Freedom,Community,and Raymond Williams’s Project of a Common Culture

Abstract

This article is part of a project that proposes and explores an articulation of community, culture, and freedom as the foundation of a cultural studies practice built on the principled intellectual analyses of Raymond Williams and Edward P. Thompson and capable of renewing and developing their democratic project. By focusing on community, culture, and freedom as concepts and practices, this article explores their theoretical status and their political potential today. By constructing a position founded on their articulation, a contemporary mode of intellectual analysis is proposed that can offer alternative views of the world we live in and open independent configurations of the human, the social, and the cultural. In the light of this articulation, the article takes account of recent challenges to cultural studies, reexamines Williams’s common culture project, and reassesses it as a basis for a democratic view and project of common humanity in the light of Zygmunt Bauman’s recent work.

Keywords

community culture freedom common culture common humanity Raymond Williams

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