Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 10:58:02 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: R. Williams on HISTORY & SIMULTANEITY


A very brief note, because I'm in a rush.  Thanks to all for their useful
input.  I'm new to this material, so I have no idea of Bloch's contribution
to the conception of non-simultaneity.  Raymond williams is very high on my
priority list, but I'm ashamed to admit I'm not as well-versed in his works
as I ought to be.  So if someone can give me some specific references in
Williams relevant ot the concept of non-simultaneity, that would help.
Williams also wrote somewhere about the knowable community, which is
interesting, because the concept of non-simultaneity as I understand it from
that brief quote from Jauss negates the very possibility of a knowable
community in the societies concerned.  Am I wrong?  Or am I  going on about
something totally unrelated to the original intentions of Kracauer, etc.?  I
don't fully understand the commentary below, perhaps through lack of
familiarity with the material.

At 12:02 PM 3/1/99 -0600, kellner-AT-ccwf.cc.utexas.edu wrote:
>Tony Lack is correct that Raymond Williams' distinction between residual,
>dominant and emergent cultures is similar to Bloch's Ungleichzeitkeit and
>is also useful today in clarifying distinction between premodern, modern
>and postmodern cultures. Both militate against ideal type separations that
>would cover over the simultaneous existence of cultures from different
>epochs in the present moment. For both, the ideal emergent culture would,
>however, be socialism, a break from capitalist modernity, and not of
>course anything like postmodernism which following Jameson, Harvey and
>others .....