Abstract
In 2009, the publishing house Les Prairies Ordinaires published a collection of essays by Raymond Williams entitled Culture et matérialisme, two years after Éditions Amsterdam published Stuart Hall’s Identités et Cultures : Politiques des Cultural Studies. It was the opportunity for Williams, another “founding father” of cultural studies, to be translated into French. When presenting the life and work of this important intellectual of 20th century critical thought, I emphasize the articulation Raymond Williams made between a certain historicist continental Marxist tradition and the Romantic criticism to industrial modernity. There is no surest way to demonstrate the actuality of the Welsh critic’s thought-something quite significant at a time when a radical critique of capitalism and the themes of political ecology are once again emerging in the public arena, the relevance and urgency of which are obvious. This is why I welcomed the editorial initiative of Les Prairies Ordinaires 13 years ago.
Keywords:
Cultural materialism; Revolutionary romanticism; Anti-capitalism; Marxism; Cultural criticism