Abstract

Although Edward Said and Raymond Williams differed significantly in terms of social background, academic specialization, political orientation, and other respects, Williams was nonetheless one of the most influential thinkers from whom Said drew inspiration and inherited key ideas that would later underpin his critical theory. Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975), Said’s early theoretical work, shares a common intellectual project with Williams’s contemporary writings. Both thinkers sought to rehabilitate the concept of intention, which had been largely marginalized within cultural and social theories at the time. After the publication of Orientalism (1978), Said increasingly and more consciously turned to Williams as an alternative theoretical foundation to poststructuralism. For both Williams and Said, the assertion of intention within social formation—along with related concepts such as agency and causality—did not represent a theoretical regression or contradiction. Rather, it constituted a serious endeavor to construct an alternative social model, one within which resistance and revolutionary change remained conceivable. Said’s engagement with Williams exemplifies a form of transgressive theory: rather than institutionalizing or dogmatizing Williams’s ideas, Said interrogates and challenges them, thereby revitalizing Williams’s concepts and rearticulating them within new cultural and social contexts.

Keywords: Traveling Theory, Affiliation and Exile, Comparative Literary Criticism, Marxist Cultural Theory, Postcolonial Thought

How to Cite:

Nakai, A., (2026) “Restoring Intention in Theory: Edward Said’s Transgressive Reading of Raymond Williams”, International Journal of Welsh Writing in English 13(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16922/ijwwe.13.1.6