Space, Cultural Materialism and Structure of Feeling: Reflections on the Chinese Reception of Raymond Williams

The burgeoning literature on Raymond Williams in China, over the last decade, is more or less vitiated by the conspicuous absence of the aesthetic dimension, which is a sympton displayed by cultural studies in many countries. A recent tendency in China to emphasise the importance of Williams's literary criticism as his core contribution seems to promise an antidote to the above-mentioned symptom; but it falls short of addressing one nagging issue, namely, the need to specify the ways in which literary works differ from other documents and even excel in their function as cultural critique. A way out of the present dilemma is suggested by a new endeavour to integrate spatial criticism into the analysis of structures of feeling.