User:Marlon/hegemony

Cultural Hegemony

Cultural hegemony is power not imposed by violence or oppression. It works invisibly: ideas, habits and preferences defined by the dominant minority become the ideas, habits and preferences that adjust the behavior of the majority. A culture that meets the minimum requirements of the majority, but serves the interests and keeps the power in hands of the ruling class.

The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The ruling class, consisting of individuals with intellectual power (thinkers) and material power, produce and distribute ideas. This ideology of classes is how the ruling class maintains or justifies its power. There is the illusion that the predominant "Idea" of a certain period of time exists independently, "a power distinct from the power of the class".

This is succeeded in three steps: by first seperating the ideas from the ruling class, then giving the ruling ideas a "mystical connection" and regarding them as "self determined". Lastly, removing their mystical appearance and applying ideas to a particular person, or persons. They are the "thinkers" that personify these concepts.

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

Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci texts starts with an exploration of the subaltern groups: those of inferior class, excluded from a meaningful role in a power structure ruled by a dominant group. Within these subaltern groups, one social group can exercise hegemony, becoming dominant by exercising power, and "intellectual and moral leadership". For Gramsci, "leadership" results in power, but also maintains it. Ideology, a concept which meaning changed from "science of ideas" to "investigation of the origin of ideas", must be examined historically: "as a superstructure".

Gramsci feels that ideology is used to define a superstructure or the subjective thoughts of individuals. The latter definition he considers the "bad sense of the word", resulting in a changed theoretical analysis of the concept. Ideologies are part of history, because their effect is psychological, in both definitions of the word. Historically, ideology can organize human masses, where arbitrary ideologies only move individuals.

Ideologies and material force are connected: they can both have the same "energy", as Marx proposed. But Gramsci notes that a without ideology (the "form"), material forces would be hard to conceive historically. And ideologies would be "individual fancies" without the material forces, or "content'.

The dominant class has a "ideological structure", in which the press plays the most dynamic part. "Everything which influences or is able to influence public opinion" belongs to it. Gramsci states that by studying how this structure works we become more aware of the dominant forces of a society.

Cultural hegemony in the contemporary world

(Not finished at all, sorry)

Mass media: Gramsci credited the press for playing the most important part in maintaining an ideological terrain, by printing news that fits within the "worldview its advancing" [link]. The content heavily influences the reader, but why does he then read it? "'Because I need to hear about what's happening.' And it would never enter his head that the news and the ingredients with which it is cooked are exposed with an art that guides his ideas and influences his spirit in a given direction." Currently news arrives not only via newspapers, but through almost every piece of media we've surrounded ourselves with. We can still buy a printed newspaper, or find it on the train and watch the news on TV. But the possibilities really expanded when we started using the internet. News is available via our computer, tablet or mobile phone. We have the ability to search for the information we need, extract what we find interesting, find it in our inbox or post it on Facebook. With all these alternatives available, there is a sense of control or freedom. But that is also how cultural hegemony works, we allow it to happen, because we feel free to think - there are options within the system, but they are restricted.

Internet Ideology: The ruling class controlling traditional media, an elite with intellectual and material means, also exists online. The internet was meant to be a construction to enable equal access to information for all, an alternative to mainstream media. In retrospect, this may seem a bit naive. Those with unlimited to internet access, do find a huge collection of information available to them. But it requires a type of training to browse this unsorted collection, knowledge that not everyone possesses. But the internet does have potential, action is being taken to maintain the principle of "net neutrality" (all internet traffic treated equal, though opposed by Google and Verizon).

Possible counter-cultures:

• Open Source Software
• Free Culture
• Hack de Overheid
• Nulpunt (Metahaven & Jonas Staal)
• Wikileaks

Notes

• "According to Gramsci, hegemony is a disposition of power which does not merely coerce its subjects into submission through top-down impositions. For Gramsci, hegemony is a power which saturates, influences, and permeates all aspects of one’s life: the economic, cultural, social, ethical, political, and so on. In doing so, it shapes and moulds consciousness, conceptions of common sense and world-views. More importantly, it creates an “ideological terrain” by positing which are the acceptable political alternatives that may be expressed within the particular world-view it is advancing." [1]