In this selection, which I did not realize was quite so short till I cracked open the text, Williams is predominately concerned with the designation and definition of "Literature," namely in how literature as a genre was constructed and how since it has become a privileged form of media. While a good deal of this section tracks the creation of the concept of literature, what I found rather relevant was Williams careful questioning of literature as a concept. According to Williams, shortly following its inception, literature becomes a concept that is self perpetuating and lauded for being literature. The problem with this approach is that doing so alienates the text from its sociohistoric context, making the text more important than the culture that has spawned it (of course, Williams also has some issues with the concept of culture.
One reason this stood out to me is due to recent conversations with my adviser on the labeling of ideas and terms. He's been calling me out on what he calls "placeholders," or terms/phrases I'm using to move a point forward that, in the end, do not contain the real meaning I want or need there. One term, for example, is "commodification," a term that featured quite heavily in my MA thesis and found its way into my brief prospectus draft. My adviser pointed out that the ideas at play seem to involve more than simply commodification, and simply using that term was to a certain extent limiting my argument. Furthermore, he advised avoiding placeholders such as this as they appear to make a term more defined and concrete yet, in the end, actually make it more abstract. Reading Williams' section was like hearing this advice in a slightly different form, which makes sense considering my adviser's knowledge and use of Marxist and Hegelian theory, a large part of the reason I wanted him to be my adviser.
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