Antonio Gramsci The Prison Notebooks

Ideologies in Dead Poets Society

!   How can we identify ideologies at work in a literary text?

!   Identify the “imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”

!   Which subject-positions are the boys interpellated into?

12-10-31 Professor S. Jeppesen

Hegemony

Revolutionary movements

Organic Intellectuals and Subalterns

Antonio Gramsci : hegemony

!   “Power can be maintained without force of the consent of the dominated can be obtained through education and through other kinds of cultural labor on the part of such intellectuals as priests an journalists”

!   Political dominance of one country, group, or ideology over others

!   Hegemony, like ideologies, can be seen as ‘natural’ or common sense

!   Hegemony is in tension with other social forces

2 forms of hegemony Power structures

!   Gramsci studied bourgeois power structures in post-industrial society (1870+)

!   How proletariat consents to domination by bourgeoisie

Revolutionary organizing

!   How leadership can be developed within proletariat and peasantry to overthrow the bourgeoisie

!   Organic intellectuals

Bourgeoisie: "the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage-labour” (Marx)

Proletariat: "the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live” (Gramsci)

State “Entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules” (Gramsci)

Political society + civil society

The governed can withdraw their consent What does that usually look like?

10 characteristics of hegemony

hegemony 1. Leadership / control

a)  Political leadership (the state) - domination, subjugation, force, coercion & control

b)  Intellectual and Moral leadership (civil society) - reciprocal relationships of leadership and consent

2. Social hegemony

!   Spontaneous consent to be ruled, and thus to the general organization of social life imposed

!   Invoked by respect of others for dominant group

!   Function of intellectuals is to manufacture consent

hegemony cont. 3. Attaining hegemony

1.  Acquiring support of ‘subaltern’ allies

2.  Fighting and eliminating opposing forces

4. Maintaining hegemony

1.  Consent of like-minded social groups and allies

2.  Domination of antagonistic groups

hegemony cont. 5. Balance of force & consent

!   Appearance of consent of majority, where force becomes invisible

!   Important role of mass media to foster consent through propaganda

6. Not hegemony

!   Domination without intellectual and moral leadership

!   Force without consent

!   Totalitarianism, dictatorships, etc.

hegemony cont. 7. Economic base

!   Hegemonic political group also controls nucleus of economic activity

8. Organic intellectuals

!   Intellectual, moral and political leadership from within subordinated social classes

!   Fused with practical activities and concerns of the social class out of which they emerge

hegemony cont. 9. Class consciousness

1.  Subject becomes aware of own economic oppression

2.  Subject joins others with similar economic oppression in class struggle

3.  Subjects become aware of and join with other types of struggles (anti-racism, feminism, etc.)

10. Crisis of hegemony

!   Social classes detach from their loyalty to elected representatives

!   Ruling class loses consent of masses

!   Spontaneous, violent solutions are possible

Challenging and resisting hegemony

Cultural Hegemony

Struggles for dominance in the artistic and literary sphere

Tuesday, October 30

!   The Culture Industry

!   (Horkheimer and Adorno 1242)