On first looking into Richard Hoggart's The Uses of
Literacy
1.
There is a little piece of mine that has proved popular,
and useful...
O’Sullivan, P. (2004). On First Looking into Mercier’s
The Irish Comic Tradition. New Hibernia Review, 8(4), 152–157.
It can be downloaded from my Archive at...
It looks at the importance of a specific book, Vivian
Mercier’s The Irish Comic Tradition, in my own life - it is part book review,
part autobiography.
I could write a companion piece, On first looking into
Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy.
In fact, astute readers have already spotted that Richard Hoggart is
there in my Mercier article - and I will leave it to new readers to spot the
relevant sections.
So... Hoggart, The
Uses of Literacy - part ethnography, part autobiography.
2.
I am prompted to think again about Hoggart and his Uses,
by - at last - getting round to reading the biography by Fred Inglis...
Inglis, F. (2014). Richard Hoggart: virtue and reward.
Cambridge: Polity.
The book is visible here...
There are many reviews...
See, for example...
Fred Inglis's book is, in its own way, as unique a thing
as Richard Hoggart's, and - as reviewers have noted - has its own oddities. Inglis, p 228, comments on later Hoggart offering,
'the kind of thing old buffers say as they switch off the ten o'clock news...'
- but himself gives us more than enough old bufferisms. In a sense fair enough - for he clearly
feels he must at least comment on the
destruction of the kind of university, and the kind of public life, that
Hoggart helped shape.
3.
Looking at my own notes about Richard Hoggart... Let me just mention Laurie Taylor's Thinking
Allowed BBC radio programmes, Wed 26 Aug 2009...
Richard Hoggart
'Laurie Taylor discusses the life and work of leading
cultural commentator Richard Hoggart, asking why his time is coming again.
Hoggart's evidence in the Lady Chatterley trial changed
censorship for ever, his influence on the Pilkington Committee established the
norms of public service broadcasting still in operation today and his academic
work led to the invention of cultural studies in the UK.'
Laurie Taylor is particularly nonplussed by the Uses of
Literacy's attack on milk bars - and milk bars, from this distance, do seem a comparatively innocent 1950s experience.
(There is an appreciative comment from Laurie Taylor on
the back cover of Inglis, Richard Hoggart: virtue and reward.)
Milk bars also haunt a nice article by Joe Moran...
Cultural Studies
Volume 20, 2006 - Issue 6
MILK BARS, STARBUCKS AND THE USES OF LITERACY
Joe Moran
Pages 552-573 | Published online: 17 Feb 2007
4.
Fred Inglis does touch, a little bit, on the
international significance of Hoggart and Uses of Literacy. He is good on Claude
Levi-Strauss's appreciation of Hoggart, p 126-7, p 174. He puts Uses of Literacy alongside Tristes
Tropiques. But, p 127, he quotes another
commentator who, in 1957, praises Hoggart in order to disparage Camus (and
Sartre). The logical thing would be to put
Hoggart alongside Camus.
And there is, indeed, a tradition of doing just that...
See...
The two (or three) careers of Richard Hoggart
From the foundation of cultural studies to the
appropriations of French sociology
by Claire Ducournau
And I do like this thesis by William Nicholas Padfield -
which outlines a French tradition of ‘intellectuels de première génération’, that
is writers and intellectuals from relatively 'humble origins', and again puts
Hoggart alongside Camus. And alongside
Bourdieu.
Padfield, W. N. (2015). “L”ascension sociale’ and the
return to origins: reconstructions of family and social origin in the writings
of Albert Camus, Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis. Manchester
Metropolitan University. Retrieved from
5.
What seems to have gone un-noticed, in discussions of
Hoggart, his critiques of the 'Americanisation of British youth culture' (including
those wicked milk bars), and his naming of 'scholarship boy ambivalence', is the
Americanisation of Richard Hoggart...
Our entry point there is Richard Rodriguez...
There is an article, 1974, which anticipates the book of
1982...
Rodriguez, R. (1974). Going Home Again:
The New American Scholarship Boy. The American Scholar, 44(1), 15–28.
Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory: the education of
Richard Rodriguez, an autobiography. D.R. Godine.
(The book is now widely visible, and increasingly visible in the secondary literature.)
The article introduces Hoggart and the Uses of Literacy,
p 17, as Richard Rodriguez tries to find a perspective on his own
experience... 'For the child who moves
to an academic culture from a culture that dramatically lacks academic traditions, looking back can
jeopardize the certainty he has about the desirability of this new academic
culture. Richard Hoggart's description, in The Uses of Literacy, of the
cultural pressures on such a student, whom Hoggart calls the "scholarship
boy," helps make the point... ...he
must choose between the two worlds: if he intends to succeed as a student, he must,
literally and figuratively, separate himself from his family, with its gregarious life, and
find a quiet place to be alone with his thoughts...'
Richard Hoggart is quoted at length in the book, and
becomes a sort of guru figure, commentating from the past as young Richard
Rodriguez shapes his future.
There is a Wikipedia entry on Richard Rodriguez...
And this recent Paris Review is helpful...
And, of course, our scholarship boy is also our
scholarship girl, and perhaps faces even more complexity than her male counterpart... Let me recommend this nicely written,
beautifully paced, article by Laura Rendón...
Rendón, L. I. (1992). From the Barrio to the academy:
Revelations of a Mexican American “scholarship girl.” New Directions for
Community Colleges, 80(80), 55–64.
'It was during my first year of graduate school at the
University of Michigan, far away from the Laredo, Texas, barrio where I spent
my youth, that I read
Richard Rodriguez’s (1975) poignant essay, “Going Home
Again: The New American Scholarship Boy.” Reading this story of how the academy
changes
foreigners who enter its culture (more than it is changed
by them) inspired a powerful emotional response in me. My own odyssey through
higher
education had taken me along an unusual path...' And she quotes from Richard Rodriguez essay
the very lines that I have just quoted, above, about chosing between two worlds.
Rendón finds Hoggart through Rodriguez...
Oddly enough, I found Rodriguez through Irish Diaspora
Studies - I was following some thoughts about nuns and Irish Christian
Brothers... And Rodriguez says, Hunger
of Memory, p 122, his mother's family name is, 'inexplicably Irish', Moran.
Patrick O'Sullivan
April 2018
Note
September 2018
My attention has been directed towards Joe Moran's web site...
The full text of his article,
Milk Bars, Starbucks and the Uses of Literacy
is available there...
