Williams Calls Research Articles

Shattering Normalcy: Disability and Queerness in Tennessee Williams’s One Arm

In addition to his extensive body of dramatic work, Tennessee Williams also wrote several screenplays that are inseparable from his oeuvre in terms of both content and form. His plays and screenplays – which Williams himself referred to as “film plays,” indicating their hybridity – are sites where the playwright explores aesthetic possibilities that blur the line between stage and screen. Exploring similar themes, such as the oppression and suffering of women, disabled people, and queer individuals, Williams’s film plays also demonstrate his desire for new aesthetic formulations. This article analyses Tennessee Williams’s unfilmed film play One Arm (published in 1984) as a major but neglected moment in his dramatic exploration of disability and the non-normative body. As in his other writing, Williams shows in One Arm that heteronormative and ableist norms can push individuals to the edges of society by stigmatizing and pathologizing their identities. By depicting their social and cultural transgressions, Williams celebrates allegedly excessive and deviant behaviour as well as “abnormal” bodies. The article further argues that in One Arm, Williams calls attention to the importance of creating a sense of community among disabled and queer subjects for a livable crip/queer future, and he calls for allyship among these communities to overcome oppression.

The Egalitarian Sublime: A Process Philosophy

The Egalitarian Sublime: A Process Philosophy

Evolution and (aristotelian) virtue ethics

Abstract It is well known that virtue ethics has become very popular among moral theorists. Even Aristotelian virtue ethics continues to have defenders. Bernard Williams (1983; 1995, p. xy), though, has claimed that this “neo-Aristotelian enterprise” might “require us tofeign amnesia about natural selection.” This paper looks at some recent work on virtueethics as seen from an evolutionary perspective (Michael Ruse, 1991; William Casebeer, 2003; Donald J. Munro, 2005; John Lemos, 2008; Jonathan Haidt & Craig Joseph, 2008) and explores whether Williams’ evolutionary challenge can be met. Against Williams’ challenge, I argue that “the first and hardest lesson of Darwinism,” as Williams calls it, has indeed found “its way fully into ethical thought” (Williams, 1983, p. xy). And virtue ethics—in several varieties, not only Aristotelian—fits it rather well with anevolutionary perspective on human origins.

‘An Invested Interest in Language’: Literary Practice in Secondary Classrooms

ABSTRACT This essay draws on the work of Raymond Williams in identifying a shift from the attempt to have students engage with literary texts in personal terms to a concern, founded on theoretical innovation, that they should read at a more sophisticated level in order to discern the ideology of a given text. It argues that what Williams calls an ‘expressivist’ view of texts needs to be reconciled with, rather than displaced by, a ‘formalist’ conception of them. It finds that high-stakes examinations reward a focus on abstracted ideological concerns at the expense of responsiveness to language and form. Exploration of the work of a teacher whose career has spanned this shift identifies ways in which she has, in meeting the challenges of the classroom and of theory, sustained a professional practice that has informed and motivated her students’ engagement with literary texts.

Why be Natural?

Naturalness, as a guiding principle for effective field theories (EFTs), requires that there be no sensitive correlations between phenomena at low- and high-energy scales. This essay considers four reasons to adopt this principle: (i) natural EFTs exhibit modest empirical success; (ii) unnatural EFTs are improbable; (iii) naturalness underwrites what Williams (Stud Hist Philos Mod Phys 51:82, 2015) calls a “central dogma” of EFTs; namely, that phenomena at widely separated scales should decouple; and (iv) naturalness underwrites a non-trivial notion of emergence. I argue that the first three are not compelling reasons, whereas the fourth is.

Gears and God: Technocratic Fiction, Faith, and Empire in Mark Twain's America by Nathaniel Williams

209 BOOKS IN REVIEW narrative field that may or may not respond differently than sf to a speculativerealist reading. Perhaps it is worth noting that Willems himself remains a relatively “dark” presence in this study. I do not recall a single instance in the text in which “I” appears; the passive voice (“it has been argued”) is prevalent and the author has disappeared. This tempts me to a discussion about the possible connections between the “dark author” and the “dark objects” of his analysis, but I lack space and so will simply note this as something intriguing to think about—among all the other intriguing ideas raised in Willems’s monograph. —Veronica Hollinger, SFS Imperial Fantasies and Biblical Literalism in Technocratic Exploration Fiction. Nathaniel Williams. Gears and God: Technocratic Fiction, Faith, and Empire in Mark Twain’s America. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2018. xii+206 pp. $44.95 hc. Although it is widely acknowledged that the dime novel played an important part in nineteenth-century American popular culture and in establishing the antecedents of American sf, Nathaniel Williams’s carefully researched and lucidly presented study, Gears and God: Technocratic Fiction, Faith, and Empire in Mark Twain’s America, adds considerable, surprising detail to that claim. Williams’s subject matter is not the dime novel per se, but rather the subgenre of technocratic exploration fiction that flourished largely within that milieu from the 1860s to World War I. The type of story Williams calls technocratic exploration fiction will be immediately recognizable to any reader of early sf. It begins with the invention of a means of transportation and proceeds with the adventures of the inventor and crew in the territory to which the invention gives them access, usually one or another type of frontier. Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) is a familiar, influential early example; E.E. Smith’s The Skylark of Space (1928) establishes its importance in pulp sf. What is no surprise at all in Williams’s examination of the subgenre is that it often played out imperialist fantasies based on racist assumptions about the non-Western world and its peoples. Williams does add considerable detail and nuance to this aspect of the subgenre’s history. What is more surprising and original in his study, however, is the connection he establishes between these technocratic fantasies and the beginnings of modern American Christian fundamentalism. Where the scientific and technocratic subject matter of the subgenre would lead one to expect secularist views on religion, Williams shows there was instead an abiding concern with supporting literalist readings of the Biblical creation myth and other episodes in the Old Testament. One of the virtues of Williams’s study is his refusal ever to give in to easy generalizations, so this quick summary of the gist of his argument should be understood to give a quite incomplete sense of the fine detail and valuable specificity of his account. He begins with a reading of Edward E. Ellis’s The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868), which “established the narrative template for the hundreds of dime novels that followed” (28). Williams’s reading of this novel focuses on the prosthetic character of the eponymous steam man in 210 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) relation to the inventor-genius protagonist, a physically challenged dwarf named Johnny Brainerd. Williams puts the tale in the context of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man Who Was Used Up” (1839) and looks at both Poe and Ellis using Donna Haraway’s well-known “Cyborg Manifesto” as his point of departure. He argues that, while Poe’s satirical short story uses the figure of the cyborg to mock the American reader’s matter-of-fact acceptance of horrific violence and Ellis instead deploys the cyborg largely as an Indian-killing machine on the Western frontier, “the American culture presented by both authors embraces prosthetic technology, at least in part, because it enhances expansionist warfare and material gain” (43). A major turning point in the history of the technocratic exploration subgenre comes with the Frank Reade Jr. novels, beginning in 1876 and ultimately comprising close to two hundred volumes. These are the novels that “make up the...

Apocalypse Without Revelation?: Shakespeare, Salvagepunk and Station Eleven

This article argues that in Station Eleven, the apocalypse brought by the Georgia Flu does not lead to revelation. Organized around a close reading of a scene in which a character named Miranda explicitly links the economic collapses of 2007–8 and the collapse occasioned by the Flu, this article argues that the novel and its characters come close to acknowledging – as critics Frederick Buell and Evan Calder Williams do – that the pre-Flu world was already apocalyptic, but in failing to fully do so they seek to redeem and recuperate this world rather than build a newer, better one. The article is arranged into two sections. The first argues that the novel’s use of Shakespeare helps Mandel register the way the Georgia Flu brings the end of the Anthropocene, an era she also defines as the era of globalized trade. The second section continues this focus on the novel’s engagement with capitalism. Reading the novel through Evan Calder Williams’ concept of ‘salvagepunk’, it borrows Jerrold E. Hogle’s description of the gothic to show how Station Eleven simultaneously addresses and disguises what Williams calls ‘capitalist apocalypse’, and in the process comes tantalizingly close to – but ultimately refuses – revelation.

Mistakes and the continuity test

In a series of recent articles, Matthew Clayton, Andrew Williams and Rasmus Sommer Hansen and Soren Flinch Midtgaard argue that a key virtue of Ronald Dworkin’s account of distributive justice, Equality of Resources, is that it provides a distribution that is continuous with the evaluations of the individuals whom it ranges over. The idea of continuity, or as Williams calls it the ‘continuity test’, limits distributive claims in at least one important way: one person cannot claim compensation from another when she does not believe she is worse off than him. In this article, I challenge whether an account of distributive justice should be continuous with the evaluations of the individuals whom it ranges over. My argument is that continuity competes with another consideration, namely, correctness. An account of distributive justice should track who actually is disadvantaged, not whether individuals believe they are disadvantaged. In addition, I offer an account of how we can get closer to a correct account of who is disadvantaged based on two sources of evidence.

Civil Religion and National Politics in a Neoliberal Era

AbstractCivil religion, or the connection of the nation‐state, its history, destiny, and people, to understandings of transcendence or divinity, is in crisis both as a theoretical concept and as a politico‐cultural phenomenon. The crisis has been brought about by the weakened capacity of the nation‐state to generate collective identity and a version of ‘charismatic’ authority. We argue that this has resulted in a shift from the widely accepted conceptualization of civil religion as a unifying force in societies to a more exclusionary force that Williams (2103) calls “tribal civil religion” That, in its own way, undermines the nation‐state. In this paper, we examine the history and various understandings of the concept of civil religion, develop an argument that the assault on the nation‐state has meant the rise of increasingly exclusive and exclusionist expressions of civil religion, and present possible suggestions for sites where ‘unitive’ civil religion may still be found.

Keyword: Critical

This essay considers what the term “critical” means—or could mean—to critical/cultural studies scholars. It does so by engaging with two key texts from the history of cultural studies: Raymond Williams' Keywords, and more specifically the clinical sense of “critical” that he develops there; and Stuart Hall et al.'s Policing the Crisis, which illustrates how a keywords approach can help practitioners of cultural studies to make sense of nascent aspects of social reality. The purpose of this essay is to suggest that critical practice has tended to focus on dominant, or fully manifest, aspects of reality, and therefore that it has tended to downplay the political import of what Williams calls “the emergent.” A focus on the latter, I contend, promises to enlarge the scope of critical practice beyond the realm of the visible and the articulable, while also raising difficult methodological questions that will need to be worked through in this journal's next decade.

Viewing Toni Morrison’s Paradise as a Response to William Carlos Williams’s Paterson

To unlock Toni Morrison's often opaque and fleeting references in her novels requires patient eye; in case of Paradise, one of keys to understanding Morrison's authorial intent lies within single referential word, word which links Paradise to William Carlos Williams and his long-format poem Paterson. This reference appears in Mavis narrative (21-49) of Toni Morrison's Paradise. Mavis, recalling when her mother came to visit and help out with her children, mentions that her mother drove from Paterson, New Jersey. With many authors, brief mention of town would normally be labeled as ephemeral. Morrison's authorial style, however, in which her choices of words, names, and places are rarely gratuitous, makes it especially important to explore purpose of town of Paterson in Paradise. Over course of almost dozen years, William Carlos Williams composed his epic poem Paterson, which focuses what he calls the city, man, While many critics have explored Paradise through variety of critical perspectives, none have examined novel as metatextual feminist response to Paterson. By juxtaposing Paterson with Paradise, it becomes clear that Morrison's Paradise is an attempt to both supplement and critique William Carlos Williams's sometimes contradictory and opaque views forging of identity, gender, and historical narrative in Paterson. At first glance, two works are vastly different. Paterson, written in years from 1946 to 1958, is an epic poem that deconstructs relationship between what Williams calls the / man, an or [a] like city (Paterson 4, 7). The and man--both named Paterson--venture through streets, searching for answers to formation of their collective identity. Along journey, Williams attempts to explore, with varied success, society's views and attitudes toward women. Morrison's Paradise, conversely, focuses deep interpersonal relationships between men, women, and their shared historical narratives. Paradise tells story of an all-African American town, Ruby, and effects group of women who live in Convent outskirts of Ruby, have town. The similarity between these two works, however, lies both in their intent and structure. Williams sought to explore how and its history affects identity (and vice versa); Morrison does much same. (1) Both authors also create textual structure with free nuance to achieve their goals. Williams uses poetry, prose, shifting narrators, and historical texts throughout five books of Paterson. Morrison tells narrative of Paradise through views of several different women in an effort to give not single voice to feminine perspective, but to exhibit how women in history have multiple, unique and rich voices. (2) Morrison's creation of an intertextual conversation with Paterson, however, becomes much more apparent when we examine specific instances in which she diverges from or signifies on Williams's conception of and city. The thematic interrelationship between Paterson and Paradise explores gender identity, as Morrison critiques destructive yet overwhelming influence of patriarchy females. Precisely because of his oblique language, Williams leaves him[self] open to current charges of sexism because it seems to support sex roles that Western culture has traditionally supported (DeWitt 64). While there is some critical argument about Williams's personal outlook roles of women and artists as members of society, his often patriarchal stance in Paterson is too great to be overlooked. Paterson, which Williams claims is an exploration of idea that a in himself is city (xiv), is reconstructed by Morrison as town of Ruby in Paradise. Morrison's man as city is dominating but, unlike Williams's masculine thematic, has competing perspective: Convent. Morrison juxtaposes two societies Ruby and Convent--to explore phallocentric deficiencies in Paterson. …

Transforming the Terms of Reading: Ideologies of Argument and the “Trope of the Angry Feminist” in Contemporary US Political and Academic Discourse

Contemporary US political and academic discourse is a site for constant irruption and circulation of encapsulated arguments to delegitimize social criticism. Strategies such as the “trope of the angry feminist” – which disparages the arguments of feminist academics and feminists in general as “angry” – perform, enact, and instantiate gendered power. Because we have not adequately theorized the discursive role of such tropes, we fail to recognize the limits of our conventional reading practices, so that our responses often reproduce the problem. Whether we claim that feminists are not angry, or are legitimately angry, or that some feminists have a right be angry (though, perhaps, not all), we are responding to the logic of the trope rather than challenging it. In Wahneema Lubiano's terms, we are being mugged by a metaphor. Reframing the problem begins by transforming the terms of reading; I propose for that purpose a critical toolkit that I call “feminist socioforensic discursive analysis.” Using this toolkit I analyze two discursive events. One – a response by “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger to the inauguration of a new doctoral program in feminist studies – demonstrates what is at stake in the relentless operation of this cultural training program. The other – in which law professor Patricia Williams recounts the editing of an article she wrote for a law review – demonstrates how conventional discursive practices defend and deny their deeply political uses of racialized and gendered power by calling on what Williams calls “an ideology of style rooted in a social text of neutrality.” This episode also demonstrates how feminists can anticipate these moves and turn them to our own advantage.

The Rapture of the Christ: The “Pre-Ascension Ascension” of Jesus in the Theology of Faustus Socinus (1539—1604)

In this essay I examine a rather quirky and possibly novel teaching of Faustus Socinus (1539—1604): what George H. Williams calls a “pre-Ascension ascension” (hereafter PAA) of Christ into heaven. Faustus claimed that this bodily ascent into heaven took place before Christ's final visible ascension to heaven some time between his baptism and the commencement of his earthly teaching ministry. The theory states in brief that Christ, “after he was born a human, and before he began to discharge the office entrusted to him by God, his own Father, … was in heaven, and abode there for some time.” Christ took this heavenly sojourn “that he might hear from God himself and … see in his very presence what he was soon to proclaim and reveal to the world in God's own name.”1 In another place Socinus states that Jesus, “after his birth from the virgin, and before he announced the gospel, was raptured into heaven (in caelum raptus fuerit). There he learned from God himself what he was to reveal to the human race.”2

Accuracy, Sincerity and Capabilities in the Practice of Teaching

This paper examines the relative strengths of two conceptions of teaching. The thinner conception, which underpins a report of the Ministerial Committee on Teacher Education in South Africa, takes the definitive purpose of teaching as the organization of systematic learning. The thicker conception draws on work by Martha Nussbaum and Bernard Williams and comes from my ongoing thinking about the conditions for trustworthy practice. I propose that educative teaching is a practice whose definitive purpose is to enable people’s flourishing by developing their capabilities as these are connected to what Williams calls ‘the virtues of truth’—‘Accuracy’ and ‘Sincerity’. I consider the case for claiming (i) that the purpose of educative teaching is to enable learners to develop the virtues of truth and (ii) that trustworthy practice depends on teachers having these virtues themselves. En route I challenge MacIntyre’s grounds for refusing to admit teaching as a practice.

Teach the University

In the face of bleak circumstances facing academe, Jeffrey J. Williams calls for us to “Teach the university!” It is particularly relevant to our students, who are its future constituents, and it is a fitting topic centering on the tradition of the humanities. He urges that we should teach not only academic fiction or well-known “ideas of the university,” but the combination of history, theory, fiction, and film, and other data on the university.

Shanghai Image: Critical Iconography, Minor Literature, and the Un-Making of a Modern Chinese Mythology

In “Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism,” Raymond Williams demonstrates how the historical symbiosis between the modern and the urban can be reconstructed, both historically and conceptually, in five successive steps. It all starts with an historical experience whose novelty has all but escaped us: a “crowd of strangers” on the street which is unknown, indeed, mysterious. Within this crowd emerges the lonely individual, whose paradox of selfrealization in isolation culminates in an “extreme and precarious form of consciousness,” namely the monad of subjectivity. The third moment can be found in the imagined objectivity confronting the new-born subjectivity, which Williams calls the “concealment” and “impenetrability” of the city. This would be the London in Conan Doyle—foggy, dark, intricate, a huge crime scene necessitating an isolated but penetrating rational intelligence that finds its form in the detective novel.1 Williams’s conceptualization of the city/modernity then takes a sharp, dialectic turn, as the alienating concentration of men and women in the city also gives rise to a new unity or “human solidarity.” Cast in this light, the image of the mob turns into that of the “masses” and the “multitude” with democratic and revolutionary potentials. Finally, the modern metropolis becomes “the place where new social and economic and cultural relations, beyond both city and nation in their older senses, were beginning to be formed” (MP 44). The initial strangeness seems to

Eric Williams and the Moral Rhetoric of Dependency Theory

Eric Williams and the Moral Rhetoric of Dependency Theory Gerald R. Bosch Jr. (bio) How do scholars discuss “capitalism”? How do their stories have the power to persuade? There are, of course, numerous economic theories and historical schools that concern themselves with the phenomenon of capitalism, and many do not even agree as to what that term means. Here, we will examine one particular theory of capitalism and the moral appeal that lies behind that theory’s continuing power. The theory in question was first assembled by the Trinidadian historian and politician Eric Williams and is presently incarnate in a school of economic and historical thought known variously as the “structuralist” school, the “world-economy” school, and the “dependency” school (amongst Africanists another common name is the “underdevelopment” school), and whose most prominent members include Immanuel Wallerstein, Andre Gunder Frank, and Samir Amin. For the sake of ease I will simply call this the dependency school or dependency theory. The dependency school has a well-developed body of theory and literature that deals with the interaction of the West and the rest of the world, both historically and in the present. The key concept in this theory is the idea that the modern capitalist system (defined here as western industrial capitalism in the Marxist sense) has developed and continues to flourish because of its ability to command the resources of the non-industrialized world, through both formal colonialism and through a form of market domination that is usually termed “neo-colonialism.” In their historical analyses, these scholars are very much concerned with the idea of the “original accumulation of capital,” Marx’s concept of a build-up of capital that allowed for the growth of the industrial system. These scholars argue that this “primitive accumulation” was made possible by Europe’s expansion overseas. While this was not spelled out in Marx’s historical writing, there are some passages that can be used in support of such a theory: The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known . . . 1 This theory, however, is more than a scientific way of analyzing economics; it is a moral critique of capitalism, one strand of the larger critiques of that system that are [End Page 817] part of both Marxism and modern anti-colonialism. Moreover, without the moral critique this theory would lose much of its persuasive power. The most easily identified point of origin for this body of scholarship is the publication of Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery, 2 but, of course, any such theory can be traced back almost infinitely. It is Williams, however, that most of the dependency theorists point to as their inspiration. Williams argues three major points in Capitalism and Slavery. His first point, made in the first two chapters, is that slavery is an economic rather than a racial phenomenon. In Chapters Three through Five, he argues that the “triangular trade” was of great economic importance to Britain, and that it provided the “original accumulation of capital” which financed the Industrial Revolution. The second half of the book, Chapters Six through Thirteen, details the fall of the mercantilist Atlantic trade system in the face of rising capitalism (a transition symbolized here by the American Revolution). The abolition of slavery is presented as resulting from these developments. In his preface, Williams calls the book “an attempt to place in historical perspective the relationship between early capitalism as exemplified by Great Britain and the Negro slave trade, Negro slavery and the general colonial trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” and later in the preface he says that the book is “an economic study of the role of Negro slavery and the slave trade in providing the capital which financed the industrial revolution in England. . . .” In the text this argument is laid out in two parts. Chapter Three argues that the “triangular trade,” based in the trade of slaves and slave-produced goods, provided extraordinary profits...

Still a Man's World: Men Who Do Women's Work.

Men who do 'women's work' have consistently been the butt of jokes, derided for their lack of drive and masculinity. In this eye-opening study, Christine Williams provides a wholly new look at men who work in predominantly female jobs. Having conducted extensive interviews in four cities, Williams uncovers how men in four occupations - nursing, elementary school teaching, librarian ship, and social work - think about themselves and experience their work. Contrary to popular imagery, men in traditionally female occupations do not define themselves differently from men in more traditional occupations. Williams finds that most embrace conventional, masculine values. Her findings about how these men fare in their jobs are also counterintuitive. Rather than being surpassed by the larger number of women around them, these men experience the 'glass escalator effect', rising in disproportionate numbers to administrative jobs at the top of their professions. Williams finds that a complex interplay between gendered expectations embedded in organizations, and the socially determined ideas workers bring to their jobs, contribute to mens' advantages in these occupations. Using a feminist psychoanalytic perspective, Williams calls for more men not only to cross over to women's occupations, but also to develop alternative masculinities that find common ground with traditionally female norms of cooperation and caring. Until the workplace is sexually integrated and masculine and feminine norms equally valued, it will unfortunately remain 'still a man's world'.

A Resistance to British Cultural Hegemony: Irish-Language Activism in West Belfast

Abstract: In this article it is to be argued that not all Irish-language activism Belfast is revolutionary, but that rather, to use Williams' terminology, it has both alternative and oppositional ideologies as major components. While both alternative and oppositional Irish-language activists have recovered Irish language and are using it to challenge legitimacy of British cultural hegemony Northern Ireland, difference lies their ultimate goals.The reaction of British State to challenge of Irish-language activists has varied depending on form and perceived intent of Irish-language activist groups. While prior to 1980, attempts were made to exclude Irish language and culture from Northern Ireland, since 1989 State's approach has re-interpretation of Irish language and culture into Northern Ireland context. Mixed reaction to British government's efforts has resulted an impasse.IntroductionThe general focus of this article is an investigation of Irish-language activism Belfast, Northern Ireland, and British State's response to this symbolic challenge to its cultural hegemony. The analysis will address way which Belfast cultural groups, Sinn Fein and British government perceive and construct Irish-language activism.(f.1) Concentrating on nature and form of Irish-language activism and how it is perceived and responded to by those power, and drawing on work of Raymond Williams (1977, 1980), this ethnographic study will suggest ways which multiple meanings of resistance areas where liberation struggles are being fought, can be delineated and analyzed. The study is based on 15 months of in-depth research conducted war-torn environment of Belfast between February 1990 and May 1991.A. British Cultural Hegemony: The Struggle for Legitimacy1. The Theoretical Framework: Raymond Williams' Model of Cultural Hegemony and Counter-HegemonyElaborating on Gramsci's concept of hegemony, Raymond Williams (1977, 1980) developed theoretical model which he analyzed relationship between power and Williams asserted that in any society, any particular period, there is central system of practices, meanings and values, which we can properly call dominant and (Williams 1980:38). This social process of selection, while being tied to relationsof dominance and subordination, is at same time meaningful to both those power and powerless, because it represents a selection from and interpretation of people's history ... [which] touches aspects of lived reality, or experience of dominant and dominated alike (Roseberry 1989:26-27). As Williams (1977:115-116; 1980:39) explains, some of subordinate culture's meanings and practices are reinterpreted, diluted, or put into forms which support or at least do not contradict other elements within dominant culture. Hence, cultural hegemony is powerful that it does allow effective self-identification of dominated with what is always passed off as the tradition, and the significant past (Williams 1980:39). However, Williams (1977:115-116) continues, other subordinate meanings and practices are neglected, excluded, dismissed or demeaned. It is latter meanings and practices that are, Williams maintains, recoverable, and can be used by subordinate group(s) to challenge dominant Therefore, cultural hegemony is also vulnerable because it leaves room for resistance or counter-hegemony to develop.One of sources of this resistance is found what Williams calls residual Residual culture is not, Williams argues, equivalent to archaic culture, even though it has been effectively formed past, but instead consists of those subordinate meanings, practices and values that are still active cultural process . …

Rejoinder-a plea for excuses

Professor Williams calls me a malcontent. I believe I have an excuse. The law of murder does not do what it should do. Present doctrine allows some who do not deserve the stigma of murder to be convicted, and allows others who do deserve the stigma to avoid it. This, in my view, is a failure of justice - of fairness. It is the result of judges, academics, and others believing that problems in the real world cannot be resolved by internally consistent legal rules. They are pragmatists. My plea for rationality in murder is nothing more pretentious than a repudiation of such pragmatism. It is a plea that the substantive purposes of the law of murder should find expression in formally rational doctrine.