Williams further develops Foucault’s ideas by examining how cultural processes are created and how they impact cultural works.
Cultural processes
One way of examining a text’s ideological alignment is through what Williams terms “epochal analysis.” This type of analysis involves studying the ways in which a culture, and the cultural works it produces, may reflect ideas and values from the past, as well as newly emerging ideas. Rather than culture being static, it is constantly being shaped and influenced by aspects of its past, present, and future.
In Marxism and Literature (1977), Williams argues that there are three main types of elements within a culture that shape historic movements and cultural works: dominant, residual, and emerging.
Dominant, or mainstream, features within a culture set the value systems and appraise what is good or acceptable art, determining social standards and norms.
Residual elements refer to aspects of a society that have “been effectively formed in the past, but [are] still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present” (Williams, excerpted in Twentieth-Century Literary Theory, 1977, [1997]). These elements can be both beneficial and a threat to the dominant ideology. Institutions linked to an antiquated past, such as the Catholic Church, still support dominant ideologies and have much influence in the modern day. On the other hand, societies “cannot allow too much residual experience and practice outside itself, at least without risk” (Williams, 1977, [1997]).
Residual elements can pose a threat to the dominant culture when there is a “reaching back” to the “meanings and values” of the past, particularly when they “represent areas of human experience, aspiration, and achievement which the dominant culture neglects, undervalues, opposes, represses, or even cannot recognize” (Williams, 1977, [1997]).
Emergent elements present the biggest threat to the dominant ideology, and represent “new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationships” (Williams, 1977, [1997]).
These new ideas are potentially dangerous as they challenge the existing order, encouraging innovation and potential change. Williams goes on to state that