L’Image, Communication Fonctionelle by Abraham A. Moles, Elizabeth Rohmer (review)

Books 255 Centre, Johnson points out, tends, among other things, to deemphasize the role of art and the artistic imagination in meliorating social change, in favor of studies that stress the class, ideological and material determinants of culture. It is perhaps not straining to say that Johnson presents yet another version of the two-cultures debate, one that ultimately awards the palm to contemporary critical theorists. With this general attitude and sense of development in mind, we can enjoy the critical forays of Arnold, Leavis and Williams and their respective contemporaries. The latter is included, says Johnson, inorder to help project the ideas and concerns of the major triad. Some of the questions advanced, addressed and discarded, only to emerge again, are familiar enough, but we can thank Ms Johnson for calling our attention to them once again and for reminding us of their original contexts. We are thus reminded that cultural debate during this period turned on questions such as:'Is culture inherently individual or social (or both, as Arnold believed)? Is culture a process or an achieved state of affairs (or both, as Arnold believed)? Should cultural criticism first strive to reconstruct society before trying to reform individuals (as in the divergent views expressed, say, by William Morris and F. R. Leavis)? Should art have a preeminently aesthetic function and be appreciated for its intrinsic values or serve primarily as a vehicle for ideas (as evidenced in the differences between the Bloomsbury Group and the Fabian Society)? Is culture a system of elites or a whole way of life (or both, asT. S. Eliot believed)?Are the preeminent sources of culture to be found in high culture or in all levels of culture (as Williams believes)? Does schooling (state or private) have a major or minor role to play in effecting change, and do the arts, especially literature, have a strategic place in the curriculum? (With regard to the latter, Leavis answered a resounding yes, while D. H. Lawrence for one was indifferent.) British cultural criticism, moreover, was pervaded by a persistent fear of The Americanization of British culture, as America was believed to be in an advanced state of everything that was to be avoided (an exception wasT. H. Huxley, who was impressed with America's vitality). If I am correct in saying that Ms Johnson generally approves of the direction cultural criticism has taken in the 1970s, then I think it is possible to raise a question or two. If, for example, one is still interested in the question of whether art plays a distinctive role in human Iife-a question that involves trying to decide what distinctive values the making and experiencing of art contribute to individual well-being and the general welfare-then I trust one won't get much help with such questions from recent cultural studies, at least insofar as they examine art primarily in terms of its material and social production. Those with traditional humanistic interests are also likely to be a bit impatient with critical theorists who maintain that beliefs regarding the potentially civilizing powers of high culture represent nothing more than a bourgeois prejudice. No doubt cultural studies have contributed valuable insights to our understanding of the relations of art and society, but clearly the questions they ask are no substitute for the humanist's queries. Those whose beliefs are substantially anchored in the humanist literary tradition may thus find it difficult to accord recent critical studies the reception they have received in certain quarters. A question or two notwithstanding, there is still much to learn from Ms Johnson's book. Indeed, as I set it down I found myselfwishing there were a similar study of American cultural criticism available. Finally, it is to Ms Johnson's credit that she finds the several definitions of culture in British cultural criticism an asset rather than a liability. This implies an obligation to organize the complexity of the term's meanings. And these various meanings remind me of something Richard Hoggart once pointed out in 'Culture and Its Ministers', an essay contributed to a Festschrift for the American literary scholar and critic Lionel Trilling. Hoggart refers to some remarks made by...