Utopia against Abstraction: Raymond Williams, Communication, and the Desire of the Common

Abstract

This essay aims to offer a clarification of the political significance of Raymond Williams’s early work, situating it in the context of utopian thought. Through a detailed reading of Culture and Society’s landmark concluding chapter, as well as his breakthrough novel Border Country, the essay argues that the core of Williams’s early project turns on a sustained critique of capitalist-driven forms of abstraction. The radical political program Williams weaves out of this critique is to be understood, first and foremost, as a utopia of communication and community premised on the measuring and overcoming of division.