Research Of Tony Bennett’s Cultural Theory

Tony Bennett is an English Marxism literary critic and cultural theorist, a post-Marxist speaking in the contemporary context, and an innovator in the tradition of Birmingham cultural studies. His excellent works include Formalism and Marxism, Outside Literature, Culture:A Reformer’s Science, Popular Culture and Social Relations, the Birth of the Museum:History Theory Politics, Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution Museums Colonisation, Culture Class Distinction, and so on. Bennett not only carries forward the cultural critique tradition from Britain cultural Marxism and Birmingham School, but also assimilates idea from Ernesto Laclau, Foucault and Antonio Gramsci. On the basis of that, Bennett constructs new literature and culture theory with post-modernism property and establishes new paradigm and field of cultural studies which makes him achieves great popularity in the field of cultural studies of Europe and the United States. So, introducing and researching Bennett’s idea are helpful to the Chinese intellectuals who effort to build their own culture theory.This paper, which illustrates by means of text analysis, historical comparison and key words analysis, explores the structural connotation of Bennett’s cultural thought and rheological process to summarizes the main features of his cultural thought and makes an objective appraisal of Bennett’s Unique contribution and historical status in the development of Britain cultural Marxism and cultural studies. Specifically, this paper includes the following contents:The first chapter introduces Bennett’s resume, the development course of his thought and the social, historical and cultural backgrounds which bred Bennett’s idea. Bennett had a philosophy economics and sociology education experience, so his thought of culture is not limited to the cultural phenomenon, but has a strong sense of social problems and active social participation. Generally speaking, Bennett’s cultural theory can be divided into two periods, the early focus on Marx’s literary theory, and the latter focus mostly on cultural studies. Bennett’s cultural thought has its specific social and historical background:after the Second World War, Britain’s economic recovery made workers’ living conditions greatly improved, so than the traditional Marxist revolutionary beliefs suffered a crisis of confidence common among intellectuals. Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall and E.P.Thompson as the representative of the New Left, created cultural Marxism and gradually became the British theory characteristic. Yet after Mrs. Thatcher wielded British politics, the new liberalism became the mainstream political economic thought and the New Left appeared the intergenerational differentiation. Cultural studies had plagued inextricably bogged down in structuralism and cultural paradigm dispute, and Gramsci’s hegemony theory and Foucault’s governance theory had entered scholars view. Under these influence Bennett’s cultural theory gradually mature.The second chapter is of the overall explanation to concentrate on the main points of Bennett’s culture theory. Bennett is a follower of Marxism, insists on the basic principles of historical materialism, but rather, he is a Marxism who stands on the post-standpoint, opposes to all forms of essentialism. Therefore, Bennett don’t give a clear definition of culture, but regards it as a special field of social practice in the open and flow historical context, and defines several basic properties for culture: First, culture is material, the production department of culture and economy is also part of material production, to directly form the social productive forces and production relations; second, culture is historical, not only it is a history development process, construction elements it is the whole human history; third, culture is the governance in nature, is a contemporary liberal society, government guidance and discipline so as to promote the effective way of people’s social relationship coordination and optimization of social structure.The third and four chapters discusses Bennett’s contribution to Marxism theory of literature and art, which is shown in two aspects:one is that Bennett rethinks traditional Marxism literary theory and found that Marxism important branch of Western Marxism aesthetics serious violated Marxism historical materialism proposition, with strong idealism color in the influence of the bourgeoisie philosophical aesthetics, thus far from Marx’s political views. Deeply regrets the long-term confrontation between Marxism literary theory and Russian formalism, Bennett believes that the formalism is not just pursuing formal research, on the contrary, the formalism has strong demands of system and historical dimension, and refuted text-metaphysics to a large extent. Therefore Bennett appeals to Marxist for treating formalism seriously in an objective and fair attitude, and to promote the healthy development of Marxism literary theory in the equal dialogue to formalism.But Bennett doesn’t believe Marxism literary theory can get rid of the dilemma completely by drawing on the experience of formalism achievement, he believes that only through the postmodern turn and the assimilation to variety of ideological resources in the postmodernism context, Marxism literary theory can keep pace with the times and self transcendence. So, Bennett constructs a unique post-Marxism literary theory, which makes up the second contribution to the literary criticism. He regards literature as specific discourse practice, makes the reading formation between readers, text and context as the object of literary research, and combines historical analysis and political analysis to study literature. Bennett’s interpretation to literature is more open, more in line with the dialectical logic of historical development, but can not be denied, the particularity of literature has been forgotten in no small measure.In the second half of1980’s, with close contact with Birmingham scholar and offer of popular culture course, Bennett had a strong interest in cultural studies. So the next fifth and sixth chapters discuss Bennett’s contribution to cultural studies. Bennett does not simply inherit the tradition pioneered by Williams, but makes outstanding breakthrough and innovation. That innovation also has two aspects:one is to modify the program of cultural studies, the second is to broaden the paradigm of cultural studies.Since the establishment of the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, it had regarded interdiscipline as cultural studies’main character that reconciled literature, sociology, history and other subjects. Therefore, Birmingham school firmly opposed to the institutionalization of cultural studies and deemed that institutionalization would limit the vitality and resulted in rigid of the cultural study. However, Bennett’s idea is different, by meanings of retrospecting the history of cultural studies and analysing the current social culture situation he insists that only after the institutionalization cultural studies can obtain long-term development. Bennett’s understanding about cultural studies is that it is a subject with interdisciplinary programs and methods; it is pragmatics and closely relates with the social reality and accompanies with various social movements, at the same time, it analyses and researches institutional, organizational, discoursive, political and other social conditions and actively participates in national and some common affairs; it should not be limited to the study of the definition of culture, but rather focus on the analysis of the relationship between culture and society so that it can develop the actual results help to society.Bennett’s culture research paradigm is influenced by Gramsci and Foucault. In the influence of Gramsci’s hegemony theory, Bennett gave up the extreme positions which regarded the popular culture as completely good or evil. He neither regards the popular culture as the ruling class’ tools, nor regards it as the genuine voice of people from the bottom of the society, but regards it as a field where various ideological struggles here, and the ruling class and the ruled class negotiate and consult uninterruptedly. So the popular culture is always a changing field. In the influence of Foucault’s governmentality theory and micro power theory, Bennett has constructed governance culture theory which regards culture as a social government field where culture is governance subject and object at the same time. The governmentality concept of culture has many points applied in practice:the first is that introducing cultural policy study from the cultural research dimension, combining the top-down path and bottom-up path and making more attention to system design of culture running. The second is that comparing museum and prison, dialyzing the specific political rationality of the cultural complex to discipline people and increasing the social utility of cultural institutions. The third is that appealling the intellectuals to give up the critical position and realizing the combination of critical reason and practical reason. The governmentality concept of culture basing on distinct political perspective, makes active exploration to solve many problems of modern society and opens up a new research paradigm for the traditional cultural studies.On the basis of a comprehensive analysis of Bennett’s cultural thought, the last chapter assesses the implications and limitations of his cultural thoughts. The innovation and development of Bennett on Marx’s literary criticism, the special theoretical perspective of him on associating culture, power and politics and the position of him on calling for intellectuals to turn from pure criticism to practice that all provide valuable experience for us to promote the socialistic cultural construction. But also Bennett has inescapable defects we need to be alert to, because he puts too much focus on practical and effective.