Unworking community: cultural imaginaries, common life, and the politics of division

Abstract

The theorisation of community as a central aspect of culture remains one of Raymond Williams’ most notable contributions. This article revisits some of its central points and critical contexts with the aim of interrogating the continuing relevance of community to any cultural project committed to the political critique of capitalism. The principal focus of the article rests on the notion, already advanced by Williams in the fifties, that any radical project of social transformation must necessarily target the dynamics of division without which capitalism itself is inconceivable. In its attempt to reconstruct the political significance of community, the article examines Williams’ debate with fellow British New Leftist E.P. Thompson and his own modified understanding of the concept in later years across the critical contexts that shaped it. The article ultimately argues (via a series of literary and historical references, including a discussion of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe) that the social project of capitalism is inseparable from a strategy of ‘unworking’ or disarticulation of common life.