Introduction

A. Dominat
The complexity of a culture is to be found not only in its variable processes and their social
definitions – traditions, institutions, and formations – but also in the dynamic interrelations, at
every point in the process, of historically varied and variable elements. In what I have called
‘epochal’ analysis, a cultural process is seized as a cultural system, with determinate dominant
features: feudal culture or bourgeois culture or a transition from one to the other. This emphasis
on dominant and definitive lineaments and features is important and often, in practice, effective.
But it then often happens that its methodology is preserved for the very different function of
historical analysis, in which a sense of movement within what is ordinarily abstracted as a system
is crucially necessary, especially if it is to connect with the future as well as with the past. In
authentic historical analysis it is necessary at every point to recognize the complex interrelations
between movements and tendencies both within and beyond a specific and effective dominance.
It is necessary to examine how these relate to the whole cultural process rather than only to the
selected and abstracted dominant system. Thus ‘bourgeois culture’ is a significant generalizing
description and hypothesis, expressed within epochal analysis by fundamental comparisons with
‘feudal culture’ or ‘socialist culture’. However, as a description of cultural process, over four or
five centuries and in scores of different societies, it requires immediate historical and internally
comparative differentiation. Moreover, even if this is acknowledged or practically carried out, the
‘epochal’ definition can exert its pressure as a static type against which all real cultural process is
measured, either to show ‘stages’ or ‘variations’ of the type (which is still historical analysis) or,
at its worst, to select supporting and exclude ‘marginal’ or ‘incidental’ or ‘secondary’ evidence.
Such errors are avoidable if, while retaining the epochal hypothesis, we can find terms which
recognize not only ‘stages’ and ‘variations’ but the internal dynamic relations of any actual
process. We have certainly still to speak of the ‘dominant’ and the ‘effective’, and in these senses
of the hegemonic. But we find that we have also to speak, and indeed with further differentiation
of each, of the ‘residual’ and the ’emergent’, which in any real process, and at any moment in the
process, are significant both in themselves and in what they reveal of the characteristics of the
‘dominant’.
B. Residual
A residual cultural element is usually at some distance from the effective dominant culture, but
some part of it, some version of it – and especially if the residue is from some major area of the
past – will in most cases have had to be incorporated if the effective dominant culture is to make
sense in these areas. Moreover, at certain points the dominant culture cannot allow too much
residual experience and practice outside itself, at least without risk. It is in the incorporation of the
actively residual – by reinterpretation, dilution, projection, discriminating inclusion and exclusion
– that the work of the selective tradition is especially evident. This is very notable in the case of
versions of ‘the literary-tradition’, passing through selective versions of the character of literature
to connecting and incorporated definitions of what literature now is and should be. This is one
among several crucial areas, since it is in some alternative or even oppositional versions of what
literature is (has been) and what literary experience (and in one common derivation, other
significant experience) is and must be, that, against the pressures of incorporation, actively residual
meanings and values are sustained.
 C. Emergent
By ’emergent’ I mean, first, that new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and
kinds of relationship are continually being created. But it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish
between those which are really elements of some new phase of the dominant culture(and in this
sense ‘species-specific’) and those which are substantially alternative or oppositional to it:
emergent in the strict sense, rather than merely novel. Since we are always considering relations
within a cultural process, definitions of the emergent, as of the residual, can be made only in
relation to a full sense of the dominant. Yet the social location of the residual is always easier to
understand, since a large part of it (though not all) relates to earlier social formations and phases
of the cultural process, in which certain real meanings and values were generated. In the
subsequent default of a particular phase of a dominant culture there is then a reaching back to those
meanings and values which were created in actual societies and actual situations in the past, and
which still seem to have significance because they represent areas of human experience, aspiration,
and achievement which the dominant culture neglects, undervalues, opposes, represses, or even
cannot recognize.
UNDERSTANDING RAYMOND WILLIAMS: “DOMINANT,
RESIDUAL, EMERGENT”
March 18, 2016mrjerrio

In Raymond Williams short but rich selection of his book Marxism and Literature, “Dominant,
Residual, and Emergent,” we find a fascinating essay that both explains how dominant social
structures maintain their dominance, while at the same time other social groups and in fact
individuals can contradict or subvert those cultures.
In short, his main ideas of importance are right in the title. There are dominant, residual, and
emergent parts of any cultural group. Interestingly enough, while dominant is the most powerful
shaping force as obviously indicated by the name, it does not get its own section of the essay, but
is mostly shown as the sort of cultural mass that he pokes at with his other types of culture.
Dominant culture oversees the whole essay, without ever being explained outright. I suppose
Williams thought readers would have enough cultural awareness to understand the dominant
group in their own cultures without direct explanation. It is valid that the reader’s dominant
culture, clearly visible through practices and ideas they themselves are immersed in require no
broad explanation. In our case consumerism and a focus on individuality are two examples that I
would consider part of the dominant in American culture. Williams does however, clearly
explain the other two ideas, residual and emergent.
He spends one section describing what ‘residual’ culture actually is. Residual is the influence of
old cultural practices on modern societies, consciously or unconsciously. A sort of “residue—
cultural as well as social” that is built into the infrastructure of the dominant culture. He goes out
of his way to differentiate residual from archaic, archaic being mostly outdated and abandoned
cultural practices, residual being certainly active in shaping society, even if it does not come
from the dominant culture itself. Williams considers organized religion, rural community, and
monarchy three important residual traits of culture. I personally consider the effects of Puritan
and Protestant ideals that still shape cultural perceptions in American society today a good
example of residual culture.
Another section clearly explains emergent culture as well. It is described as the new cultural
ideas and practices that are being created constantly in a society by groups and individuals.
These ideas can be dominant themselves, but they can also be alternative or opposing.
Alternative would be less confrontational, where as opposition (to the dominant culture) would
clearly be more confrontational. Hippie culture sprung to mind when considering examples in
American society, though there are of course many examples of emerging cultures, alternative or
opposing. Though not an exact fit, I wonder that if this had been written later, Williams would
have used subculture or counterculture to describe these terms?

Finally, there is another important section about public versus private in dominant culture, where
practices that are not openly of the dominant culture are practiced in private. The dominant
culture can do nothing about this, whether or not it approves of these practices. “Therefore no
dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all
human practice, human energy, and human intention.”

For the most part I have spent this time summarizing the article itself, adding examples that
helped me understand the multiple segments that make up Williams perspective of culture. Now,
to address things outside the work itself. I was surprised upon finishing to find that Williams was
a novelist and literary critic. The paper reminded me of an anthropological text, particularly one
of cultural materialism. I wasn’t wrong, it’s just that it was not anthropological, but Williams
own creation of literary cultural materialism. I was surprised to find that cultural materialism is
both a movement in anthropology and literary studies, and while they both have different
important thinkers and inspirations (in anthropology cultural materialism as a sub-field is not
Marxian at all) they do share similar ideas, even if their terminology is not the same. I knew that
throughout the 80s and 90s anthropology became much more cross-disciplinary, and I’m excited
to see this interweaving start to happen even sooner than I expected. I’m also excited by
Williams description of dominant cultures being influenced by individual actions and practices,
as this is a prominent idea in practice theory a theory that shows how individuals shape their
cultural environment through their own agency. Practice theory is also expounded upon by
Foucault, another author we will be reading soon, though I don’t know if it will be prevalent in
the book we are reading by him.

As to avoid the risk of rambling on about anthropology indefinitely, I shall cut myself off here,
but I’m excited to hear other responses to this work from those of us who have been English
scholars longer than myself. It felt very familiar to me, at least in the sense of it being an exciting
blend of many theories that I was familiar with, and it seems like a very important crossroads in
theory that we find ourselves standing at with this work. What did you think of it? How do you
think Williams ideas apply to literature? I hardly addressed this at all, having trouble finding
literature even discussed in this work. Perhaps it was deep in subtext. I look forward to any
responses.
 Philippine Rehabilitation Institute
Guagua Campus
SanMatias Guagua Pampanga

Philippine Popular Culture

A. Dominant Culture
B. Residual Culture
C. Emergent Culture

L.A.Gabriel P. Bansil
Student 1st Year BSRT

MRS. AVELINA SAPLALA MA