New+Historicism+&+Cultural+Materialism

Matt Greenawalt Bryce Mullen Paul Bromell Chris Sutch Brian Harvey

New Historicism is a term applied to a trend in American academic literacy studies in the 1980s that emphasized the historical nature if literary texts and at the same time the textual nature of history.

MICHEL FOUCAULT is quite possibly the most influential critic of the last quarter-century. His interest in issues of power, epistemology, subjectivity, and ideology have influenced critics not only in literary studies but also political science, history, and anthropology. His willingness to analyze and discuss disparate disciplines (medicine, criminal science, philosophy, the history of sexuality, government, literature, etc.) as well as his questioning of the very principle of disciplinarity and specialization have inspired a host of subsequent critics to explore interdisciplinary connections between areas that had rarely been examined together. Foucault also had the ability to pick up common terms and give them new meaning, thus changing the way critics addressed such pervasive issues as "power," "discourse," "discipline," "subjectivity," "sexuality," and "government." ([|www.cla.purdue.edu])

STEPHEN GREENBLATT's brilliant studies of the Renaissance have established him as the major figure commonly associated with New Historicism. Indeed, his influence meant that New Historicism first gained popularity among Renaissance scholars, many of whom were directly inspired by Greenblatt's ideas and anecdotal approach. This fascination with history and the minute details of culture soon caught on among scholars working in other historical periods, leading to the increasing popularity of culturally- and historically-minded studies. This general trend is often referred to as Cultural Studies.([|www.cla.purdue.edu])

New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand the work through its historical context and to understand cultural and intellectual history through literature, which documents the new discipline of the history of ideas. Michel Foucault based his approach both on his theory of the limits of collective cultural knowledge and on his technique of examining a broad array of documents in order to understand the //episteme// of a particular time. New Historicism is claimed to be a more neutral approach to historical events, and to be sensitive towards different cultures. More info on Cultural Materialism

Associated in anthropology primarily with the work of Marvin. Cultural Materialism is rooted in the proposition that culture is strongly determined by material conditions. Although it bears a relationship to Marxist Histirical materialism, cultural materialism departs from it on many key points, especially in marginalizing or abolishing the Marxist concern with ideology and dialectics. Instead, Harris favors the idea that culture is an adaptation to material conditions that largely reflects rational individual evaluations of the least costly or most beneficial action. For Harris, material conditions are primarily environmental and geographic, but they also include certain kinds of societal feedback, such as technology, modes of subsistence, and population pressure. For him, these constitute the //infrastructure// on which social and political organization (//structure//)—and ultimately broader areas of belief and cultural production (//superstructure//)—are based. Cultural materialism has been an influential point of convergence for ecology, and since the 1960s. The term has also been used by Raymond  and other social theorists to describe the work of locating texts and other cultural products within the larger material, social, and economic fabric of a historical period. Michel Foucault  's emphasis on the interpenetration of discourse, institutions, and power shares this analytical perspective. In literary studies, some of this work is referred to as “New Historicism.” More info on New Historicism