User:Yoana Buzova/R&W/cultural hegemony

The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas---> Marx and Engels:

Marx and Engels state that society is dominated by a ruling class, that is in possession of both material production and intellectual power.The ruling class executes the ruling ideas. However, by attributing these ideas an "independent" existence, this is elaborately covered. The illusion is possible because ideas are separated from those who rule and given a certain feeling of “mysticism”. This creates the deception that ideology and philosophy are separated from politics .

Gramsci | History of the Subaltern Classes, The Concept of "Ideology", Cultural Themes: Ideological Material

Ruling classes are historically united in the State. Subaltern classes are not unified until they “become” State. The strive to unify results in building up new parties .Subaltern groups fail to unite because they lack own history and get entwined in the history of the ruling class. Social groups seek supremacy by “domination” and “intellectual leadership” but actually adopt ruling ideas, accept them as common sense and do not question their function. They transform into ideology rather than serving the interests of the ruling class. Gramsci traces the term ideology to the "science of ideas". He analyses is it as a form of superstructure. He makes a distinction between arbitrary and "historically organic" ideologies. Gramsci emphasises how all forms of media shape and mould ideology. Only by understanding the ruling class, only then could resistance apply.

my definition of cultural hegemony: A complex method that serves the ruling class, thus creating an ever-lasting loop of very well distributed and incorporated in life ideas that feed back to it, i.e. they serve it.

Notes and Speculations about Cultural Hegemony in contemporary society

Cultural Hegemony is by far a well-distributed, multilevel phenomenon, that operates in various if not all aspects of contemporary life and society.

Ideas and ways of thinking that come to us already neatly packaged and presented as our own, as universal, as common sense. One cannot refuse such an easy gift but to embrace it.

A method of "gentle" dominance.

It is consent. It is "the way things are".

Freedom, diversity and openness seem to exist in contemporary life, therefore one cannot perceive beyond that and realise the scale and scheme of cultural hegemony.

It is hard to identify "ruling", there is no clear distinction between ruling and subaltern classes.

The Internet gives us power, unlimited information and freedom of speech. It is a platform to resist the ruling ideas, but at the same time this resistance itself is not harmful to the superstructure, it is needed.