Weeks Pass and Confusion Rises

As this course progresses, I feel that everything is becoming less black and white.  Each new definition of culture provides us with a different way of examining culture, not just through the eyes of Arnold or of the Leavisism.  This week we examined the works of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, E.P. Thompson, Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel.  Each of these people had a different way of defining culture and I felt a stronger understanding for and agreement with Raymond Williams's definition, or rather definitions.  In 'The Analysis of Culture' Williams gives us three general categories to define culture: Ideal, Documentary, and Social.  I would prefer to examine only the Ideal today.

The Ideal defines culture as "the discovery and description, in lives and works, of those values which can be seen to compose a time-less order, or to have a state or process of human perfection, in terms of certain absolute or universal views" (Storey 44).  I originally had great difficulty understanding the second half of that definition, so for clarification I wanted to break it down and create my own definition.  The following was how I went about creating my new definition.

According to Storey, "the roll of cultural analysis, using this definition is ... to have permanent reference to the universal human condition" (ibid.).  I would like to break down what this means into smaller segments.  Let us look at the last seven words of this definition; "permanent reference to the universal human condition." First, we must consider the words "permanent reference." I take these to mean an everlasting allusion, or more simply a mention that carries over an indefinite amount of time.  Next, we look at the term "universal"  which means applying to all cases.  Last, we examine the definition of the "human condition" which is defined by Dictionary.com as "the positive and negative aspects of existence as a human being." Putting them all together, we reach the following definition: "An everlasting allusion pertaining to the whole set of positive and negative aspects of existence as a human being."  This new definition that I have constructed may not feel as wieldy to some as it does for me, but breaking it down into pieces really helped to understand what Williams tried to originally convey.
       
Having exhausted my brain and my fingers, I bid you farewell.