Abstract
As the pioneer of British Cultural Studies, Raymond Williams (1921-88) is among the most seminal and gifted critics in Britain since the Second World War. His field of interest is vast, and includes adult education, media studies, politics, cultural and literary criticism, as well as original fiction and drama. In this paper, I concentrate on certain key concepts of Williams: "a whole way of life", "exile", and "structure of feeling". I explore Williams' cultural theory in terms of convergence of art educational concerns, because these concepts provide radical arguments for the rethinking of art education. My conclusion is threefold. First: Culture is "a whole way of life", a matrix consisting of art, education and other practices, interacting with each other. Second: We can rethink "the creative subject" by applying certain themes of British Cultural Studies in the 1950s-70s, especially through Williams' concepts of "exile" and "structure of feeling". Third: The space of art education can be a moment of a general cultural transformation as well as a school cultural one, as an alternative space where "structure of feeling" is elaborated. By drawing on Raymond Williams' cultural theory, I attempt to suggest these points. Through this "Dialogue with Raymond Williams and British Cultural Studies", we will be able to rethink the significance of art education in the second half of the twentieth century.
