡村与他的经验认知相去甚远，萦绕于文本间的“田园诗传统”将诗歌视为对乡间生活的记录，但文学并非居于精神与审美的楼阁，关于社会历史进程的记录亦显影其间。乡间除却怡然的美景与淳朴的道德，还伴随着对劳动、贫穷、疾病的遮蔽，以及导致这一遮蔽的社会关系与权力秩序。淳美乡村画卷建立在剥夺乡民的基本权利之上，乡村赞歌在吟咏中遮蔽农民及其劳动过程，为资本主义美学与剥削的勾连腾出空间。威廉斯冲破作家因依附权力秩序而筑造的静美伊甸园，破除乡绅贵族剥削无产者的“自然化”壁障，解构资产阶级作家景观视角及其文学表征形式；树立“文学是一种生产”的观念，并引入资产阶级之外的复杂群体的声音与视角（如农民群体、工人群体等），将劳动者及劳动过程重置于乡村文学叙事中；以“视角—形式—社会关系”之递进路径解构剑桥主流文学范式，为重塑英国乡村变动与冲突并存的文化叙事提供切口，具体过程可从基石、中介、旨归三个层面进行阐释。

(I) Language as Social Practice: The Foundation of Deconstructing Narrative

（一）作为社会实践的语言：解构叙事之基石

The foundation of cultural materialism’s deconstruction of texts lies in the rediscovery of language. Williams abandons the formalist view of language as a tool and intermediary, breaks free from the constraints of Saussurean structuralist linguistics that treats language as an objective system of signs, and regards linguistic signs as a uniquely human mode of existence. In Williams’s view, “What we find is not ‘language’ and ‘society’ existing separately, but an active social language. What we have is a grasp of reality through language; language, as practical consciousness, is both permeated by all social activities (including productive activities) and permeates all social activities. Language is the articulation of this active, changing experience, a social presence that appears in the world full of active vitality.” By fully elucidating the social practicality of language, the changes in language also refer to the development of social-historical situations; the two interpenetrate and shape each other. Language is not merely a mediating system for expressing the world, but a social material practice that can establish connections between people, a social construction of the world by humanity. Literary culture, as the face of social production, is thus revealed.

文化唯物主义解构文本的基石在于对语言的重新发现。威廉斯摒弃语言作为工具与中介的形式主义观念，破除索绪尔结构主义语言学将语言作为一种客观符号系统的桎梏，视语言符号为人类特有的存在方式。在威廉斯看来，“我们所发现的并不是各自存在的‘语言’和‘社会’，而是一种能动的社会语言。我们所拥有的是通过语言对现实的一种把握，语言作为实践意识既被所有的社会活动（包括生产活动）渗透，也渗透到所有社会活动之中。语言就是这种能动的、变化着的经验的接合表述（the articulation），就是一种充满能动活力显现在这个世界上的社会在场（social presence）”。通过充分阐释语言的社会实践性，语言的流变亦指涉社会历史情境的发展，二者互渗互塑。语言并非仅是表达世界的媒介系统，而是能够在人与人之间建立联系的社会物质实践，是人类对世界的社会性建构。文学文化作为社会生产的面影，由此得以显现。

In *The Country and the City*, Williams examines the idyllic pastoral tradition and discovers that in literature’s green-tinted language one sees only sheep, honey, and clear streams, but not war, labor, or exploitation; the sufferings of real life become distant, shadowy rumors, vanishing into this glazed linguistic world. The pastoral tradition, like other traditions, is selective. As the historical starting point of the pastoral golden age is pushed ever further back, scholars reinforce its utopian coloring through academic language, and the clear, poetic language of the pastoral is likewise stripped away from the tradition that simplifies rural economy and social relations. However, Williams “studies literature not for the purpose of literary analysis, but as historical evidence, to reveal the ideology underpinning the rural/urban binary opposition”; by indicating the social practices and historical processes to which language refers, he brings what is concealed back into the light. In *Penshurst*, Ben Jonson praises the natural bounty of the rural economy; the connection between language and social practice leads Williams to realize that the country house is in fact the social foundation of this pastoral economic monopoly, and that arrogance and greed are equally active among landed gentry and urban merchants. The countryside in pastoral poetry is a natural order arranged by the landlord, also seen as a refuge from the city, but Williams approaches it from the perspective of linguistic subject and social power, listening to the suppressed expressions in the text, seeing the social order hidden beneath the natural order: the real men and women who raise animals, drive them to the manor to be slaughtered, and turn them into meat, who plant fruit trees, who set traps to catch partridges—none of this is presented; their labor is replaced by the natural order, and when they finally appear, they are shown to us as boisterous country folk. When the relationship between charity and labor is hidden in the shadows under the cover of recited poetry, language, as material social practice, has already torn a gap in its ornate garment, allowing the light of the real historical process to be seen. As Jacques Rancière says of “the book of life and social expression,” the materiality of language “can find invisible signs in visible things.” The landscape constructed through language is in fact a kind of condescending, even manipulative expression. The social order is constructed by the green pastoral and projected into the text. In the pleasing green scenery, one can glimpse the removal of the processes of production and labor, while the rural landscape originates from the process of agricultural capitalism that crawls beneath literary language.

威廉斯在《乡村与城市》中检视优美的田园诗传统，发现文学那充满绿色的语言中只见羊群、蜂蜜与清澈溪流，却不见战争、劳作与剥削，现实生活的苦难成为远在天边、影影绰绰的传闻，消失在这涂满釉彩的语言世界中。田园诗传统与其他传统一样具有选择性。当田园黄金时代的历史起点不断前溯，学者通过学术语言强化其乌托邦色彩，清澈诗意的田园语言亦与简化乡村经济、社会关系的传统相剥离。然而，威廉斯“研究文学并非为文学分析之目的，而是作为历史证据，来揭示支撑乡村／城市二元分立的那种意识形态”，通过表明语言所指涉的社会实践与历史进程，令遮蔽之所重见光明。本·琼森在《潘舍斯特》中赞美乡村经济的自然恩惠，语言与社会实践的连结令威廉斯意识到，乡村宅邸实为这一田园经济垄断的社会基础，傲慢、贪婪同样活跃于地主乡绅和城市商人之间。田园诗中的乡村是一种由地主安排的自然秩序，亦被视为逃离城市的憩园，但威廉斯从语言主体与社会权力的角度探之，倾听文本中被压抑的表达，看见隐匿于自然秩序之下的社会秩序：饲养动物并将它们赶到宅邸里屠宰、做成肉食的真实的男人和女人们，他们种植果树，他们设置陷阱捕捉山鹑，但这些都没有被呈现出来，他们的工作最终由自然秩序代替，当他们最终出现时展示给我们的是喧闹的乡下人形象。当慈善与劳动的关系在吟咏诗歌的遮蔽中隐入暗处，作为物质社会实践的语言已然在其华美的罩衫上撕开缝隙，透出真实历史进程的光亮为人所见。正如雅克·朗西埃谈及“生命之书与社会表达”那般，语言的物质性“能在可见物中找到不可见的符号”。经由语言搭建的风景实为一种居高临下，甚至具有操纵意味的表达。社会秩序为绿色田园诗所建构并投射于文本中。在喜人的绿色景色中能窥见生产和劳动过程被从中移除，而乡村景观则源自匍匐于文学语言之下的农业资本主义进程。

(II) The Structure of Feeling Bearing Local Experience: The Mediation of Deconstructive Narrative

（二）承载在地经验的感觉结构：解构叙事之中介

When Williams examines the contrapuntal discourse on the country and the city, the structure of feeling bearing local experience provides an entry point for cultural materialist analysis. The structure of feeling is an important concept in the theory of cultural materialism, first appearing in *Preface to Film*, co-authored by Williams and Michael Orrom. Williams further discusses it in *The Long Revolution* and *Marxism and Literature*, while *The Country and the City* is what Williams explicitly calls “an example of the structure of feeling.” “As the word ‘structure’ suggests, it is firm and definite, yet it operates in the most subtle and least tangible parts of our activities.” The fluid feeling combined with the stable structure gives rise to a local narrative that corresponds to and complements the characteristics of mainstream society, so that the expression of historical change and conflict is no longer deferred. The structure of feeling is first of all the local experience or consciousness of individuals and groups; part of it gradually becomes social through writing and dissemination, while part cannot even enter the level of linguistic expression. Individuals, as active subjects, engage in embodied observation of their surroundings, infusing mainstream discourse with nuanced and diverse experiences. The structure of feeling sometimes collides with mainstream discourse, sometimes serves as a supplement; it is inherited by people of different eras, but also continuously grows anew through creative responses, thus becoming a structure of consciousness that is more attentive to actual presence and in a state of dynamic development than ideology.

威廉斯考察关于乡村与城市的对位式言说时，承载在地经验的感觉结构为文化唯物主义分析提供了切口。感觉结构是文化唯物主义理论中的重要概念，首次出现于威廉斯与迈克尔·奥罗姆合著的《电影序言》中。威廉斯在《漫长的革命》《马克思主义与文学》中皆对其有进一步论述，而《乡村与城市》是威廉斯曾明言的“感觉结构之例证”。“正如‘结构’这个词所暗示的，它稳固而明确，但它是在我们活动中最细微也最难触摸到的部分发挥作用”。流质的感觉与稳固的结构相结合，生发出与主流社会特征相对应且有所互补的在地叙事，历史变化与冲突的表达不再延宕。感觉结构首先是个人、群体的在地经验或意识，一部分经由写作与传播逐渐具有社会性，一部分甚至无法进入语言表达层面。个人作为能动主体对周遭事物进行具身观察，以细腻多元的经验浸润主流话语。感觉结构有时是对主流话语的冲撞，有时则成为一种补充，为不同时代的人们所继承，但也在创造性反应中不断有新的生长，由此成为一种比意识形态更注重现实在场且处于动态发展中的意识结构。

Literature and art, because they can accommodate abundant emotions and subtle experiences, have an advantage in capturing the structure of feeling and can reveal the complex and nuanced picture of society. In *The Country and the City*, the discourse of rural experience is tested by Williams within the tension (scene) between literature and historical reality; disparate local experiences form uneven structures of feeling in the text, sometimes even contradicting each other. This shows that the “production” of literature is a selective creation, not a true representation. The pastoral not only reinforces the binary opposition between country and city but also suppresses the real voices of society: these poems do not present real history, but rather a mystified, idealized description of the so-called natural economy under feudal order; they are a defense of the landlord class and the values of the feudal era, and are untenable.

文学与艺术因能容纳丰沛的情感与微妙的经验，所以在捕捉感觉结构方面颇具优势，并可展现社会复杂细腻的图景。在《乡村与城市》中，乡村经验的言说被威廉斯置于文学与历史现实的张力（场景）中进行检验，迥异的在地经验在文本中形成参差的感觉结构，有时竟互相矛盾。这表明文学的“生产”是一种选择性创造，而非真实呈现。田园诗不仅强化城乡间的二元对立，亦对社会真实声音进行压制：这些诗作展现的并非真实历史，而是对封建秩序之下所谓自然经济的一种神秘化、理想化的描述，是对地主阶级和封建时代价值观念的辩护，是站不住脚的。

In pastoral poetry, neo-pastoral poetry, and reflective poetry, Williams discovers a structure of feeling that sings of innocence: the countryside, as a holy place that redeems the city, stands quietly in the suburbs, distinguishing itself from the filth and ugliness of the secular world. However, by this time agricultural capitalism had already quietly arisen in the countryside; the process of capital development is again concealed, and the two-way urban-rural process dominated by commercial profit is covered over by the structure of feeling that celebrates innocence. In a keen contrast, Williams finds evidence that the pastoral poetic tradition “creates” historical reality: the exploitation of people and nature carried out in the countryside is concentrated into profit in the city, but the gains from other forms of exploitation—the wealth accumulated by merchants, lawyers, and court favorites—seep back into the countryside. Yet that structure of feeling holds that an innocent, traditional system is being invaded and destroyed by a cruel order.

在田园诗、新田园诗与反思性诗歌中，威廉斯发现了一种咏吟纯真的感觉结构，乡村作为救赎城市的圣地静伫于郊外，以区别于俗世的肮脏与丑陋。然而，此时农业资本主义已悄然在乡间兴起，资本开发过程再次被隐去，商业利润主导下的城乡双向进程被歌颂纯真的感觉结构覆盖。在一种敏锐的对比中，威廉斯找到了田园诗歌传统“创造”历史现实的证据：乡村中进行的对人和自然的剥削在城市里被集中变成了利润，但其他剥削形式带来的收益——商人、律师、宫廷宠臣积累的财富——又渗进了乡村。但那种感觉结构却认为一种纯真的、传统的制度正在遭受一种残酷秩序的侵袭和毁坏。

As the opposite of the natural countryside, the nineteenth-century British metropolis is an even more chaotic reality, where civilization and order are utterly lost. The structure of feeling of the city manifests a conflicted, negative appearance. In the poetry of William Blake, Williams sees a common condition of weakness and sorrow; the “swollen metropolis” is the earliest structure of feeling concerning the city. As the capitalist process develops, organizations and human institutions construct new social relations. The “order” and “lease” in the poetry of William Wordsworth become a new structure of feeling. Williams senses from this the strangeness of human relations blocked by institutions. When change spreads from the city to the countryside, “social mobility” becomes an imprinted structure of feeling, which Thomas Hardy profoundly describes in *Tess of the d’Urbervilles* and *Jude the Obscure*; his narrative shifts from nostalgia for the countryside to attention to rural change. Williams points directly to the fact that this stems from Hardy growing up in a rural society undergoing change and struggle. The differences between different structures of feeling signify people’s ambivalent mentality in the face of social change (the formation of new industrial cities). Williams travels back and forth between different structures of feeling, sensing the loneliness and hesitation in people’s hearts in the city.

作为自然乡村的对立面，19世纪的英国都市则是一处更为混沌的现实，文明与秩序在其中纷然失落。城市的感觉结构体现出冲突、消极的面貌。威廉斯在威廉·布莱克的诗歌中看见一种虚弱与悲伤的共同状况，“臃肿的大都市”是关于城市最早的感觉结构。随着资本主义进程日渐发展，组织及人类制度建构起新的社会关系。威廉·华兹华斯诗歌中的“秩序”与“租赁”成为新的感觉结构。威廉斯从中嗅到人与人的关系被制度阻滞的陌生感。当变化从城市蔓延至乡村，“社会流动”成为一种烙印式的感觉结构，托马斯·哈代在《苔丝》《无名的裘德》中对此有深刻的描述，其叙述从眷恋乡村转变为关注乡村变化。威廉斯直指，这源于哈代成长于一个正在经历改变和斗争的乡村社会。不同感觉结构之间的差异意味着人们面对社会变化（新的工业城市开始形成）时的矛盾心态。威廉斯在不同的感觉结构之间穿梭巡游，感悟到城市中人们内心的孤独与彷徨。

The structure of feeling bearing local experience forms a consciousness or representation of society, rather than an objective reflection of reality; the solidified structure transmits the determining power of culture, while the fluid feeling negates systematicity and uniqueness. The process of the constant rise and disappearance of structures of feeling points to the trajectory of nineteenth-century British social development, with both the country and the city showing complex faces. The structure of feeling is a concept encompassing generational and class differences, sometimes merely a mute and chaotic consciousness. Whether for the pastoral golden age whose starting point is pushed ever further back, or for the bewildered individuals under the impact of dark industrial civilization and modernity, the structure of feeling, as an intermediate zone between local experience and mainstream cultural narrative, provides a path for exploring the contours of distant eras.

承载在地经验的感觉结构形成对社会的意识或表征，而非对现实的客观反映，凝固的结构传递出文化的决定性力量，而流动的感觉则否定系统性与唯一性。感觉结构不断兴起与消弭的变换过程指涉19世纪英国社会发展的轨迹，乡村与城市均显现复杂面影。感觉结构是涵盖代际差异与阶级差异的概念，有时仅是一种喑哑混乱的意识。无论对于起点不断前溯的田园黄金时代，抑或对于黑暗工业文明与现代性冲击下惶惑的个体，感觉结构作为在地经验与主流文化叙事的中间地带，为体察遥远时代的脉络提供求索之道。

(III) The Perspective Connecting Social Relations: The Aim of Deconstructive Narrative

（三）连结社会关系的视角：解构叙事之旨归

In *The Country and the City*, Williams asks, “Where is our standpoint? And with whom are we identifying? The serf, the tenant farmer, the copyholder? Or this abstract order? For countless generations, countless people were merely instruments of this order.” [16]16 Raymond Williams, *The Country and the City* (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 12. This capture of the author’s position is precisely perspective consciousness; the traditional central perspective “has a privilege and an interest in selection that is essentially material, though it is often presented as ideal.” [17]17 Ibid., p. 120. Because observers occupy different social positions in the countryside, their perspective can be linked through narrative devices such as form to social relations and social order, forming an analytical logic of “perspective—form—social relations.” Williams guides people to examine the rural landscape from a new perspective, arguing that the country house is not only a representation of cultural history but also a concrete embodiment of power and wealth, revealing the imbalance of social relations and social structure. “The cathedral is not only a monument of faith; the manor is not only an elegant building. They are presented to us eternally as our tradition, containing a specific way of understanding and relating to the world, accompanied by our recognition of their value—this must be critically pointed out.” [18]18 Ibid., p. 322. Between the observational perspective and social understanding, the task of cultural materialist analysis is to enter into it and step beyond it, to appreciate the text while identifying the material production processes embedded within it, striving to reflect on the influence of habitual perspectives on cultural structure.

威廉斯在《乡村与城市》中发问，“我们的立足点在何处？我们认同的又是什么人？是农奴、佃农、隶农？或是这一抽象的秩序？连续多少世代以来，无数人们不过是这种秩序的工具”。这一对作者立场的捕捉即为视角意识，传统中心视角“进行选择的特权和利益本质上是物质性的，可在形式上却常常表现为理念性的”。由于观察者在乡村具有不同的社会地位，其视角便可通过形式等叙事装置连结社会关系及社会秩序，形成“视角—形式—社会关系”的分析理路。威廉斯引导人们用全新的视角审视乡村景观，认为乡村宅邸不仅是文化历史的表征，亦为权力财富的具象，展现了社会关系与社会结构的不平衡。“大教堂并不仅仅是信仰的纪念碑，庄园并不仅仅是典雅的建筑。它们永恒地作为我们的传统被呈现给我们，包含了理解这个世界和关联这个世界的某种特定方式，伴随着我们对其价值的承认，这一点必须得到批判性的提示。”在观察视角与社会理解之间，文化唯物主义分析的任务是入乎其内、出乎其外，在欣赏文本的同时，识别其中蕴藏的物质性生产过程，力求反思惯常视角对文化结构的影响。

Looking through the bourgeois perspective, Williams sees that what the poetry laments includes both natural scenery and the suddenly formed fruits of labor; the landlord, who provides work and board for the peasants, is highly praised. But Williams sharply points out that these seemingly moral acts stem from a series of clearly immoral relations—it is precisely in the process of landlords constantly increasing crop yields and land rents that laborers are displaced and suffer hardship. After the Enclosure Movement, [19]19 The Enclosure Movement refers to the process in England from the 15th to the 19th centuries of consolidating small landholdings into larger farms, often by fencing off common lands, which displaced many peasant farmers. the concentration of ownership and rising rents drove small tenant farmers off the land they leased, either into exile or to the cities, struggling to survive in the gap between self-sufficiency and destitution. The landlord’s relief for the poor appears charitable, but its root still lies in the overall exploitation of the peasant class by the landlord class in the process of agricultural capitalism. Praise becomes a jarring mockery.

威廉斯沿着资产阶级视角望去，诗歌中感怀的既有自然风景，也有骤然形成的劳动成果，地主为农民提供工作、食宿，备受歌颂。但威廉斯一针见血地指出，这些看似道德的行为源于一系列明显不道德的关系——劳工正是在地主不断提高作物产量、土地租金的过程中流离失所，饱受苦难。圈地运动后，所有权的集中与租金上涨使小农户被逐出他们租用的土地，或流亡他乡，或去城市，在自给自足与穷困潦倒的落差间谋求生存。地主对贫民的救济看似慈善，但根源仍在于农业资本主义进程中地主阶级对农民阶级的整体性剥削。歌颂变成一种刺耳的嘲讽。

The agricultural capitalism behind the urban-rural binary opposition, the obscured peasants and their labor processes in the countryside, the wandering and loneliness of pedestrians in the city, the development of imperialism and colonies—these are all real historical processes that Williams attempts to capture by shifting perspective. By linking textual perspective with social order, Williams discovers that while feudal lords enriched towns and monasteries, they also developed complex socio-economic relations; the wool trade, though it could promote the construction of pastures, also led to the Enclosure Movement destroying villages and the rapid emergence of new capitalist landlords; in the decline of the feudal order, although the influence of residual forces waned, after the government took control of land ownership, it established a more stable socio-economic order, of which manors and houses were the material embodiment. Whether it is the language of greenery, historical heritage, or viewing as appreciation, without a shift in observational perspective, reflection on culture cannot truly occur.

城乡二元对立背后的农业资本主义，乡村中被遮蔽的农民及其劳动过程，城市中行人的彷徨与孤独，帝国主义与殖民地的发展，都是威廉斯试图通过转换视角去捕获的真实历史进程。威廉斯通过联系文本视角与社会秩序发现，封建地主虽然繁荣了城镇和修道院，但发展出复杂的社会经济关系；羊毛贸易固然能促进牧场的修建，却也导致圈地运动摧毁村庄，新型资本家地主快速涌现；在封建秩序衰落过程中，尽管残余力量影响日渐式微，但政府在掌握土地所有权之后建立起更稳定的社会经济秩序，庄园和宅邸便是这一秩序的物质体现。不论是绿色语言、历史遗产，还是作为欣赏的观看，如若不转换观察视角，对文化的反思便无法真正发生。

The complexity and diversity of the countryside are absorbed by the bourgeois social order, and real life recedes into a smooth narrative until it completely disappears. As Pierre Bourdieu puts it, “The English countryside becomes a landscape without peasants, that is, a pure object of aesthetic contemplation, based on the cult of ‘nature’ and undulating curves, part of the worldview of the enlightened agricultural bourgeoisie. At the same time, because it ‘improves’ agriculture with a straight grid, it aims to create a visible universe entirely devoid of any trace of productive labor and any mention of the producer.” [20]20 Pierre Bourdieu, *The Field of Cultural Production* (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), p. 17. The progressive logic of “perspective—form—social relations” reveals that the production process of the text does not hang in a void; literature and social history are not separate streams that do not interfere with each other, nor a simple relationship of reflection and being reflected, but a complex, dynamic relationship of interweaving and mutual reference. Thus, literary criticism is no longer confined to the abyss of aesthetics; the deconstruction and critique of cultural central narratives also resound within it.

乡村的复杂性与多样性被资产阶级社会秩序吸纳，真实的生活也随之退居平滑的叙事中，直至完全消逝。正如皮埃尔·布尔迪厄所言，“英国乡村变成一个没有农民的风景，也就是说变成一个纯粹的审美沉思对象，基于对‘自然’和起伏曲线的崇拜，是开明的农业资产阶级世界观的一部分。同时，因为它以直线网格‘改善’农业，旨在创造一个可见的宇宙，完全没有任何生产劳动的痕迹和任何对生产者的提及”。“视角—形式—社会关系”的递进逻辑揭示了文本的生产过程并非悬于虚空，文学与社会历史并非互不干涉的流线，也不是简单的反映与被反映关系，而是复杂、动态的交织与互鉴关系。由此，文学批评不再局限于审美的渊薮，对文化中心叙事的解构与批判亦响彻其中。

III. The Methodological Path and Significance of Cultural Materialism

三、文化唯物主义的方法论路径及意义

By resetting the relationship between base and superstructure, cultural materialism’s reinterpretation of the “base” means that culture no longer occupies a position of being reflected, allowing the material production process to rise to the core plane of cultural analysis. Terry Eagleton argues that cultural materialism is a departure from historical materialism, because historical materialism holds that there is an asymmetry among social factors, with the economic factor occupying a primary position in the social whole; cultural materialism, however, not only downplays the determining influence of the economic factor but also grants culture an important status. In fact, Williams was always aware of this contradiction and explained it: “In striving to make people accept that cultural production is a basic activity… I have both demonstrated (a result I did not want) the claim that culture has primacy over other social processes, and opposed this claim.” [21]21 Raymond Williams, *Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review* (London: Verso, 1979), p. 353. From this response, it can be seen that the original intention of cultural materialism is not to deny economic determinism or depart from historical materialism, but to oppose the extraction of any single social domain for analytical priority; there are many other processes besides the economic process. It does not intend to deny the importance of economic practice in social processes, but rather questions a unidirectional and exclusive final determination model. “Emphasizing the indivisibility of social processes” is the foundational theoretical positioning of cultural materialism, and it is also the way Williams embraces Marxism. Starting from this anchor point, one can correctly grasp the methodological path and significance of cultural materialism.

文化唯物主义通过重置基础与上层建筑之关系，对“基础”的再阐释使文化不再居于被反映的位置，使得物质性生产过程浮至文化分析的核心位面。特里·伊格尔顿认为，文化唯物主义是对历史唯物主义的背离，因为历史唯物主义认为社会各因素之间存在不对称性，经济因素在社会整体中占据首要地位；而文化唯物主义不仅淡化经济因素的决定性影响，还赋予文化以重要地位。实际上，威廉斯始终意识到这一矛盾，并作出解释，“在努力使人们接受文化生产是一种基本活动的时候……既对文化相对于其他社会进程具有首要地位的主张进行了证明（我并不想要这种结果），又对这种主张表示了反对”。从上述回应可以看出，文化唯物主义的初衷并不在于否认经济决定论、背离历史唯物主义，而是反对抽取某一社会领域进行分析的优先性，在经济进程之外还有其他诸多进程；无意否定经济实践在社会进程中的重要性，而是质疑单向且排他的最终决定模式。“强调社会进程的不可分性”是文化唯物主义的基础理论定位，亦是威廉斯与马克思主义相拥的方式。从这一锚点出发，方能正确把握文化唯物主义的方法论路径及意义。

(I) The Integration of Theory, Text, and History: The Analytical Path of Cultural Materialism

（一）理论、文本与历史的统合：文化唯物主义的分析路径

Cultural materialism differs from classical Marxist theory; it is a reflection on the official Cambridge literary conception, and literature is always the deeply rooted ground from which it springs. As Stuart Hall states, “He always framed his problematic from the perspective of literary works as cultural expression; there was a continuous focus in his career on how we understand literature in its historical, cultural, economic, and political contexts.” [22]22 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and the Centre: Some Problematics and Problems,” in *Culture, Media, Language* (London: Hutchinson, 1980), p. 25. Williams proposed that cultural materialism can serve as an analytical tool for “the analysis of all forms of signification, including quite centrally writing, within the actual means and conditions of their production,” [23]23 Raymond Williams, *Marxism and Literature* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 138. restoring works to their conditions of production and interrogating them from cultural, political, and historical perspectives, thereby granting cultural materialism a methodological status. In the field of literary studies, unlike the structuralist paradigm’s favor for theory, and unlike Cambridge literary criticism’s focus on the text, the core of cultural materialism lies in its emphasis on the historical dimension, and in its practical application, it seeks the integration of three dimensions: theoretical analysis, textual analysis, and historical analysis. Theoretical analysis points to the effective interpretation of the text by theory; textual analysis refers to the general structure of the text; historical analysis concerns the original means and conditions of the text’s production, as well as the history of the text’s interpretation. The three work together to achieve the state of entering into it and stepping beyond it. *The Country and the City* contains both textual analysis of works and an inquiry into the historical conditions of their creation, ultimately pointing to the disjuncture between pastoral narrative and social history. Williams, on the one hand, glimpses the overall social process through the disjointed narrative, restoring the figures of agricultural capitalism and labor from the serene and idyllic pastoral poetry; on the other hand, he embeds the deconstruction of such narratives into the field of literary studies, indicating that literary research should not fall into the rut of aesthetic form, and opens up a practical path combining theoretical analysis, textual analysis, and historical analysis, seeking an opportunity to reshape the overall literary narrative in the deconstruction of the Cambridge literary history system. His argumentation logic and interpretive logic offer many insights for deepening the methodology of cultural materialism.

文化唯物主义不同于经典马克思主义理论，是对剑桥官方文学观念的反思，文学始终是其深深扎根的园地。正如斯图亚特·霍尔所言，“他总是从文学作品作为文化表达这一角度架构自己的问题式，其职业生涯中存在一个持续的焦点，即我们如何在历史、文化、经济和政治语境中理解文学”。威廉斯提出，文化唯物主义可以作为一种分析工具，用于“在意义生产的实际方式和情形中对意义的各种形式（特别是作品）进行分析”，将作品恢复至其生产条件中，并从文化、政治、历史等角度进行探问，赋予文化唯物主义以方法论地位。在文学研究领域，不同于结构主义范式对理论的青睐，亦不同于剑桥文学批评对文本的关注，文化唯物主义的核心在于其对历史维度的强调，并在运用实践中谋求理论分析、文本分析与历史分析三重维度的统合。理论分析指向理论对文本的有效解读；文本分析指涉文本的一般结构；历史分析则关注文本的原始生产手段和条件，以及文本的解读史。三者合力，以达入乎其内、出乎其外之境。《乡村与城市》中既有对作品的文本分析，也有对创作历史条件的探问，最终指向田园诗叙事与社会历史的错位。威廉斯一边透过错落的叙事窥见整体社会进程，从静美恬淡的田园诗中恢复农业资本主义与劳动的身影；一边将对此类叙事的拆解嵌入文学研究领域，指明文学研究不应落于审美形式的窠臼，并开辟一条理论分析、文本分析与历史分析相结合的实践路径，在对剑桥文学史体系的解构中寻找重塑整体文学叙事的契机，其立论思路与阐释逻辑对文化唯物主义方法论的深化提供诸多启示。

As far as its analytical premise is concerned, *The Country and the City* clarifies the concept that “literature is a production.” Williams discovered that literary scholars have no consensus on the starting point of the “golden age of the pastoral,” and after investigation, this starting point was found to be continuously pushed back; the reasons behind this are thought-provoking and constitute the core of Williams’s problematic. Cultural materialism holds that culture and art are material production processes. Compared with focusing on the fixed features of textual form and symbols, productivity emphasizes that the textual system itself possesses dynamism and recombinability. This means that literature is both constrained by the historical conditions of production and mutually shapes and is shaped by its interaction with society. Literature can both express a particular ideology and question and resist specific ideologies.

就其分析前提而言，《乡村与城市》明确了“文学是一种生产”的观念。威廉斯发现，文学家们对“田园黄金时代”起点的界定莫衷一是，经考证后，该起点竟不断前溯，其中缘由发人深省，这是威廉斯的问题意识所在。文化唯物主义认为，文化艺术是物质生产过程。相较于关注文本形式及符号的固定特征，生产性则强调文本系统本身具有动态性和可重组性。这意味着文学既受到历史生产条件的制约，又在与社会互动的过程中彼此形塑。文学既可以表达某种意识形态，也能够对特定意识形态进行质疑与抵抗。

In terms of the object of analysis, *The Country and the City* demonstrates how linguistic signs function as a core referent in the theoretical analysis of cultural materialism. In Williams’s view, language is not a pure medium but a key constitutive element of shared social practice. Language contains real social experience. Unlike structuralist linguistics, which focuses on the systematic features of language and signs, Williams’s inquiry into language addresses both the history of language itself—that is, “how linguistic sign practices are institutionally constituted and reproduced over time”—and the social background and historical context of linguistic practice, that is, hearing through language what is unexpressed and the reasons for its silence. Williams found that the meaning of the countryside in literary language changes repeatedly. In the language praising the generosity of the gentry in hosting charitable activities, the facts of production are excised. The tranquil pastoral constructed by green language is like a world coated in glaze, while the real scenes of labor and life dissolve within it. Through the theoretical analysis of language as social practice, Williams glimpsed the figure of the agricultural capitalist process galloping through the countryside.

在分析对象方面，《乡村与城市》展现了语言符号作为核心指涉在文化唯物主义的理论分析层面发挥作用。在威廉斯看来，语言并非纯粹媒介，而是共享性社会实践的关键构成要素。语言中蕴藏着真实的社会经验。不同于结构主义语言学关注语言与符号的系统特征，威廉斯对语言的探问既指涉语言自身的历史，即“语言符号实践如何在制度上构成并随着时间的推移而再生产”，亦叩问语言实践的社会背景与历史语境，即透过语言听见未表达的事物及其沉默缘由。威廉斯发现，文学语言中的乡村意涵一变再变。在赞美乡绅举办慈善活动的慷慨语言里，生产的事实被剔除。由绿色语言构筑的静美田园宛如涂满釉彩的世界，而劳动与生活的现实场景消解其中。通过将语言作为社会实践的理论分析，威廉斯窥见了农业资本主义进程呼啸驶过乡间的身影。

In terms of analytical means, *The Country and the City* expands the dimensions of cultural materialism’s textual and historical analysis from two aspects: perspective and lived experience. Textual analysis generally points to the internal structure of the text, but *The Country and the City* further connects the text to society. This article summarizes this as a progressive path of “perspective—form—social relations,” as a supplement to the textual analysis of cultural materialism. In Williams’s view, observers’ positions and attitudes in rural society vary; although the writing perspective is based on the observer’s autonomous aesthetic choice, “any viewpoint (including those that exclude people or turn people into landscape) is social,” and the textual form constructed by the viewing perspective ultimately points to a certain social relation and social order. This means that the author’s standpoint and identification indicate where the author stands, with whom they identify, what they see, and whether they reveal or conceal. Jonson, standing in the patron’s country mansion, constructs poetry by ignoring the laborers and their labor process; the perspective serving the aristocracy sees vast estates and classical countryside, and the writing form within this landscape representation has its hidden social basis. Landscape, as a narrative device, appears on the surface to be a praise of the natural order but in fact implies the socioeconomic exploitation that clears away peasants and their labor traces. The description of grand mansions and small cottages reveals a capitalist rural order including landlords, tenant farmers, and landless laborers. The display of the natural order actually reveals the linkage between aesthetics and capitalist exploitation. Williams reminds people to pay attention to the complexity within the countryside and to flexibly shift perspectives in order to analyze the countryside’s richly layered visual structure and social composition.

在分析手段方面，《乡村与城市》分别从视角和在地经验两个方面入手，拓展了文化唯物主义文本分析与历史分析的维度。文本分析一般指向文本的内部结构，但《乡村与城市》进一步连结文本与社会。本文将其归纳为“视角—形式—社会关系”的递进路径，作为对文化唯物主义文本分析的补充。在威廉斯看来，观察者在乡村社会中的位置及态度各有不同，写作视角虽基于观察者自主的审美选择，但“任何视点（包括那种排除了人或将人化作风景的视点）都是社会性的”，由观看视角构造的文本形式最终指向某种社会关系与社会秩序。这意味着作者的立足点及认同，表明作者立足于何处，认同谁，看到了什么，是揭示还是掩盖？琼森站在资助人的乡村宅邸，通过无视劳作者及其劳动过程建构诗意，为贵族服务的视角看见的是辽阔庄园与古典乡村，这一景观表征内部的写作形式有其隐蔽的社会基础。风景作为一种叙事装置，表面看来是对自然秩序的赞誉，实则暗含清理农民及其劳动痕迹的社会经济剥削。对宏伟宅邸与狭小村舍的描述昭示了包括地主、佃农和无地劳工在内的资本主义乡村秩序。自然秩序展示的实为美学与资本剥削的勾连。威廉斯提醒人们注意乡村内部的复杂性，应灵活转换视角，以对乡村层次丰富的视觉结构与社会构成进行分析。

Cultural materialism’s historical analysis concerns both the initial means of production of the text (including literary techniques and social relations) and the conditions, as well as the history of the text’s interpretation. It is noteworthy that Williams invests *The Country and the City* with many personal, autobiographical statements of experience. The comparison between lived experience and literary tradition becomes a core issue, and the revelation of the discrepancy between literature and history can serve as a new dimension of cultural materialism’s historical analysis. “We begin thinking where we live.” Williams values the individual as observer and the historicity and subjective agency inherent in their lived experience, because “concepts and words are never as stable as we would like them to be, and not thinking this way would blind us to the historical density of language and the sociopolitical conflicts within it.” Lived experience historically transcends isolated texts and rigid theoretical frameworks, granting the individual a viewpoint distant from central authority, so as to recognize the complex life itself that persists delicately in literature. Just as Williams, who grew up in the village of Pandy, discovered upon arriving at Cambridge: “When I first went to Cambridge, Cambridge University offered me the explanation I now reject—the rural order, England’s ancient traditions, opposition to industry and the modern world—and I had the strongest personal reasons to doubt it.” The discrepancy between mainstream academic interpretation and rural lived experience constantly prompted Williams to question himself, and in the poetic landscape constructed by cultural authority, he glimpsed the exploitation of peasant labor. From the narrative beautifying rural settlement, Williams perceived the pressure of the agricultural capitalist mode of production, a historical moment marked by capital’s control of land, rural population decline, and the unsustainability of reproductive labor.

文化唯物主义历史分析既关注文本最初的生产手段（包括文学表现手法和社会关系）和条件，亦探问文本的解读史。值得关注的是，威廉斯在《乡村与城市》中倾注了诸多个人自传式的经验陈述。在地经验与文学传统之间的比照成为核心问题，对文学与历史之间差异的揭示可作为文化唯物主义历史分析的新向度。“我们在我们生活的地方开始思考”。威廉斯看重作为观察者的个体及其在地经验所蕴含的历史性与主观能动性，因为“概念和词汇永远不会像我们所希望的那样稳定，如果不这样想，就会对语言的历史密度和其中的社会政治冲突视而不见”。在地经验历史化地超越孤立的文本和凝滞的理论框架，赋予个体远离中心权威的观察视点，以体认文学中细腻持存的复杂生活本身。如同成长于潘迪村的威廉斯来到剑桥后发现的那样，“我第一次去剑桥时，剑桥大学向我提供了我现在拒绝的解释——乡村秩序、英格兰的古老传统、对工业和现代世界的反对，我有最强烈的个人理由怀疑它”。主流学术阐释与乡村在地经验之间的差异令威廉斯时常自我叩问，并在文化权威建构的诗意风景中窥见对农民劳动的剥削。从美化乡村定居的叙述中，威廉斯感知农业资本主义生产方式的压力，而那是由资本控制土地、乡村人口下滑和再生产劳动难以为继的历史时刻。

(II) Theoretical Deepening and Spatial Extension: The Methodological Significance of Cultural Materialism

（二）理论深化与空间延拓：文化唯物主义的方法论意义

Williams, wielding the sharp blade of cultural materialism, dismantles the pastoral tradition in *The Country and the City*, pointing directly to the fact that behind the opposition between country and city lies the quietly rising process of agricultural capitalism. The veil of textual concealment and displacement is stripped away; the tranquil countryside is in fact an imagined refuge from the city, and green language and serene landscape are in fact slices of capitalist landscape. The uniqueness of the cultural materialist methodology lies in its integration of theoretical analysis, textual analysis, and historical analysis. *The Country and the City* deepens each analytical path of cultural materialism from perspectives such as “literary production,” “language,” “perspective,” and “lived experience.” Its methodological significance is manifested on both theoretical and practical levels.

威廉斯持文化唯物主义之利刃在《乡村与城市》中对田园诗传统进行拆解，直指乡村与城市的对立背后是悄然兴起的农业资本主义进程，文本遮蔽与置换的面纱被揭落，宁静乡村实为想象中的城市避难所，绿色语言和恬淡风景实为资本主义景观的切片。文化唯物主义方法论的独特之处在于其对理论分析、文本分析及历史分析的统摄，《乡村与城市》又从“文学生产”“语言”“视角”“在地经验”等角度对文化唯物主义各层分析路径进行深化，其方法论意义体现在理论和实践两个层面。

As for its theoretical significance, cultural materialism revises the Marxist formula of base and superstructure, clarifying the dynamic and historical nature of the base and breaking free from the analytical rut of “base determines superstructure”; it alleviates the difficulty Marxist literary criticism faces in deeply analyzing concrete experience, deepening the applicability of Marxist theory in the literary and cultural fields. Orthodox Marxism treats the base as an absolutely existing object and the superstructure as a reflection or representation of the base, whereas cultural materialism’s emphasis on the materiality of culture means that culture no longer resides in the dark drawer of the superstructure, and the base shifts from a fixed category to a historical, dynamic process, thereby breaking free from the binary opposition and reflection theory of base and superstructure. Cultural materialism endows culture with the status of a social formation, pointing to the indivisible totality among various social processes, breaking the single determinism of economic determinism in the historical materialist paradigm.

就其理论意义而言，文化唯物主义对马克思主义理论的基础与上层建筑公式进行修正，明确基础的动态性和历史性，跳出“基础决定上层建筑”的分析窠臼；纾解马克思主义文学批评难以深入分析具体经验之困，深化马克思主义理论在文学文化领域的适用性。正统马克思主义将基础视为绝对存在的客体，又将上层建筑视为基础的反映或表象，而文化唯物主义对文化之物质性的强调，使文化不再居于上层建筑的暗屉，基础也从一般固定范畴转为一种历史的、动态的过程，从而跳出基础与上层建筑的二元对立反映论。文化唯物主义赋予文化以社会构成地位，指涉社会各进程间具有不可分割的整体性，打破历史唯物主义范式中经济决定一切的单一决定论。

The Marxist literary critical paradigm takes the economic base and ideology as its yardstick, and it is “precisely the accepted formula of base and superstructure” that overlooks the complexity inherent in literature itself. Marxist literary criticism reduces literature and art to a reflection of the politico-economic structure, lacking subtle and detailed perception when interpreting actual experience; abundant human experience, under the effect of reflection theory, is treated as a carrier of specific ideology and relegated to a reductionist category defined by the economic base. But Williams holds that “literature is primarily concerned with the ‘direct experience of reality,’ not with the dry abstractions that constitute social theory.” Cultural materialism advocates analyzing literature from the perspective of the production process and historical conditions; literature is no longer a carrier of ideology but a relatively autonomous form of writing, “one of the areas where ideological control can be loosened. Although literature cannot escape the construction of ideology, the key to literariness lies in the continuous questioning within ideology.” Seemingly static literature is also accompanied by the dynamic process of real production, deepening Marxist literary theory and its critical practice from the perspective of daily experience and history.

马克思主义文学批评范式以经济基础与意识形态为衡量标尺，而“正是被接受的基础与上层建筑公式”，忽略了文学本身蕴含的复杂性。马克思主义文学批评将文学艺术简化为对政治经济结构的映照，在阐释实际经验时缺乏幽微、详细的感知力，丰沛的人类经验在反映论的作用下被视为特定意识形态的载体，归入由经济基础限定的还原论范畴。但威廉斯认为，“文学首先关注的是‘现实的直接经验’，而不是构成社会理论的枯燥抽象”。文化唯物主义提倡从生产过程及历史条件的角度分析文学，文学不再是意识形态的载体，而是具有相对自主性的写作形式，“是意识形态控制可以松动的领域之一，尽管文学无法逃脱意识形态的建构，但文学性的关键在于对意识形态内部的持续质疑”，看似静态的文学亦伴随着动态的现实生产过程，从日常经验与历史的角度深化了马克思主义文学理论及其批评实践。

In terms of practical significance, cultural materialism demonstrates its deconstructive potential as a methodology, breaking through the aesthetic principles and limitations of bourgeois literary theory, challenging the official Cambridge literary tradition, and expanding the space for literary critical practice. This expansion is reflected both in the shift of critical criteria from aesthetic value to social value and in the extension of the scope of literary history. The Cambridge paradigm of literary studies, inheriting aesthetic and moral values, ignores the process of cultural production and confines the vast expanse of literary history to a known range of works. The first step in resisting this is “to grasp the concept of literature as a social and historical category.” [27]27 Raymond Williams, *Marxism and Literature* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 145. In this sense, literature, as a socio-historical representation, can be close to or distant from reality, similar to or radically different from it. But in any case, “representation” means that literature is not an objective reflection of reality but rather refers to the process of producing reality. Literature not only reflects a specific ideology but can also call it into question. When analyzing a work, “cultural materialism provides a model for interpreting historical change and its cultural significance, acknowledging power structures through the concept of hegemony without denying the sociality and subjective complexity of the work itself.” [28]28 Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, eds., *Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism*, 2nd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. viii. Its deconstructive approach does not consist in analyzing and negating the composition, origin, and function of internal structures, but rather in “constantly dismantling instances as a way of dismantling the system itself.” [29]29 Alan Sinfield, *Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 9. The deconstruction of mainstream cultural narratives aims to reconstruct a more pluralistic and holistic social narrative. Cultural materialism’s examination of the process of literary production and its historical conditions not only clarifies the boundary between literary representation and literary reflection, thereby unsettling literature’s static gaze and posture of reflecting reality, but also provides a social and historical comparative perspective for analyzing literary works, offering space for rethinking literary tradition and the structure of literary history. The methodology of cultural materialism emphasizes that the process of literary production constitutes part of the social production process. This conception of “literature as a social production process” involves the deconstruction of central narratives, the scrutiny of literary writing, and the supplementation of the totality of literary history, moving from the text outward toward a broader world beyond the text.

就实践意义而论，文化唯物主义展现了作为方法论所具有的解构潜能，突破资产阶级文学理论的审美原则及限制，挑战剑桥官方文学传统，延拓文学批评实践空间。这一延拓既体现在批评准则从审美价值到社会价值的迁移，亦彰显于文学史范围的扩展之中。剑桥文学研究范式因袭审美和道德价值，无视文化生产过程，并将磅礴的文学史局限于已知的作品范围。与之抗争的第一步，是“把握文学作为一个社会和历史范畴的概念”。从这个意义上看，文学作为一种社会历史表征，与现实的距离可近可远、可相似可迥异。但无论如何，“表征”意味着文学并非对现实的客观反映，而是指涉现实生产过程。文学不仅反映特定意识形态，亦可对其提出疑问。在对作品进行分析时，“文化唯物主义提供解读历史变革及其文化意义的模式，通过霸权概念承认权力结构，但不否认作品本身的社会性与主观复杂性”，其解构方式并不在于对内部结构的组成、来源和功能进行分析和否定，而是“不断拆解实例，作为拆解其系统的一种方式”，对主流文化叙事的解构是为了重建更为多元与整体的社会叙事。文化唯物主义对文学生产过程及历史条件的考察，不仅厘清文学表征与文学反映之间的边界，使文学静态凝视与反映现实的姿态得以摇动，亦为剖析文学作品提供了社会与历史的对照视角，对文学传统与文学史结构也提供了重新思考的空间。文化唯物主义方法论强调，文学生产过程构成社会生产过程的一部分。这种“文学是一种社会生产过程”的观念涉及对中心叙事的解构、对文学书写的审视、对文学历史整体性的补充，从文本出发指向文本之外更为广阔的天地。

Conclusion

结语

As Williams’s culminating theoretical work in his later years, cultural materialism engages in dialogue and interaction with his cultural-historical writings such as *The Country and the City* and *Modern Tragedy*, with literature and art always remaining the deeply rooted ground of his inquiry. However, a survey of academic explorations of cultural materialism reveals that few have clearly delineated its methodological path and directed it toward practice. Starting from the problem domain of application and connection, and taking “*The Country and the City* can serve as an illustration of the structure of feeling (one of the key concepts of cultural materialism theory)” as a point of entry, this article centers on *The Country and the City* to inquire into the practical application, methodological path, and significance of cultural materialism. The study finds that cultural materialism and *The Country and the City* differ from classical Marxism and the official Cambridge English culture in that both emphasize the integration of historical analysis into literary criticism. To reproduce the persistent complexity between literature and society, Williams uses cultural materialism as a sharp blade in *The Country and the City* to dissect the production process and historical conditions of mainstream Cambridge literary works, deconstructing the capitalist literary perspective and its forms of literary expression; he establishes the concept of “literature as a production,” explaining the deconstructive practice of cultural materialism from three aspects: “language as social practice,” “the structure of feeling bearing local experience,” and “the perspective linking social relations.” The core of the cultural materialist methodology lies in the integration of theoretical analysis, textual analysis, and historical analysis, and *The Country and the City* deepens this integrative path from three angles: the premise of analysis, the object of analysis, and the means of analysis. “Literature as a production process” can serve as the analytical premise of this methodology; “linguistic signs” function as the core analytical object at the level of theoretical analysis; the progressive logic of “perspective—form—social relations” enriches its textual analytical content; and the comparison between local experience and literary tradition can serve as a new dimension of its historical analysis.

作为威廉斯晚年的集大成理论，文化唯物主义与《乡村与城市》《现代悲剧》等文化史著述之间存在对话互动，文学与艺术始终是其深深扎根的园地。然而，纵观学界对文化唯物主义的探察，殊少明确其方法论路径并将其导向实践。笔者从运用与连结的问题域出发，从“《乡村与城市》可作为感觉结构（文化唯物主义理论的关键概念之一）的例证”切入，以《乡村与城市》为中心探问文化唯物主义之运用实践、方法论路径及意义。研究发现，文化唯物主义及《乡村与城市》与经典马克思主义和剑桥官方英语文化有所不同，即皆注重在文学批评中吸收历史分析成果。为再现文学与社会之间持存的复杂性，威廉斯以文化唯物主义为利刃，在《乡村与城市》中剖析剑桥主流文学作品的生产过程及历史条件，解构资本主义文学视角及其文学表现形式；树立“文学是一种生产”的观念，从“作为社会实践的语言”“承载在地经验的感觉结构”“连结社会关系的视角”三个方面阐释文化唯物主义之解构实践。文化唯物主义方法论的核心在于理论分析、文本分析与历史分析的统合，而《乡村与城市》从分析前提、分析对象和分析手段三个角度深化了这一统合路径。“文学是一种生产过程”可作为该方法论的分析前提；“语言符号”作为核心分析对象在其理论分析层面发挥作用；“视角—形式—社会关系”的递进逻辑丰富其文本分析内涵；对在地经验与文学传统的比照可作为其历史分析的新向度。

The methodology of cultural materialism not only refines classical Marxist theory, deepening its applicability in the field of literature and culture from the perspectives of experience and history, but also realizes a shift from aesthetic value to social value, expanding the space for literary critical practice. Cultural materialism’s revelation of the production process demonstrates that literary forms are social; its incorporation of marginal local experience reflects its balancing of central literary narratives; and within the framework of the interweaving of literature and history, it provides a strategy for advancing contemporary cultural analysis. Regarding the future of research on cultural materialism, entering into the local, moving toward life practice, re-understanding cultural materialism in emerging forms of literature and art and in artistic sites, and allowing local experience to nourish new theoretical shoots will become a more vital research path.

文化唯物主义方法论不仅细化了经典马克思主义理论，从经验与历史的角度深化其在文学文化领域的适用性，而且实现从审美价值向社会价值的迁移，延拓文学批评实践的空间。文化唯物主义对生产过程的揭示表明文学形式具有社会性，对边缘在地经验的吸纳体现其对文学中心叙事的平衡，在文学与历史交织的框架下为当代文化分析提供升进之策。关于文化唯物主义研究的未来，进入在地、走向生活实践，在新兴文学艺术样态与艺术现场中重新理解文化唯物主义，浸润在地经验生发理论新芽，将会成为一条更具有生命力的研究路径。

Online Editor: Paul

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