Cultural Materialist Analysis of The War Of The Worlds

Abstract

Cultural materialism is an ideological construction, defined by British critic Graham Holderness as “a politicized form of historiography”(Barry 184).The objective of current research is to explore how the residual, emerging and dominant cultural elements are at work in The War of the Worlds. Further, statement of the research claims that the novel helps us to create an understanding of cultural Materialism. To narrow it down further, the present paper intends to investigate three cultural elements: residual, emerging and dominant in The War of the Worlds byHerbert George Wells, commonly known as H.G. Wells.He is well known for science fiction; at that for his approach towards futurism. He has undoubtedly been labeled as science fiction writer by researchers and critics. There are considerable numbers of researches on his writings: but his science fiction was not comprehensively analyzed through cultural studies. That is, how new and old cultural elementswork. H.G. Wells engages side by side with the idea of old cultural elements too, which are still actively participating in shaping new culture. This gap is tried to be bridged by using the lens of cultural materialism; which identifies residual, emerging and dominant cultural elements.