the space of overlap...

Originally, I felt a little bogged-down reading through Williams’ incredibly detailed sections and subsections in his method, but then I started thinking of this work as something of a blueprint. Not only does it contain a glossary of cultural studies keywords, but it also gives us a blueprint of how to carry out our work. With all of this considered, in addition to the knowledge that he is writing this book towards the end of his career, it was easier to appreciate what Williams was trying to accomplish: to literally outline and define the field that he had pioneered in his work.

The thing that I was most fascinated by was the idea of overlap (30-1) which for me really resonated as the perfect way to describe what it is we try and do in cultural studies. I know, personally, when people ask me “what are you studying?” it is very difficult to define it: “well, I study literature, with some theory, and some visual art—and the historical period in which all of these things were developing.” Oftentimes, “interdisciplinary” finds its way into the explanation—but how do you give a concise explanation of a project that spans several discrete disciplines to someone outside the field? This is where Williams’ term comes in. I imagine overlap as the intersection in a venn diagram and circle A, B, C, etc. are different fields in which a scholar can trace a topic. Williams described the role of the bard, the artist with the patron, and the institutionalized artist to show that the arts and literature have never had a solitary existence outside of their relationship to culture, and therefore it is necessary to study the spaces in which the artist and the art meet with the other branches of society:

…but the work now being done, from so many different starting-points, is still a convergence of interests and methods, and there are still crucial theoretical differences at every stage. Another effect of the variety of starting-points, in history, philosophy, literary studies, linguistics, aesthetics and social theory, as well as in sociology itself, is that there is always a problem of overlap with other distinct and still necessary disciplines. (30)

Williams gives us a great outline of what cultural studies should be, and truly exemplifies in the text why he denied being called just a Marxist; his scholarship and his method uproot the limiting effect of definition and categorization so that we can understand the full sociological impact of culture.