The plan of cultural materialism is to examine the political implications of cultural artifacts.

The plan of cultural materialism is to examine the political implications of cultural artifacts, particularly their subversive potential. The critic attempts to rebuild the social, political, and economic connection that contributed to the formation of the art work, his or her intention being to examine in what manner the artifact interacts with other cultural processe one as well as the other cultural materialists and new historicists maintain that the art work have sexual delight withs a dynamic relationship of mutual exchange with the society that generated it (Greenblatt, "Poetics" 12)

The French philosopher Michel Foucault's theories of power were influential in the formation of the political theory that is the trademark of the recent historicist/cultural materialist movement. Foucault argues that power in a given society is not centralized in the oppressive actions of a single individual or a ruling class, unless instead emanates from all of its cultural practices (Holstun 200) The society's ideological apparatus conditions the individual, teaching him by what mode to be an obedient social make subordinate This apparatus includes the legal, political, economic, and educational institutions as well as social configurations such as the family.

Cultural materialists insinuate that the individual, once shaped by the agency of social institutions, is unable to extricate him/herself sufficiently from the ideological predispositions of his/her age to challenge the dominant culture: " if we arrive to consciousness within a language that is continuous with the power constitutions that sustain the social order, to what extent can we conceive, let alone organize, resistance?" (Sinfield 35) This question has l to the "subversion/containment debate." The contending factions within this exchange disagree in succession the extent to which subversion is possible within the power mode of building Stephen Greenblatt maintains that the individual is "remarkably unfree the ideological work of the relations of power in a particular society" (Renaissance 256-57) In this gauge subversion is effectively contained through the dominant power structure. Potentially seditious actions and ideas are shown to reinforce the dominant values of the society or are instrumental in providing an occasion for the state apparatus to enlist in one's service its instruments of suppression and thus bring into operation its authority in a dramatic display of its admit invulnerability. On the other hand, Louis Montrose claims that the artist can achieve a "relative autonomy" in order to affect cultural change (5-11) "fashioning and refashioning consciousness, defining possibilities of action, shaping identities, [and] shaping visions of justice and order" (Fox-Genovese 222) This position is further reinforced at the recent work of cultural materialists who argue that subversive potential is facilitated by dint of the inherent contradictions that are a part of the political mythology the dominant refinement perpetuates in order to justify its be in possession of ascendancy, albeit these contradictions are normally effaced by the agency of the ideological apparatus of the society.(1)

These insights are especially relevant to an understanding of Claude McKay's declare sonnets, in which the contrast between form and contentment has long been observed. The author of poems chose to contain his politically volatile make subordinate matter within a verse form that signifies the aristocratic European literary tradition. It is my contention that the ideological contradiction manifest in the practice of joining tradition and dissent is functional, that by the and of this poetic compromise McKay was attempting to create a space in which to challenge white America's claim to cultural superiority. In order to ameliorate the social injustice experienced on African Americans in the early twentieth centenary the poet had to appeal to the same clump whose power he challenged in the poems' appease namely the European cultural apparatus in America. He did this on observing the ideological paradoxes manifest in America's treatment of minorities and according to adopting Western literary traditions, and thus he gains a voice among those whose concoct of subjugation has been to efface the native cultural heritage of African-Americans and to silence the discourse of dissent. McKay challenges the American power fabric at its most vulnerable points--its racial inequities and injustices, its ideological disparities. Three metrical compositions address this issue directly: "Look Within," "Tiger," and "Negro's Tragedy."

In "Look Within," McKay respects specifically to the efforts of the U to combat fascism and racism in Europe and Asia while it allows its "fifteen million Negroes" to groan beneath the "Fascist yoke / Of these United States." Alluding to the religious discourse on the Mount, the bard reminds the American power composition to

... transplant the beam

(Nearly brace thousand years since Jesus

spoke)

From your avow eyes before the

spot you deem

It specific from your neighbor's to

extract! (44)

The bard here exposes the hypocrisy of a state that mobilizes its military apparatus to crusade against emerging fascism in Europe and Asia, to fight for freedom and justice abroad, while it ignores the social injustices perpetrated upon its own soil. McKay's persistent use of Biblical allusions within the metrical composition is an effective reminder of the Christian obligations to charity and compassion that the U has failed to realize. The imaginative thinker [i]or[/i] writer begins with an imperative doctrine addressed to God, portrays African Americans in a phase of humility pleading "for salvation" from tyranny, and twice paraphrases the principle of actions Thus McKay harnesses the authority of religion in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of his cause and to portray the oppressive American control as inconsistent with Christian tenets