The Centenary Edition Raymond Williams: Who Speaks for Wales? Nation, Culture, Identity

by Raymond Williams, Daniel G. Williams (Editor)

In the words of Cornel West, Raymond Williams was "the last of the great European male revolutionary socialist intellectuals." A figure of international importance in the fields of cultural criticism and social theory, Williams was also preoccupied throughout his life with the meaning and significance of his Welsh identity. Who Speaks for Wales? was the first collection of Raymond Williams’s writings on Welsh culture, literature, history, and politics. Published in 2003, it appeared in the early years of Welsh political devolution and offered a historical and theoretical basis for thinking across the divisions of nationalism and socialism in Welsh thought. This new edition, appearing in the centenary of Williams’ birth, appears at a very different moment in which, after the Brexit referendum of 2016, Raymond Williams’s "Welsh-European" vision seems to have been soundly rejected and is now a reminder of what might have been. This new edition includes new material and a new afterword. Williams’s engagement with questions of nationhood and identity contained in this book spoke to readers from Berlin to New York, Sao Paulo to Tokyo. Daniel G. Williams’s new edition further underlines the ways in which Raymond Williams’ engagement with Welsh issues makes a significant contribution to contemporary international debates on nationalism, class, and ethnicity. Who Speaks for Wale s? remains essential reading for everyone interested in questions of nationhood and identity in Britain and beyond.
 

432 pages, Paperback

Published July 22, 2021

About the author

Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist, and critic. He taught for many years and the Professor of Drama at the University of Cambridge. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. His work laid the foundations for the field of cultural studies and the cultural materialist approach. Among his many books are Culture and Society, Culture and Materialism, Politics and Letters, Problems in Materialism and Culture, and several novels.

Reviews

[Theo Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Williams discusses a range of topics but a consistent foundational theme of particularism buttressed by universalism bleeds from the pages. Williams' is earrily prophetic, hopeful and practical in this necessary reading for cymrofiles

[Billy Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly indispensable collection of Raymond Williams's writings on Wales, wonderfully edited by Professor Daniel G. Williams who provides generously detailed explanatory footnotes in each piece and who has written an illuminating afterword for this updated centenary edition. So much has come to pass since the original publication in 2003 and it seems that, although it may be a cliché to say so, Raymond Williams's work is just as relevant now as it has ever been, perhaps more so now that this edition is appearing amid the aftermath of Brexit. Although, as Daniel Williams points out in the preface, aspects of Raymond's vision, namely that of his self-defined 'Welsh Europeanism', may be more out of reach now than ever thanks to the result of the Brexit referendum of 2016, hope for progressive politics is not lost. Indeed, so much of Raymond Williams's thought testifies to an awareness of reactionary pressures without fully losing hope, and of harnessing the lessons and resources of the past to forge a humanist vision of the future.

In Who Speaks for Wales?, many of the pieces adopt a Welsh framework and bring the particularities of the Welsh experience to bear on many questions. An abiding concern of the pieces contained within is that of the link between the particular and the universal. Williams spoke of 'militant particularism', where the struggles of a particular people or movement can nevertheless form the basis for much wider social change. The solidarities formed in the actual, lived relationships of people connect Williams's fierce communalism and firm rootedness in Wales with his socialist vision for the construction of a society that benefits all. It is this and much more that has the potential to inspire the community based direct action that creates, as Williams argued, the 'feelings that make the institutions work'.