User:Ssstephen/Reading/Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory
What if the means of production is a superstructural idea and not materialist at all? By letting the people believe they are in control by allowing them access to the means of production, can they still be controlled? Eg through force (or the threat of force), access to society, etc.
Is there a relationship between Calvinist predetermination and Marx's use of the word "determine"? Re Calvinists and the time of the witch trials.
There is, on the one hand, from its theological inheritance, the notion of an external cause which totally predicts or prefigures, indeed totally controls a subsequent activity. But there is also, from the experience of social practice, a notion of determination as setting limits, exerting pressures.
Should have just read one sentence further, this is what I was talking about. I think Ray is saying Marx had a more fluid version of "determine" in mind, one with more feedback and flexibility, as opposed to the set-it-and-forget-it universe the god of the calvinists created. What rituals did the Calvinists have that reinforced this idea of predetermination? Are there rituals that work counter to this? For example fortune telling and looking into the future very much depends on whether you believe the future has already been decided. I'm pretty sure physics allows for an undecidable and unpredictable future, which feels like a more empowering future for individuals whose path seems socially determined (in a bad or controlled way). Maybe some undecidable elements of physics could be incorporated into a freeing ritual. What about chaotic systems in mathematics, and chaos in general as a (often outsider) religious idea? I read the phrase "chaos as oracle" somewhere recently, I think it was in Musimathics chapter 9 have to double check. No it was "Chance as Oracle". Re: chance as cosmic will, John Cage, the I Ching, Jung's synchronicity. Chance in art as allowing the voice of nature to enter instead of emphasising the voice of people. This description, maybe makes chance sound antisocialist? It depends if you are taking the voice of "the people" away or the voice of specific people who are in charge I guess.
the notion of ‘homologous structures’, where there may be no direct or easily apparent similarity, and certainly nothing like reflection or reproduction, between the superstructural process and the reality of the base, but in which there is an essential homology or correspondence of structures, which can be discovered by analysis.
What theory is this in reference to? Or what specific examples? When I search this term I just get references to this essay.
while a particular stage of the development of production can be discovered and made precise by analysis, it is never in practice either uniform or static.
Production is always changing, and ideology is always following it with some lag? Or ideology is attempting to staticify production? If the ideology were really behind (by any significant amount) wouldn't it be more obviously inappropriate and useless? The uselessness of ideas only seems to boil over at certain points in history, 1848, 1989, etc.
we have to revalue ‘the base’ away from the notion of a fixed economic or technological abstraction, and towards the specific activities of men in real social and economic relationships, containing fundamental contradictions and variations and therefore always in a state of dynamic process.
This sounds like a good definition to me. "Social and economic relationships" implies production not just of physical goods but, as he says after, "the primary production of society itself, and of men themselves, material production and reproduction of real life". Productive social forces beyond the economy.
If we come to say that society is composed of a large number of social practices which form a concrete social whole, and if we give to each practice a certain specific recognition, adding only that they interact, relate and combine in very complicated ways, we are at one level much more obviously talking about reality, but we are at another level withdrawing from the claim that there is any process of determination...
Why? Yes it is a more complicated picture and therefore making generalisations and predictions is harder, but maybe the reality is complex and chaotic, and predictions should be hard to make? The difference seems to me to be in the words "determination" and "interact", thinking of other complex systems like the weather this seems like a much more appropriate term. The scale of phenomena needs to be taken into account to understand the degree they can be understood, and maybe society is not a machine with two cogs, one driving the other. It is maybe deceptively messy like a double pendulum. I dont think its even that deceptive though, it seems obviously complex to me.
...And this I, for one, would be very unwilling to do.
Why, you too chicken?
[Hegemony] is a whole body of practices and expectations; our assignments of energy, our ordinary understanding of the nature of man and of his world. It is a set of meanings and values which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society.
the selectivity [of tradition and history] is the point; the way in which from a whole possible area of past and present, certain meanings and practices are chosen for emphasis, certain other meanings and practices are neglected and excluded.
Framing and reframing of certain evidence and past practices which furthers the aims of today's hegemony. The celebration (and rejection) of the past is how we define the present and our aspirations for the future.
We have to recognize the alternative meanings and values, the alternative opinions and attitudes, even some alternative senses of the world, which can be accommodated and tolerated within a particular effective and dominant culture.
Hegemony is not a single idea owned by a single class, but the full range of ideologies believed and promoted by all the various agents in society. Does this include non human agents such as corporations, classes or political parties? Is it more useful to think of the ideas of these actors or to focus on a single scale (that of individual humans for example, or the scale of classes), mixing the scales seems useful to me.
Ray suggests the real internal oppositions of things like parliamentary politics 'do not in practice go beyond the limits of the central effective and dominant definitions'. But surely in his previous hegemony-as-multiplicity ideas there would be a more realistic interpretation of the limits of dominant definitions being something more elastic and changing (usually slowly I suppose). In that case I would guess oppositions within society (such as politics) are potential active drivers of these changes in limits, although maybe he is suggesting these oppositions have no real change which certainly seems possible too. If at least the individuals involved in these oppositions didnt desire change to happen (and believe it possible), surely they wouldn't bother with the opposition at all?
Residual and Emergent Cultures
okie, makes sense. Residual exapmples he gives are religious and rural practices and ideas today. The residual culture has to be incorporated into the dominant culture for the latter to make sense. Emergent culture has to be incorporated by the dominant culture too because they are also part of 'effective contemporary practice'. This all makes sense but has a bit of an arrow of time feeling to it that seems wrong, surely cultures can regress and fluctuate between ideas, rather than the new idea always being better? Or even if the new idea is better, it still doesn't mean there will be linear progress.
I am sure it is true of the society that has come into existence since the last war, that progressively, because of developments in the social character of labour, in the social character of communications, and in the social character of decision, it extends much further than ever before in capitalist society into certain hitherto resigned areas of experience and practice and meaning.
Society is more hegemonic than it used to be, seems like a difficult claim to argue but I'm sure historians and anthropologists would have an opinion. But the metrics are so different in a world with NATO, the UN and Big Tech, did these kinds of organisations have analogues in the past? The church, the family, the state seem to have been more powerful? The complexity I think makes it really hard to make big statements like he is doing. This was written in the 70s though maybe it was different then.
In capitalist practice, if the thing is not making a profit, or if it is not being widely circulated, then it can for some time be overlooked.
Can secret subversive ideas spread without detection through disorganisation? For example by appearing multiple, small scale and in conflict with each other, various branches could go unnoticed while actually being part of a bigger whole. Also if things are less obviously oppositional, are they less likely to be quashed or incorporated by the dominant culture. Is this something that would have to happen intentionally, or is it also possible for various supposedly unrelated actors to suddenly discover their shared aims?
It was very evident in the sixties, in some of the emergent arts of performance, that the dominant culture reached out to transform them or seek to transform them. In this process, of course, the dominant culture itself changes, not in its central formation, but in many of its articulated features.
Why does he claim the dominant culture doesn't change in its central formation again? This doesnt make sense to me.
There is no Fifth Symphony, there is no work in the whole area of music and dance and performance, which is an object in any way comparable to those works in the visual arts which have survived.
Unless the definition of 'object' is expanded to include these, which would be helpful for understanding the 'objects' or works of visual arts too. These are not items which arrived to us as if from a time machine from the past and directly from their creator. They are works that are reinterpretted every time they are performed, in a range of active and receptive ways by different participants, just like the musicians and audience of a musical performance. As Christopher Small says in Musicking, 'all art is performance'. Oh this is sort of what he says in the next paragraph never mind, under the name 'notations'.
The relationship between the making of a work of art and the reception of a work of art, is always active, and subject to conventions, which in themselves are forms of social organization and relationship, and this is radically different from the production and consumption of an object.
Again I think he is minimising the word 'object' a bit, but I agree with the general point. There are also complex relationships in the making of other 'objects' like tins of food, scientific theories, smartphones, political ideas, humans: art doesn't seem exceptional here to me.
What this can show us here about the practice of analysis is that we have to break from the notion of isolating the object and then discovering its components. On the contrary we have to discover the nature of a practice and then its conditions.
This makes sense as a conclusion! Good job! Although it seems useful in a lot of situations to examine a practice through the residue of artifacts it leaves behind, so understanding objects has to play a part here somewhere.
I am saying that we should look not for the components of a product but for the conditions of a practice.
Sounds like a good idea. 'A practice' sounds a bit individualistic though, presumably we could also have the practice of punk musicians in 1970s and the practice of schoolboys in Belfast as well as the practice of Stiff Little Fingers.
The irreducibly individual projects that particular works are.
How can you say this after writing all the rest of this essay? Are you implying there is only a practice when objects are taken in relation to each other, and one single object is on its own unique or isolated? I dont think I agree.
what we are actively seeking is the true practice which has been alienated to an object
Sounds like there is a 'correct reading', is this true. A 'true' practice sounds unlikely, maybe a true history would be more useful, but even then that doesn't fully define what something is/means now or what it can do in future. No truth for me thanks anyway.