Page 211 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

ContCultural Theory Text Pages 4/4/03 1:42 PM Page 202

Contemporary Cultural Theory

practical alternative, within the space of postmodernity, to that
radical commodification that now threatens to absorb the
cultural into the economic. At one level, it registered little more
than the truth of an already existing commonality, evident in
language and in the most fundamental of moral proscriptions.
But at another, it registered the ‘ideals’ of community and soli-
darity, as standards against which to measure the actual
deficiencies of our culture and our society. As Williams himself
concluded: ‘If we are to break out of the non-historical fixity of
postmodernism, then we must search out and counterpose an
alternative tradition... which may address itself...to a modern
future in which community can be imagined again’ (Williams,
1989, p. 35).

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