Public educators as interpretive critics: Edward Said and Raymond Williams

Abstract

The work of Edward Said and Raymond Williams exemplifies an important aspect of the role of the public intellectual as educator. This paper concentrates on the significance of their work as public educators and on the tradition of interpretive criticism as they developed it within the field of literary and cultural theory. The argument builds from the assumptions that (1) the work of these two very different critics provides important methodological insights regarding the nature of interpretation; (2) these insights have general application across the human and social sciences; and (3) their application is integral to the role of the public intellectual as educator. Central to the argument is that the prime responsibility of the public educator is not to mark out her or his own value position, but to ensure that there are the necessary civic spaces for others to do so – and, crucially, that these spaces are kept open. Holding open the civic spaces is the duty and moral responsibility of the public educator as interpretive critic.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Stewart Ranson, who first suggested a comparative essay on the work of Said and Williams, and who commented on an earlier essay on Said; Bob Lingard, for discussions and commentary on Said; and Fred Inglis for previous discussions on Williams and his work. My occasional discussions with Kate Pahl on Williams have been helpful and inspiring. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who, on behalf of this journal, provided extremely helpful commentary and advice on an earlier submitted draft of this paper and Dawn Butler for preparing the final draft for publication.

Notes

1. This paper does not deal directly with Said's and Williams's politics or with the former's commitment to the Palestinian cause which was the major source of his political awakening. I have discussed the relation between Said's politics and his interpretive method in Nixon (2006). The ways Said and Williams saw themselves bridging the gap between formal and informal political activism were markedly different. In some respects, Said's position was closer to that of Hoggart than to that of Williams, which is ironic given the disparity of their respective backgrounds. (See Nixon, 2007, in press.)

2. I am not seeking to belittle Foot, who himself might be seen as a public educator in the sense in which I am using that term (Jones, 1994; Morgan, 2007). Interestingly, Foot was the Labour candidate for Monmouth in 1935 and Williams was a campaigning constituent at the ripe old age of 14. Foot was 22. Williams was not impressed by Foot's campaign. (See Williams, 1979, p. 31.)

3. See Bhabha and Mitchell (2005) and Rizvi and Lingard (2006) for analyses of Said's legacy; see Inglis (1995) and O'Connor (1989) for analyses of Williams’ life and work.

4. Ringverein: the criminal gangs that haunted Berlin after the First World War – euphemistically known as ‘wrestling clubs’.

5. Said was born in 1935 and died in 2003; Williams was born in 1921 and died in 1988.

6. I am not suggesting that Said and Williams held identical views. This is far from the case. For, example, Said's postcolonial internationalism might be contrasted with Williams's very British approach to critical work, even if the latter is highly sceptical regarding the major canons of literary criticism of his times.

7. See, also: Anderson's (2005, pp. 177–187) ‘in memoriam’ on Thompson; Collini's (2006, pp. 171–198) discussion of Thompson's involvement in New Left Review.

8. Said (2004b), with characteristic generosity, wrote of Williams as ‘a critic whom I really respect and enjoy’ (p. 85) and as a person ‘whom I revere and love’ (p. 211). His obituary of Williams referred to the latter as ‘optimistic, charitable, gentle and large’. (Quoted in Inglis, 1995, p. 14.) In his writing, he frequently refers to Williams’ (1975) The Country and the City. (See, for example, Said, 2000, pp. xxix–xxx, 213, 468–470.) Williams, again characteristically, is much more sparing in his public recognition of Said.

9. A compellingly written example of this scholarly genre is Shapiro (2005), which is based on the assumption that ‘it's no more possible to talk about Shakespeare's plays independently of his age than it is to grasp what his society went through without the benefit of Shakespeare's insights’ (pp. xv–xvi).

10. It is possible, of course, to insist upon Shakespeare's plays as products of a unique ‘cognitive intelligence’ while remaining sceptical regarding the identity of that intelligence. (See Michell, 1996.) However, Ackroyd (2005) makes a compelling case for Shakespeare as Shakespeare (rather than Bacon, Ralegh, Marlowe, Edward de Vere, and other even more improbable candidates).

11. Said's ‘Introduction to Erich Auerbach's Mimesis’ constitutes Chapter 4 of Said (2004a, pp. 85–118). See Auerbach (2003).

12. The following weeks saw some informed analyses beginning to emerge – mainly to the effect that there was very little to analyse. (See, for example, Hare, 2007; Lanchester, 2007; Rawnsley, 2007.)

13. Said (2004a, p. 16) sees the New Critics as centrally concerned with ‘the giving up of certain things, like amusement, pleasure, relevance to worldly circumstances, and so on’ and with exclusivity: ‘an equally stern, unsmiling affirmation of the few, the very few works that could be considered truly great’. Williams (1979, p. 266) focuses on the ‘unrooted’ (historically ungrounded) nature of New Criticism and its reductionist attempt to address questions of form in purely technical terms.

14. Said (1993, p. 92) elaborates this point, with reference to the novel, in terms of the text's ‘consolidation of authority’: ‘There is first the authority of the author … Then there is the authority of the narrator … Last, there is what might be called the authority of the community’. The ‘constitution of a narrative subject’, insists Said, is a ‘social act par excellence’.