I must have read the Jackson Lears piece about three times now and each time I’m not quite sure if I grasp the concepts he extracts from Antonio Gramsci. So I looked up some other reading on Cultural Hegemony to gain a better understanding of Lears and Gramsci himself. After doing this I came across a few interesting authors on the subject of Hegemony and included in this blog some of the ideologies they received from Gramsci as well.
Hegemony is the dominance of one nation or culture over the other. This dominance creates norms, socially, politically and otherwise. For Gramsci hegemony takes on a specifically Marxist character. Of Gramsci’s era, the dominant class of a
Gramsci defines hegemony as a form of control exercised by a dominant class, in the Marxist sense of a group controlling the means of production. Gramsci's "hegemony" refers to a process of moral and intellectual leadership through which dominated or subordinate classes of post-1870 industrial Western European nations consent to their own domination by ruling classes, as opposed to being simply forced or coerced into accepting inferior positions. (Lears 568)
Gramsci uses the classical base-superstructure model of Marxism. The economic base included only the material necessary for production. The superstructure was arranged in two halves.
- "Social hegemony" which includes the "'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group [i.e. the ruling class – in Gramsci's Western Europe, the bourgeoisie]; this consent is 'historically' caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.
- "Political government" which includes "apparatus of state coercive power which 'legally' enforces discipline on those groups who do not 'consent' either actively or passively. This apparatus is, however, constituted for the whole of society in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed"
Through a societies superstructure hegemony becomes a form of control. Superstructure is used in three particular ways: Institutions which are the legal and political forms of the existing real relations of production; Forms of consciousness that express a particular class view of the world; political and cultural practices which covers a range of activities when men become conscious of a fundamental economic conflict and fight it out.
The two superstructures do not function solely on their own but come together to create the integral state. Gramsci uses the idea of the “state” to signify the “governmental-coercive apparatus”. This includes the functions of social hegemony and political government. The state is dictatorship plus hegemony. Political society plus civil society equal the state, in other words hegemony is protected by coercion. “Ruling groups do not maintain their hegemony merely by giving their domination an aura of moral authority through the creation of perpetuation of legitimating symbols; they must also seek to win consent of subordinate groups to the existing social order.” (Lears 569)
When a group develops its own particular world view, what Gramsci refers to as a “historical bloc” it may or may not become hegemonic. This depends on how the group establishes itself within the framework of other groups and classes. Hegemony can only be achieved when a historical bloc develops a world view that is appealing to multiple groups within a wide range of society and they must be able to claim that their view is for the benefit of society as a whole (Lears 571). Thus the system of hegemonization is constant, it is a life cycle that consistently meets protest and must be legitimized repeatedly. Power is then fluid it belongs to many and culture is shaped by many, though the hegemony can serve the interests of some groups better than others. Subordinate groups may participate in legitimizing their own domination half-consciously. Lears speaks of a hegemonic continuum which can be closed or open. In the closed continuum the subordinate groups “lack the language necessary even to conceive concerted resistance” and in the open continuum “the capability for resistance flourishes and may lead to the creation of a counterhegemonic culture”. The idea of “contradictory consciousness” allows for one to understand that domination and subordination is fluid as well, it is not built in all defining categories, which according to Lears has opened possibilities for more complex ideas of popular culture.
In an attempt to apply this to a more tangible ideology I present to you Google. Google, used by millions as a search engine but also with the company’s vast methods of organizing your online life (i.e. Google chrome, Google Calendar, Google Docs) it has quickly become a favorite among internet users. If we consider Google the dominant group, which has successfully validated its ideologies, values and uses to the public domain, we can see the contradictory consciousness Gramsci speaks of. Currently Google is now recording the types of websites you visit in order to gather a behavioral profile of your interests purportedly so that they can send you targeted advertising. This policy is in addition to their current policy of keeping a record of every single web search you have ever made along with as much other personally identifying information as they can gather. They claim that they are doing this in order to personalize and simplify the online experience per user making it more efficient and enjoyable. The information gathered can be readily handed over to authorities upon request. They can receive detailed web histories and behavioral profiles in a flash. In doing this they are violating the online privacy of millions. One can safely say that many users will willingly allow for this to happen in order to gain the “perks” Google offers. This is an act done puposly. It is easy for an internet user not to use Google, but instead an alternative web browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer, but subordinate groups may continue in maintaining the Google universe even if it means it will legitimize their own subordination.
Aside from Lears I stumbled across this interesting reading by Raymond Williams on Hegemony:
- Hegemony constitutes lived experience, "a sense of reality for most people in the society, a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas of their lives" (100).
- Hegemony exceeds ideology "in its refusal to equate consciousness with the articulate formal system which can be and ordinarily abstracted as 'ideology'" (109)
- Lived hegemony is a process, not a system or structure (though it can be schematized as such for the purposes of analysis)
- Hegemony is dynamic - "It does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not all its own."
- Hegemony attempts to neutralize opposition - "the decisive hegemonic function is to control or transform or even incorporate [alternatives and opposition]" (113).
- One can argue persuasively that "the dominant culture, so to say, at once produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture."
- Hegemony is not necessarily total – "It is misleading, as a general method, to reduce all political and cultural initiatives and contributions to the terms of the hegemony."
- "Authentic breaks within and beyond it . . . have often in fact occurred."
Works Cited
Anderson, Perry. "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci." New Left Review 100 (1976): 5-78.Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised Edition. New
York: Oxford UP, 1985.
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