Raymond Williams: Exploring The Aesthetics From The Perspective Of Cultural Location

Raymond Williams is one of the representatives and founders of British Cultural Studies. His significant theory on Cultural Materialism not only establishes a foundation of Cultural Studies, but also views all of branches in cultural fields at a different angle. Cultures, as a category, are the theoretical starting point of Culture Materialism. While we stayed here so long that the importance of cultural hegemony that should have been considered as the essential core has been weakened in our studies. So the skipping phenomenon in our theoretical introduction can be found everywhere, furthermore, the constructive and processive meaning of Culture Materialism can't be shown. It is for lacking understanding the application of Culture Materialism that the significance of it in theoretical introduction is resulted directly. The perspective of cultural location is based on Cultural Materialism, making a concrete analysis of the arts that change in the different stage of the same times. Today, globalization make the location in arts contact with metropolitan, nation, gender and religion, which are all important factor in modern time. Exploring the aesthetics from the perspective of cultural location can deepen our understanding about Cultural Materialism directly, which must enhance our theoretical level of Marxist aesthetics, and contribute to utilize the resulting of Cultural Studies in studying our own theoretical resources from a new view. The discussion between the arts and location has continuous arisen from past to now. The peculiarity of cultural location is as a concrete application of Cultural Materialism. Precisely speaking, it tests three essential principles of Cultural Materialism. These principles include the new explanation about "base and superstructure"(the category of Cultures how to pose), the mediation of cultures between society and art, and the hegemony of substance in cultures. Williams pointed that the cultural analysis in the arts could avoid the special analysis manner with ideology, in which the arts were isolated from society, and could avoid the mysterious explanations about the arts that resulted from application of some concepts, including "unconscious", "absence", etc. The meaningful contribution of the perspective of cultural location lies in his analysis about the substance of arts, furthermore, Williams puts forward the movement mode of cultural hegemony that dominates the shape of new art form. "Formation"and "Structure of feeling "is the most important concepts in the course of the test. The former focus on the phenomenon in special times from cultural stand and the latter direct the movement pattern of hegemony through the formal change of art. In the process of application of cultural location, we can draw lessons from his definition of Modernist arts from metropolitan view and find his significant explanation the phenomenon of the arts caused by modern location and new mediums in cultures. During studying the cultural location, we will have a chance to face a series masters, such as Marx, Benjamin, Althusser, Jameson, Said and so on, so we can know different theories well and then benefit in many ways through comparing their theories.