The window and the wardrobe: C.L.R. James and the critical reading of sport and literature

This article explores the materialist reading of culture developed by C.L.R. James. Central to James's approach was his refusal to respect the implicit segregation between high and low or intellectual and popular forms of culture. In important respects, the article argues, it is precisely because James begins from an analysis of the practices and audiences of popular sport that his approach to the analysis of literature is as valuable as it is. In particular, the article emphasizes three lessons which James appears to derive from his willingness to think carefully about the political and sociological meanings of sporting practice: first, his attention to the embodied and time-bound nature of cultural reception; second, his consistent rejection of a determinist reading of culture; third, his insistence on the necessity of continuing to make evaluative judgements with regard to cultural creativity.