ideological cover, but which can nevertheless be properly analysed as in my sense corporate, if we find that, whatever the degree of internal controversy and variation, they do not exceed the limits of the central corporate definitions. But if we are to say this, we have to think again about the sources of that which is not corporate; of those practices, experiences, meanings, values which are not part of the effective dominant culture. We can express this in two ways. There is clearly something that we can call alternative to the effective dominant culture, and there is something else that we can call oppositional, in a true sense. The degree of existence of these alternative and oppositional forms is itself a matter of constant historical variation in real circumstances. In certain societies it is possible to find areas of social life in which quite real alternatives are at least left alone. (If they are made available, of course, they are part of the corporate organization.) The existence of the possibility of opposition, and of its articulation, its degree of openness, and so on, again depends on very precise social and political forces. The facts of alternative and oppositional forms of social life and culture, in relation to the effective and dominant culture, have then to be recognized as subject to historical variation, and as having sources which are very significant, as a fact about the dominant culture itself. 9.10 RAYMOND WILLIAMS: DOMINANT, RESIDUAL AND EMERGENT The complexity of a culture can be found not only in its differing structures and social meanings – traditions, institutions, and formations – but also in the multiple interrelationships between historically varying and variable elements at any point in the process. In what I've called \"epochal\" study, a cultural system is seized as a cultural process with distinct dominant features: feudal culture or bourgeois culture or a transition from one to the other. This focus on dominant and definitive lineaments and features is critical, and it is always successful in practise. However, its technique is often retained for the very different reason of historical analysis, in which a sense of movement within what is usually abstracted as a framework is important, particularly if it is to interact with the future as well as the past.It is important to consider the dynamic interrelations between movements and tendencies both 201 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
within and outside a specific and successful supremacy in authentic historical analysis at all times. Rather than concentrating on the selected and abstracted dominant structure, it is important to understand how these contribute to the entire cultural process. Thus, within epochal study, fundamental similarities with ‘feudal culture' or ‘socialist culture' convey ‘bourgeois culture' as a significant generalising definition and hypothesis.However, as a definition of cultural process spanning four or five centuries and multiple cultures, it necessitates immediate historical and internal comparative distinction. Furthermore, even if this is accepted or adopted, the ‘epochal' definition will exert pressure as a static type against which all actual cultural processes are assessed, either to demonstrate ‘stages' or ‘variations' of the type (which is still historical analysis) or, at worst, to pick supporting evidence while excluding ‘marginal', ‘incidental', or ‘secondary' evidence. Such errors are avoidable if, while retaining the epochal hypothesis, we can find terms which recognize not only ‘stages’ and ‘variations but the internal dynamic relations of any actual process. We have certainly still to speak of the ‘dominant’ and the ‘effective’, and in these senses of the hegemonic. But we find that we have also to speak, and indeed with further differentiation of each, of the ‘residual’ and the ’emergent’, which in any real process, and at any moment in the process, are significant both in themselves and in what they reveal of the characteristics of the ‘dominant’. By ‘residual’ I mean something different from the ‘archaic’, though in practice these are often very difficult to distinguish. Any culture includes available elements of its past, but their place in the contemporary cultural process is profoundly variable. I would call the ‘archaic’ that which is wholly recognized as an element of the past, to be observed, to be examined, or even on occasion to be consciously ‘revived’, in a deliberately specializing way. What I mean by the ‘residual’ is very different. The residual, by definition, has been effectively formed in the past, but it is still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present. Thus, certain experiences, meanings, and values which cannot be expressed or substantially verified in terms of the dominant culture, are nevertheless lived and practised on the basis of the residue – cultural as well as social – of some previous social and cultural institution or formation. 202 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
It is crucial to distinguish this aspect of the residual, which may have an alternative or even oppositional relation to the dominant culture, from that active manifestation of the residual (this being its distinction from the archaic) which has been wholly or largely incorporated into the dominant culture. In three characteristic cases in contemporary English culture this distinction can become a precise term of analysis. Thus, organized religion is predominantly residual, but within this there is a significant difference between some practically alternative and oppositional meanings and values (absolute brotherhood, service to others without reward) and a larger body of incorporated meanings and values (official morality, or the social order of which the other-worldly is a separated neutralizing or ratifying component). Again, the idea of rural community is predominantly residual, but is in some limited respects alternative or oppositional to urban industrial capitalism, though for the most part it is incorporated, as idealization or fantasy, or as an exotic – residential or escape – leisure function of the dominant order itself. Again, in monarchy, there is virtually nothing that is actively residual (alternative or oppositional), but, with a heavy and deliberate additional use of the archaic, a residual function has been wholly incorporated as a specific political and cultural function – marking the limits as well as the methods – of a form of capitalist democracy. A residual cultural element is usually at some distance from the effective dominant culture, but some part of it, some version of it – and especially if the residue is from some major area of the past – will in most cases have had to be incorporated if the effective dominant culture is to make sense in these areas. Moreover, at certain points the dominant culture cannot allow too much residual experience and practice outside itself, at least without risk. It is in the incorporation of the actively residual – by reinterpretation, dilution, projection, discriminating inclusion and exclusion – that the work of the selective tradition is especially evident. This is very notable in the case of versions of ‘the literary-tradition’, passing through selective versions of the character of literature to connecting and incorporated definitions of what literature now is and should be. This is one among several crucial areas, since it is in some alternative or even oppositional versions of what literature is (has been) and what literary experience (and in one common derivation, other significant experience) is and must be, that, against the pressures of incorporation, actively residual meanings and values are sustained. 203 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
By ’emergent’ I mean, first, that new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationship are continually being created. But it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish between those which are really elements of some new phase of the dominant culture (and in this sense ‘species-specific’) and those which are substantially alternative or oppositional to it: emergent in the strict sense, rather than merely novel. Since we are always considering relations within a cultural process, definitions of the emergent, as of the residual, can be made only in relation to a full sense of the dominant. Yet the social location of the residual is always easier to understand, since a large part of it (though not all) relates to earlier social formations and phases of the cultural process, in which certain real meanings and values were generated. In the subsequent default of a particular phase of a dominant culture there is then a reaching back to those meanings and values which were created in actual societies and actual situations in the past, and which still seem to have significance because they represent areas of human experience, aspiration, and achievement which the dominant culture neglects, undervalues, opposes, represses, or even cannot recognize. The case of the emergent is radically different. It is true that in the structure of any actual society, and especially in its class structure, there is always a social basis for elements of the cultural process that are alternative or oppositional to the dominant elements. One kind of basis has been valuably described in the central body of Marxist theory: the formation of a new class, the coming to consciousness of a new class, and within this, in actual process, the (often uneven) emergence of elements of a new cultural formation. Thus, the emergence of the working class as a class was immediately evident (for example, in nineteenth-century England) in the cultural process. But there was extreme unevenness of contribution in different parts of the process. The making of new social values and institutions far outpaced the making of strictly cultural institutions, while specific cultural contributions, though significant, were less vigorous and autonomous than either general or institutional innovation. A new class is always a source of emergent cultural practice, but while it is still, as a class, relatively subordinate, this is always likely to be uneven and is certain to be incomplete. For new practice is not, of course, an isolated process. To the degree that it emerges, and especially to the degree that it is oppositional rather than alternative, the process of attempted incorporation significantly begins. This can be seen, in the same period in 204 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
England, in the emergence and then the effective incorporation of a radical popular press. It can be seen in the emergence and incorporation of working-class writing, where the fundamental problem of emergence is clearly revealed, since the basis of incorporation, in such cases, is the effective predominance of received literary forms – an incorporation, so to say, which already conditions and limits the emergence. But the development is always uneven. Straight incorporation is most directly attempted against the visibly alternative and oppositional class elements: trade unions, working-class political parties, working-class life styles (as incorporated into ‘popular’ journalism, advertising, and commercial entertainment). The process of emergence, in such conditions, is then a constantly repeated, an always renewable, move beyond a phase of practical incorporation: usually made much more difficult by the fact that much incorporation looks like recognition, acknowledgement, and thus a form of acceptance. In this complex process there is indeed regular confusion between the locally residual (as a form of resistance to incorporation) and the generally emergent. Cultural emergence in relation to the emergence and growing strength of a class is then always of major importance, and always complex. But we have also to see that it is not the only kind of emergence. This recognition is very difficult, theoretically, though the practical evidence is abundant. What has really to be said, as a way of defining important elements of both the residual and the emergent, and as a way of understanding the character of the dominant, is that no mode of production and therefore no dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all human practice, human energy, and human intention. This is not merely a negative proposition, allowing us to account for significant things which happen outside or against the dominant mode. On the contrary it is a fact about the modes of domination, that they select from and consequently exclude the full range of human practice. What they exclude may often be seen as the personal or the private, or as the natural or even the metaphysical. Indeed, it is usually in one or other of these terms that the excluded area is expressed, since what the dominant has effectively seized is indeed the ruling definition of the social. It is this seizure that has especially to be resisted. For there is always, though in varying degrees, practical consciousness, in specific relationships, specific skills, specific 205 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
perceptions, that is unquestionably social and that a specifically dominant social order neglects, excludes, represses, or simply fails to recognize. A distinctive and comparative feature of any dominant social order is how far it reaches into the whole range of practices and experiences in an attempt at incorporation. There can be areas of experience it is willing to ignore or dispense with: to assign as private or to specialize as aesthetic or to generalize as natural. Moreover, as a social order changes, in terms of its own developing needs, these relations are variable. Thus, in advanced capitalism, because of changes in the social character of labour, in the social character of communications, and in the social character of decision-making, the dominant culture reaches much further than ever before in capitalist society into hitherto ‘reserved’ or ‘resigned’ areas of experience and practice and meaning. The area of effective penetration of the dominant order into the whole social and cultural process is thus now significantly greater. This in turn makes the problem of emergence especially acute, and narrows the gap between alternative and oppositional elements. The alternative, especially in areas that impinge on significant areas of the dominant, is often seen as oppositional and, by pressure, often converted into it. Yet even here there can be spheres of practice and meaning which, almost by definition from its own limited character, or in its profound deformation, the dominant culture is unable in any real terms to recognize. Elements of emergence may indeed be incorporated, but just as often the incorporated forms are merely facsimiles of the genuinely emergent cultural practice. Any significant emergence, beyond or against a dominant mode, is very difficult under these conditions; in itself and in its repeated confusion with the facsimiles and novelties of the incorporated phase. Yet, in our own period as in others, the fact of emergent cultural practice is still undeniable, and together with the fact of actively residual practice is a necessary complication of the would-be dominant culture. This complex process can still in part be described in class terms. But there is always other social being and consciousness which is neglected and excluded: alternative perceptions of others, in immediate relationships; new perceptions and practices of the material world. In practice these are different in quality from the developing and articulated interests of a rising class. The relations between these two sources of the emergent – the class and the excluded social (human) area – are by no means necessarily contradictory. At times they can be very close and on the relations between them much in political practice depends. But culturally and as a matter of theory the areas can be seen as distinct. 206 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
What matters, finally, in understanding emergent culture, as distinct from both the dominant and the residual, is that it is never only a matter of immediate practice; indeed, it depends crucially on finding new forms or adaptations of form. Again, and again what we have to observe is in effect a pre-emergence, active and pressing but not yet fully articulated, rather than the evident emergence which could be more confidently named. It is to understand more closely this condition of pre-emergence, as well as the more evident forms of the emergent, the residual, and the dominant that we need to explore the concept of structures of feeling. 9.11 SUMMARY The essay sees Williams trying to overcome the relationship between the determined superstructure and the determining base of mechanical materialism. Any modern approach to a Marxist theory of culture must begin by considering the proposition of a determining base and a determined superstructure. Rather than being a fixed category, William distinguishes culture through three different categories; dominant, residual, and emergent that stresses the ongoing process of culture. The dominant culture refers to the established language and ideals held as the norms for a society, usually imposed by the majority. In Raymond Williams short but rich selection of his book Marxism and Literature, “Dominant, Residual, and Emergent,” we find a fascinating essay that both explains how dominant social structures maintain their dominance, while at the same time other social groups and in fact individuals can contradict or subvert those cultures. In short, his main ideas of importance are right in the title. There are dominant, residual, and emergent parts of any cultural group. Interestingly enough, while dominant is the most powerful shaping force as obviously indicated by the name, it does not get its own section of the essay, but is mostly shown as the sort of cultural mass that he pokes at with his other types of culture. Dominant culture oversees the whole essay, without ever being explained outright. I suppose Williams thought readers would have enough cultural awareness to understand the dominant group in their own cultures without direct explanation. It is valid that the reader’s dominant culture, clearly visible through practices and ideas they themselves are immersed in require no broad explanation. In our case consumerism and a focus on individuality are two examples that I would consider part of the dominant in 207 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
American culture. Williams does however, clearly explain the other two ideas, residual and emergent. 9.12 KEYWORDS Residual: remaining after the greater part or quantity has gone. Superstructure: a structure built on top of something else. Emergent: in the process of coming into being or becoming prominent. Marxist: Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx. It examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism. Dominant: commanding, controlling, or prevailing over all others the dominant culture. 9.13 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Research on several publications of Raymond Williams. __________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 9.14UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. Describe Raymond Williams as a Marxist? 2. What is Raymond Williams’ contribution to the ‘Cultural Studies’? 3. Why Base and Superstructure are the key terms in Marxist Theory? 4. Williams distinguishes culture through three different categories: dominant, residual, and emergent. Define? 208 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Long Questions 1. What is Raymond Williams contribution to cultural studies? 2. What is William's definition of base and superstructure? 3 How does Raymond Williams define hegemony? 4. How does the superstructure influence the base? 5. How is Hegemony defined by Antonio Gramsci? B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. Raymond Williams belongs to a. Scotland b. England c. Wales d. Ireland 2. Williams takes great pain to define the notion of a. Dedication b. Perseverance c. Coordination d. Determination 3. A unitary “area” within which all the cultural and ideological activities could be placed is a. Residual b. Superstructure c. Base d. Emergent 209 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
4. “The new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kind of relationships are continually being created” is defining to the concept of a. Emergent b. Residual c. Dominant d. None of these Answers 1-c, 2-d, 3-b, 4-a 9.15 REFERENCES Reference’s book Abrams, M.H. \"Marxist Criticism.\" A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999. 147-153. Biddle, Arthur W., and Toby Fulwiler. Reading, Writing, and the Study of Literature. NY: Random House, 1989. Lynn, Steven. Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory. 2nd ed. NY: Longman, 1998. Textbook references Mamoria, C.B. (2002). Personnel Management. Mumbai: Himalaya Publishing House. Dipak Kumar Bhattacharyya, Human Resource Management, Excel Books. French, W.L. (1990), Human Resource Management, 4th ed., Houghton Miffin, Boston. H.J. Bernardin, Human Resource Management, Tata McGraw Hill, New Delhi, 2004. Website http://www.slideshare.net/sreenath.s/evolution-of-hrm 210 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
www.articlesbase.com/training-articles/evolution-of-human-resource- management- 1294285.html http://www.oppapers.com/subjects/different-kinds-of-approaches-to-hrm- page1.html 211 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
UNIT – 10: ANTONIO GRAMSCI: ‘THE FORMATION OF THE INTELLECTUALS’ AND ‘HEGEMONY (CIVIL SOCIETY) AND SEPERATION OF POWERS’ Structure 10.0 Learning Objective 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Gramsci’s life and thought 10.3 The Formation of the Intellectuals 10.4 Hegemony 10.5 Concept of Gramsci’s Hegemony 10.6 Summary 10.7 Keywords 10.8 Learning Activity 10.9Unit End Questions 10.10References 10.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, you should be able to: Identify Antonio Gramsci and his work Describe why, when and how Gramsci played different roles Identify the concept of ‘The Formation of the Intellectuals’. Describe the theory of ‘Hegemony’ 10.1 INTRODUCTION Antonio Gramsci, (born Jan. 23, 1891, Ales, Sardinia, Italy—died April 27, 1937, Rome), intellectual and politician. Hewas an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer 212 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy, his ideas greatly influenced Italian communism. He was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. Gramsci was a central figure in the growth of Western Marxism and one of the most influent ial Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century. Gramsci's tracing of Italian history and nationalism, as well as some concepts in Marxist phi losophy, critical theory, and educational theory synonymous with his name, are included in t he Prison Notebooks. Maintaining and legitimising the capitalist state by cultural hegemony. 213 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
The importance of mainstream worker education in fostering the academic growth of working-class intellectuals. An overview of the current capitalist state that distinguishes between political society, which governs directly and coercively, and civil society, which is guided by consent. Historicism without a doubt An answer to fatalistic interpretations of Marxism's economic determinism. Italian history and nationalism, the French Revolution, imperialism, Taylorism, and Fordism, civil society, mythology, religion, and high and popular culture are among the subjects covered in the notebooks. “Hegemony” was most likely derived from the Greek egemonia, whose root is egemon, meaning “leader, ruler, often in the sense of a state other than his own” (Williams, Keywords 144). Since the 19th century, “hegemony” commonly has been used to indicate “political predominance, usually of one state over another” (Williams, Keywords 144). According to Perry Anderson’s “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,” “hegemony” acquired a specifically Marxist character in its use (as “gegemoniya“) by Russian Social-Democrats, from the late 1890s through the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 (15). This sense of hegemony, as articulated by Lenin, referred to the leadership exercised by the proletariat over the other exploited classes: “As the only consistently revolutionary class of contemporary society, [the proletariat] must be the leader in the struggle of the whole people for a fully democratic revolution, in the struggle of all the working and exploited people against the oppressors and exploiters” (qtd. in Anderson 17). 214 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Portrait of Antonio Gramsci around 30 in the early 20s/ public domain Italian Communist thinker, activist, and political leader Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) is perhaps the theorist most closely associated with the concept of hegemony. As Anderson notes, Gramsci uses “hegemony” to theorize not only the necessary condition for a successful overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat and its allies (e.g., the peasantry), but also the structures of bourgeois power in late 19th- and early 20th-century Western European states (SPN 20). Gramsci, particularly in his later work encompassed in the Quaderni del Carcere or Prison Notebooks (written during the late 1920s and early 1930s while incarcerated in a Fascist prison), develops a complex and variable usage of the term; roughly speaking, 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. It is important to note that, although Gramsci’s prison writings typically avoid using Marxist terms such as “class,” “bourgeoisie,” and “proletariat” (because his work was read by a Fascist censor), 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 uses “fundamental group” to stand in euphemistically for “class” (SPN 5 n1). For Gramsci, the dominant class of a Western Europe nation of his time was the bourgeoisie, defined in the Communist Manifesto as “the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage-labour,” while the crucial (because potentially revolution-leading) subordinate class 215 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
was the 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” (SPN 473 n5). Gramsci’s use of hegemony cannot be understood apart from other concepts he develops, including those of “state” and “civil society” (see Caste in India). State and Civil Society For Gramsci, hegemony was a form of control exercised primarily through a society’s superstructure, as opposed to its base or social relations of production of a predominately economic character. In Marxism and Literature, Raymond Williams identifies three ways in which “superstructure” is used in the work of Karl Marx, including: 1. (a) legal and political forms which express existing real relations of production; 2. (b) forms of consciousness which express a particular class view of the world; 3. (c) a process in which, over a whole range of activities, men [sic] become conscious of a fundamental economic conflict and fight it out. These three senses would direct our attention, respectively, to (a) institutions; (b) forms of consciousness; (c) political and cultural practices” (77). (See also Colonial Education, Cricket, Anglophilia.) For purposes of analysis, Gramsci splits superstructure into “two major . . . ‘levels’: the one that can be called ‘civil society,’ that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called ‘private,’ and that of ‘political society,’ or ‘the State.’” Civil society includes organizations such as churches, trade unions, and schools, which as Gramsci notes are typically thought of as private or non-political. A major piece of Gramsci’s project is to show that civil society’s ways of establishing and organizing human relationships and consciousness are deeply political, and should in fact be considered integral to class domination (and to the possibility of overcoming it), particularly in Western Europe. According to Gramsci, civil society corresponds to hegemony, while political society or “State” — in what Gramsci will call the “narrow sense” (SPN 264) — corresponds to “‘direct domination’ or command” (SPN 12) (see Gender and Nation). Gramsci further delineates these two relatively distinct forms of control, as follows: “Social hegemony” names 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 216 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.” “Political government” names the “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” (SPN 12). Although they are useful for understanding different modes or aspects of social control, Gramsci does not retain “social hegemony” and “political government” as purely distinct categories, but rather brings them together under the “integral State.” Integral State While Gramsci at times uses “State” narrowly to refer to the “governmental-coercive apparatus” (265), he also deploys a broader “general notion of State” (SPN 263) or “integral State” (SPN 267), which includes both the functions of social hegemony and political government as described above. In this general or integral sense, 1. State is “dictatorship + hegemony” (SPN 239) 2. “State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armor of coercion” (SPN 263) 3. “State is the 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” (SPN 244). The concept of integral State seems derived from historical shifts in the forms of and relations between State and Civil Society, which Gramsci discusses in terms of a parallel shift in military strategies, from a war of movement or manoeuvre, to war of position. War of Manoeuvre and War of Position Gramsci theorizes historical changes in modes of political struggle by drawing parallels between political struggle and military war. World War I staged a transition from (1) war of manoeuvre/movement or frontal attack (SPN 238), characterized by relatively rapid movements of troops, to (2) war of position or trench warfare, involving relatively immobile troops who dig and fortify relatively fixed lines of trenches. For “modern States” — though not for “backward countries or for colonies” — the war of manoeuvre increasingly gives 217 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
way to war of position, which “is not, in reality, constituted simply by the actual trenches, but by the whole organizational and industrial system of the territory which lies to the rear of the army in the field” (SPN 234). The “modern States” — meaning post-1870 Western European States — are marked by: 1. Ever-wider colonial expansion 2. Increasing complexity and massiveness of internal and international organizational relations of the State 3. Emergence of great mass political parties and economic trade unions 4. Diminished fluidity of society 5. Declining autonomy of civil society from State activity 6. Increasing importance of civil hegemony 7. Diminishing autonomy of national markets from economic relations of the world market. Gramsci asserts that the “massive structures of the modern democracies, both as State organizations, and as complexes of associations in civil society, constitute for the art of politics as it were the ‘trenches’ and the permanent fortifications of the front in the war of position …” (SPN 243). In other passages comparing social structures to trenches and fortifications, Gramsci stresses the importance of Civil Society, either by (1) suggesting it is stronger than the State as governmental-coercive apparatus: “when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks” (SPN 238); or (2) omitting altogether reference to the State as “government technically understood” (SPN 267): “civil society” has become a very complex structure and one which is resistant to the catastrophic “incursions” of the immediate economic element (crises, depressions, etc.). The superstructures of civil society are like the trench-systems of modern warfare. In war it would sometimes happen that a fierce artillery attack seemed to have destroyed the enemy’s entire defensive system, whereas in fact it had only destroyed the outer perimeter (SPN 235). 218 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Gramsci thus develops an argument not only about the power structures of Western European states, but also about the kind of Communist revolution that might succeed in such states. He argues against a view that economic forces and crises will in themselves suffice to bring about the overthrow of capitalist relations of production and the installation of the proletariat as controllers of the means of production. Economic crisis alone will not galvanize the exploited classes, transforming them into an iron will; neither will it dishearten the “defenders” [the bourgeoisie] nor force them to “abandon their positions, even among the ruins” (SPN 253). Gramsci also argues against the view that the working classes can overthrow the bourgeoisie simply through military strikes — “to fix one’s mind on the military model is the mark of a fool: politics, here too, must have priority over its military aspect, and only politics creates the possibility for manoeuvre and movement” (SPN 232). Political struggle for Gramsci necessarily involves a struggle for hegemony, a class’s struggle to become a State and take up the role of State as educator. Hegemony as Education According to Gramsci, one of the most important functions of a State is “to raise the great mass of the population to a particular cultural and moral level, a level (or type) which corresponds to the needs of the productive forces for development, and hence to the interests of the ruling class” (SPN 258). The ruling class in Gramsci’s Italy (and in the other Western European states of which he writes) was the bourgeoisie, though it seems that his remarks might function also as a blueprint for Communist rule. Gramsci proceeds to claim that the State — which at one point Gramsci asserts is equivalent to the “fundamental economic group” or ruling class (bourgeoisie) itself (SPN 16) — implements its educative project through a variety of channels, both “public” and “private”, with the “school as a positive educative function, and the courts as a repressive and negative educative function” constituting “the most important State activities in this sense […][B]ut, in reality,” Gramsci maintains, “a multitude of other so-called private initiatives and activities tend to the same end — initiatives and activities which form the apparatus of the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling classes” (SPN258). Hegemony, therefore, is a process by which “educative pressure [is] applied to single individuals so as to obtain their consent and their collaboration, turning necessity and coercion into ‘freedom.’” The “freedom” produced by instruments of the ruling class thus molds the “free” subject to the needs of an economic base, “the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production” (SPN 242). It is difficult to determine the status of this educated “freedom” in Gramsci’s writing, but 219 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Gramsci does assert its “immense political value (i.e. value for political leadership)” in a discussion of political parties, which for Gramsci “must show in their specific internal life that they have assimilated as principles of moral conduct those rules which in the State are legal obligations. In the parties necessity has already become freedom” (242). The party exemplifies the “type of collective society to which the entire mass must be educated” (SPN 267) (see Colonial Education). For a discussion of ways in which educative practices, particularly those of literary studies, have been used to establish hegemony in a colonial setting, see GauriViswanathan’s Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. Viswanathan’s text demonstrates how English literary studies emerged as a discipline in colonial settings — prior to its institutionalization in England itself — with “the imperial mission of educating and civilizing colonial subjects in the literature and thought of England,” thus “serv[ing] to strengthen Western cultural hegemony in enormously complex ways” (2-3). As Viswanathan argues, the process of moral and ethical formation of Indian colonial subjects through the study of English literature was intimately linked to the consolidation and maintenance of British rule in India. Raymond Williams on Hegemony Readers interested in a concise and brilliant exposition of “hegemony” should consult the chapter devoted to it in Raymond Williams’s Marxism and Literature (1977). Williams’s key points include the following: 1. 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). 2. Hegemony exceeds ideology, “in its refusal to equate consciousness with the articulate formal system which can be and ordinarily abstracted as ‘ideology’” (109) 3. Lived hegemony is a process, not a system or structure (though it can be schematized as such for the purposes of analysis). 4. 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.” 5. Hegemony attempts to neutralize opposition, “the decisive hegemonic function is to control or transform or even incorporate [alternatives and opposition]” (113). One can 220 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
argue persuasively that “the dominant culture, so to say, at once produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture.” 6. 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.” Breaks become more apparent “if we develop mode of analysis which instead of reducing works to finished products, and activities to fixed positions, are capable of discerning, in good faith, the finite but significant openness of many actual initiatives and contributions” (114, emphases mine). Works Cited Anderson, Perry. “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci.” New Left Review 100 (1976): 5-78. Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks, I-II. Ed. and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg. Trans. Antonio Callari. European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992-1996. Quaderni del carcere / Antonio Gramsci; a cura di Valentino Gerratana. Turin: G. Einaudi, 1977. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971. Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Select Bibliography Adamson, Walter L. Hegemony and Revolution : A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Augelli, Enrico and Craig Murphy. America’s Quest for Supremacy and the Third World: A Gramscian Analysis. London: Pinter Publishers, 1988. Bocock, Robert. Hegemony. New York: Tavistock Publications, 1986. Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavojiek. Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso, 2000. 221 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Dombrowski, Robert S. “Ideology, Hegemony, and Literature: Some Reflections on Gramsci.” Forum Italicum 23 (105-17). Femia, Joseph. Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. Fontana, Benedetto. Hegemony and Power: On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. “Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on Hegemony.” Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 305-26. Ghosh, Peter. “Gramscian Hegemony: An Absolutely Historicist Approach.” History of European Ideas 27 (2001): 1-43. Gill, Stephen, ed. Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Golding, Susan R. Gramsci’s Democratic Theory: Contributions to a Post-Liberal Democracy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Gramsci, Antonio. Antonio Gramsci: Pre-Prison Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Ed. and trans. Derek Boothman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Letters From Prison. Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. Ed. Frank Rosengarten. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Selections from Cultural Writings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. Selections from the Political Writings. Ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1978. Hall, Stuart. “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 10.2 (1986): 5-27. Hardt, Michael. “The Withering of Civil Society.” Social Text 45 (1995), 27-44. Harris, David. From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure: The Effects of Gramscianism on Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1991 Holub, Renate. Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism. London: Routledge, 1992. Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal. Hegemony and Social Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso, 1985. Landy, Marcia. Film, Politics, and Gramsci. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. 222 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Levy, Carl. Gramsci and the Anarchists. Oxford: Berg, 1999. Liu, Kang. “Hegemony and Cultural Revolution.” New Literary History 28 (1997): 69- 86. Martin, James. Gramsci’s Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Mouffe, Chantal. “Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci.” Research in Political Economy 2 (1979), 1-31. Mouffe, Chantal, ed. Gramsci and Marxist Theory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. Sassoon, Anne Showstack. Gramsci and Contemporary Politics: Beyond Pessimism of the Intellect. London: Routledge, 2000. Storey, John. An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. 2nd ed. New York: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1997. Watkins, Evan. Throwaways: Work Culture and Consumer Education. Stanford: Stanford University Press,1993. Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. The bourgeoisie, in Gramsci's view, develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. Hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the \"common sense\" values of all and thus maintain the status quo. Cultural hegemony is therefore used to maintain consent to the capitalist order, rather than the use of force to maintain order. This cultural hegemony is produced and reproduced by the dominant class through the institutions that form the superstructure. Gramsci also attempted to break from the economic determinism of traditional Marxist thought, and so is sometimes described as a neo-Marxist. He held a humanistic understanding of Marxism, seeing it as a \"philosophy of praxis\" and an \"absolute historicism\" that transcends traditional materialism and traditional idealism. 10.2GRAMSCI'S LIFE AND THOUGHT Gramsci began a brilliant academic career at the University of Turin in 1911, where he met the Socialist Youth Federation and became a member of the Socialist Party (1914). During World War I, he studied Marxism and rose to prominence as a leading theorist. He founded 223 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
the newspaper L'OrdineNuovo (May 1919; \"The New Order\") after creating a radical faction within the Socialist Party. Gramsci advocated the establishment of factory councils (democratic bodies elected directly by factory workers) to combat trade union influence. In Turin (1920), the councils took part in a general strike, in which Gramsci was a key figure. In 1911 Gramsci won a scholarship to study at the University of Turin and began a brilliant scholastic career at the University of Turin, where he came in contact with the Socialist Youth Federation and joined the Italian Socialist Party in late 1913. During World War I he studied Marxist thought and became a leading theoretician. After this, he was imprisoned. Extracts of Gramsci’s prison writings were published for the first time in the mid-20th century; the complete Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks) appeared in 1975. Many of his propositions became a fundamental part of Western Marxist thought and influenced the post-World War II strategies of communist parties in the West. His reflections on the cultural and political concept of hegemony (notably in southern Italy), on the Italian Communist Party itself, and on the Roman Catholic Church were particularly important. During his imprisonment, Gramsci penned more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of histo ry and study. His Prison Notebooks are regarded as a pioneering contribution to political tho ught in the twentieth century. Gramsci took inspiration from a wide range of philosophers, including Niccol Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel, and Benedetto Croce, as well as other Marxists. Italian history and nationalism, the French Revolution, imperialism, Taylorism, and Fordism civil society, mythology, religion, and high and popular culture are among the subjects cove red in the notebooks. Gramsci's political and social writings occur in two periods, pre-prison (1910-1926) and prison (1929-35). His pre-prison writings tend to be politically specific, while his post- prison writings tend to be more historical and theoretical. Selections from Political Writings (1910-1920), The Electric Book Company London 1999, selected, introduced and edited by Quentin Hoare and translated by John Mathews, transcribed from the edition published by Lawrence and Wishart, London 1977. Selections from Political Writings (1921-1926), translated and edited by Quintin Hoare, published by Lawrence and Wishart, London 1978. 224 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
The Concept of “Ideology” The evolution of the meaning of ideology is only possible to trace via a historical lens. Ideology within Marxist philosophy, Gramsci writes, “implicitly contains a negative value judgment and excludes the possibility that for its founders the origin of ideas should be sought for in sensations, and therefore, in the last analysis, in physiology”. This in turn allows Gramsci to analyse ideology via a biological framework, more specifically the “philosophy of praxis, as a superstructure”. The negative aspect of philosophy comes into play because ideology is derived from both a person and a particular structure (i.e. a dominant group). As a result, Gramsci suggests a distinction between ideologies that are historically related and emerging from structures, and the arbitrary ones from a particular person. Ideologies act like herding pens for the “human masses, and create the terrain on which men move, acquire consciousness of their position, struggle, etc.”. Most important of all, he takes a page from Marx in understanding the voice of the populous has a type of energy which is equivalent to “material force”. He theorizes that this material force represents content whereas ideology, form. However, force can exist without form, he writes “…material forces would be inconceivable historically without form and the ideologies would be individual fancies without the material forces”. This can be interpreted that the populous can be directed without ideology, that it can exist without ideology—but that it is not dependent on ideology to partake in the means of production. Hegemonic views In his hegemonic theories, Gramsci argued that capitalist dominance needed to be challenged by establishing a counter-hegemony, in line with Gramsci's theories of hegemonic power. He meant that, as part of the struggle for power, organic intellectuals and those in the working class would create alternative principles and ideologies to those promoted by the bourgeoisie. He said that this did not need to happen in Russia because the ruling class lacked true hegemony. Since ruling-class hegemony had never been completely established, the Bolsheviks were able to see through a manoeuvring war (the 1917 revolution) reasonably easily. 225 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
State and Civil Society Gramsci's hegemony theory is intertwined with his view of the capitalist state. Gramsci does not comprehend the state in the conventional sense of the word. Instead, he divides it into two categories: democratic society (police, army, legal system, and so on) – the domain of political institutions and legal constitutional power – and civil society (family, education system, labour unions, and so on) – the private or non-state sphere that mediates between the state and the economy. He emphasises, however, that the distinction is solely conceptual, and that the two often overlap in practise. According to Gramsci, the capitalist state is governed by coercion and consent. Historicism Historicism is the analysis of the past. Gramsci, like early Marx, was a staunch supporter of historicism. The relationship between human practical action (or praxis) and the objective historical and social processes of which it is a part, according to Gramsci, is the source of all significance. Apart from their function and roots, ideas cannot be understood outside of their social and historical context. The social connections between the users of those concepts, rather than our relationship to objects, are the primary source of the concepts by which we organise our knowledge of the world. As a consequence, there is no such thing as constant human nature; only historically variable social relationships exist.Furthermore, neither philosophy nor science represent a fact that exists independently of man. Rather, a hypothesis is said to be valid when it accurately expresses the actual developmental pattern of a historical situation. 10.3THE FORMATION OF THE INTELLECTUALS The thesis of The Formation of the Intellectuals is simply that each class produces its own intellectuals. Within the term “intellectual” Gramsci distinguishes two “strata,” “organic” and traditional which represent distinct origins of intellectuals. It is the intellectuals that emerge, organically, within a social group that give it “homogeneity” and a sense of awareness of function within society (economic, political, social). Organic intellectuals serve as a sort of chef within the group, such as his example of an élite entrepreneur who acts as a catalyst for economic development because he creates jobs and necessity. Gramsci writes, “it can be observed that the ‘organic’ intellectual which every 226 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
new class creates alongside itself and elaborates in the course of its development, are for the most part ‘specializations’ of a partial aspects of the primitive activity of the new social type which the new class has brought into prominence”. The emerging social group appropriates the intellectuals that already existed, those who had ties with the previous dominant group. The social group adopts the intellectuals that reflect the socio-political-economic beliefs. “Traditional” intellectuals are only considered as such due to their emergence within the historically traditional dominant class, the aristocracy. For Gramsci the ecclesiastics are the traditional intellectuals associated with aristocracy and as such they formed their own class within the aristocracy, “la noblesse de robes.” This in turned engendered a sense of independence and autonomy for the intellectual. Gramsci proposes that the criterion by which history defines an intellectual promotes problems because it assumes a distinct linear path of description and classification of an intellectual, i.e., the traditional intellectual: the scientist, the academic etc. However, he claims, “in any physical work . . . there exists a minimum of technical qualification, that is, a minimum of creative intellectual”. Thus, the classification of a person within society is more linked to their social function (profession) than their intrinsic, unique, humanity: “All men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”. The newly emerged intellectual “strata” is then used as a foundation for a new conception of the world. However, it does not suffice for the new intellectual to maintain a passive role within the new class, but that he must “actively participate in practical life…”. In a sense, the intellectual must not only be the producer of ideology that a particular group then idealizes but that the intellectual must be active in the proliferation of this ideology and not “just a simple orator”. This is important because the emerging social group that is struggling against the dominant group must find a way to overcome the ideology of the dominant group; however, with the formation of a groups organic intellectual, within the emerging class can facilitate more readily the conquering of the dominant ideology. Gramsci then goes on to establish a parallel correlation to the production of intellectuals via academic institutions to the economic productive capacities of a given particular state. The more efficient the productive capacities, the more a particular state will have to produce intellectuals. That is to say, that the industrialization of a state allows more people to differentiate or to specialize in something other than direct means of production. 227 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
The intellectual then acts as an intermediary between the “complex superstructures” of society. Gramsci views the intellectual as a type of functionary whose goal is to diffuse the ideologies of the dominant class (or emergent class, in the case of a revolutionary party). He proposes two “levels” within the superstructure: “civil society,” i.e., private and “political society,” i.e. the State. Within the two levels is a corresponding hegemony and direct domination, which organizes and connects society under the dominant groups ideology: “The intellectuals are the dominant group’s ‘deputies’ exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government”. This function gives rise to division of labor, and as such this division of labor pertains also to the stratification of the intellectual “at the highest level would be the creators of the various sciences, philosophy, art, etc., at the lowest the humblest ‘administrators, and divulgators of pre-existing, traditional, accumulated wealth”. In a sense, the formation of the civic society is not just constrained to the formation of the worker but also the intellectual. Central Theory of Gramsci’s “Formation of the Intellectuals” The Formation of the Intellectuals' central theory is that each social class creates its own inte llectuals. Gramsci distinguishes two \"strata\" within the word \"intellectual,\" \"organic\" and \"traditional, \" which reflect different intellectual roots. Intellectuals who arise organically from a social group are what offer it \"homogeneity\" and a sense of function within society. Organic intellectuals, like his example of an élite entrepreneur who acts as a catalyst for eco nomic growth by creating employment and necessity, serve as a sort of chef within the party .“It can be observed that the ‘organic' intellectual that every new class develops alongside its elf and elaborates in the course of its creation, are for the most part ‘specialisations' of a part ial aspect of the primitive behaviour of the new social form that the new class has brought to prominence,” writes Gramsci. The newly formed social group appropriates the existing intellectuals, especially those with links to the previous dominant group. The intellectuals who represent the sociopoliticoeconomic beliefs are adopted by the social community. The rise of “traditional” intellectuals within the previously ruling class, the aristocracy, qualifies them as such. 228 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Organic and Traditional Intellectuals In Antonio Gramsci’s “Formation of the Intellectuals”, Gramsci identifies two different kinds of intellectuals: organic intellectuals and traditional intellectuals. He categorizes intellectuals based on certain skills that these intellectuals have to fulfil a function in society. Humans are classified by how they function or choose to function in everyday life. Gramsci states that “All men are intellectuals” and everyone must be able to practice intellectualism however they see fit in society. These intellectuals lay the ground for hegemony, the social, cultural, and ideological impact that an intellectual has on society. There must be a healthy balance of traditional and organic intellectuals in society for hegemony to be present. Organic intellectuals are entrepreneurs and organizers of the mass population. They organize a new culture, social class, and they can act as a voice for the working class. According to Gramsci, “it can be observed that the “organic” intellectuals which every new class creates alongside itself and elaborates in the course of its development, are for the most part “specializations” or partial aspects of the primitive activity of the new social type which the new class has bought to prominence”. Organic intellectuals are special individuals who give a voice to those who need one and can inspire a group of people to fight for something worth fighting for. One example of an intellectual thinker is Kendrick Lamar. He is not a traditional intellectual in the sense that he was never part of an “elite” belonging. Even as his fame and fortune rise as he gets more popular, he remains true to his roots of growing up in Compton, California. Traditional intellectuals have “espiritdecorps” which is a sense of elitism in society. These intellectuals tend to be the professors, doctors, lawyers, businessmen,scholars, scientists, philosophers, preachers, and media of today’s age. Traditional intellectuals tend to believe that they are independent of the dominant social group in society when in fact that is not true. According to Gramsci, “There is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded”. Gramsci is saying that all intellectualism, no matter if it is Traditional or Organic, feeds off of each other. 229 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
One of America’s most controversial Ivy League graduates is now our President. President Trump is the quintessential Traditional intellectual. He has often been seen as an “elite” because of his wealth and his business acumen. Furthermore, President Trump is an example of Hegemony. Hegemony is executed throughout society with direct domination through the government onto those who do not give consent. Although any president cannot have a satisfaction rating of one hundred percent, President Trump often uses his elite image to force things upon people who do not give consent. He constantly tears down a group of people almost every day and asserts himself in a way that is not needed from the leader of the free world. There is an irony with the supporters of Donald Trump that Gramsci would probably find hilarious. Donald Trump the ultimate elite Traditional intellectual has gained the loyalty of millions of Organic intellectuals (intellectual being used loosely). 10.4HEGEMONY Hegemony derives from the Greek term hēgemonia (“dominance over”), which was used to describe relations between city-states. Its use in political analysis was somewhat limited until its intensive discussion by the Italian politician and Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci’s discussion of hegemony followed from his attempts to understand the survival of the capitalist state in the most-advanced Western countries. Gramsci’s key observation was that in advanced capitalist societies the perpetuation of class rule was achieved through largely consensual means—through intellectual and moral leadership. Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony thus involves an analysis of the ways in which such capitalist ideas are disseminated and accepted as common and normal. A hegemonic class is one that is able to attain the consent of other social forces, and the retention of this consent is an ongoing project. To secure this consent requires a group to understand its own interests in relation to the mode of production, as well as the motivations, aspirations, and interests of other groups. 230 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
10.5 CONCEPT OF GRAMSCI’S HEGEMONY The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, imprisoned for much of his life by Mussolini, took these ideas further in his Prison Notebooks with his widely influential notions of ‘hegemony’ and the ‘manufacture of consent’ (Gramsci 1971). Gramsci saw the capitalist state as being made up of two overlapping spheres, a ‘political society’ (which rules through force) and a ‘civil society’ (which rules through consent). This is a different meaning of civil society from the ‘associational’ view common today, which defines civil society as a ‘sector’ of voluntary organisations and NGOs. Gramsci saw civil society as the public sphere where trade unions and political parties gained concessions from the bourgeois state, and the sphere in which ideas and beliefs were shaped, where bourgeois ‘hegemony’ was reproduced in cultural life through the media, universities and religious institutions to ‘manufacture consent’ and legitimacy. The political and practical implications of Gramsci’s ideas were far-reaching because he warned of the limited possibilities of direct revolutionary struggle for control of the means of production; this ‘war of attack’ could only succeed with a prior ‘war of position’ in the form of struggle over ideas and beliefs, to create a new hegemony (Gramsci 1971). This idea of a ‘counter-hegemonic’ struggle – advancing alternatives to dominant ideas of what is normal and legitimate – has had broad appeal in social and political movements. It has also contributed to the idea that ‘knowledge’ is a social construct that serves to legitimate social structures. In practical terms, Gramsci’s insights about how power is constituted in the realm of ideas and knowledge – expressed through consent rather than force – have inspired the use of explicit strategies to contest hegemonic norms of legitimacy. Gramsci’s ideas have influenced popular education practices, including the adult literacy and consciousness- raising methods of Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), liberation theology, methods of participatory action research (PAR), and many approaches to popular media, communication and cultural action. The idea of power as ‘hegemony’ has also influenced debates about civil society. Critics of the way civil society is narrowly conceived in liberal democratic thought – reduced to an ‘associational’ domain in contrast to the state and market – have used Gramsci’s definition 231 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
to remind us that civil society can also be a public sphere of political struggle and contestation over ideas and norms. The goal of ‘civil society strengthening’ in development policy can thus be pursued either in a neo-liberal sense of building civic institutions to complement (or hold to account) states and markets, or in a Gramscian sense of building civic capacities to think differently, to challenge assumptions and norms, and to articulate new ideas and visions. The concept of hegemony first appeared in Gramsci’s Notes on the Southern Question (1926), where it was defined as a system of class alliance in which a “hegemonic class” exercised political leadership over “subaltern classes” by “winning them over.” The concept made allusion to the proletariat in Italy in terms of such a “winning over”: the proletariat had to free itself of its class corporatism so as to embrace other classes, notably the peasants, in a system of alliances within which it could then genuinely become the leading element in the society. The concept was introduced in the following way: The Turin communists posed concretely the question of the ’hegemony of the proletariat’: i.e., of the social basis of the proletarian dictatorship and the workers’ State. The proletariat can become the leading (diligent) and the dominant class to the extent that it succeeds in creating a system of alliances which allows it to mobilize the majority of the working population against capitalism and the bourgeois State. In Italy, in the real class relations which exists there, this means to the extent that it succeeds in gaining the consent of the broad peasant masses. As presented to us here the concept is in a relatively primitive stage. It is in the Prison Notebooks that Gramsci presents us with an advanced definition of the concept, this time going beyond a simple class alliance and political leadership by including intellectual and moral leadership and elaborating on the process of forging the class alliance. Hence, in the more developed elaboration “Hegemony” entails two things. First of all, it presupposes that the “hegemonic class” takes into consideration the interests of the classes and groups over which it exercises its “hegemony.” Added to this, some equilibrium between the hegemonic class and the subaltern classes is entailed whereby the hegemonic class will be forced to make some sacrifices tangent to its corporate interests. 232 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Secondly, “hegemony” entails economic leadership besides ethico-political leadership. In other words, it entails that the hegemonic class be a “fundamental class”–that is, a class situated at one of the two fundamental poles in the relations of production: owner or non- owner of the means of production. It would seem, therefore, that hegemony entails for a class its execution of a leadership role on the economic, political, moral, and intellectual levels vis-a-vis other classes in the system, coupled with the sacrificing of some of its corporate interests as a fundamental class precisely to facilitate its vanguard role. Noticeable in this notion is the abstract notion of balance: sacrifice for consensus or strict corporativism for a coercive imperative. Indeed, this notion underlies Gramsci’s definition of the concept of hegemony, and the notion itself is embodied in Gramsci’s elaborate concept of power. Gramsci’s concept of power is based simply on the two moments of power relations– Dominio (or coercion) and Direzione (or consensus). These two moments are essential elements, indeed the constitutive elements of a state of balance, a state of equilibrium between social forces identified as the leaders and the led. This state of balance consists of a coalition of classes constituting an organic totality within which the use of force is risky unless there emerges an organic crisis which threatens the hegemonic position and the ruling position of the leading class in the hegemonic system. Clearly, political or state rule by a hegemonic class so defined would be rule in which consensus predominates over coercion. According to Gramsci, consensus rests at the level of civil society and hence must be won there. On the other hand, coercion rests at the level of the state, more specifically at the level of “political society.” Accordingly, hegemonic rule, characterized by the predominance of consensus over coercion, represents in broad terms a balance, an equilibrium between “political society” and “civil society.” Needless to say, for Gramsci the state embodies “the hegemony of one social group over the whole of society exercised through so-called private organizations, such as the church, trade unions, schools, etc.,” in balance with the ensemble of public (coercive) organizations such as the state, the bureaucracy, the military, the police, and the courts. Thus, state power rests in a hegemonic equilibrium with alternated moments of force and consensus but without the necessity of predominance by coercion over consensus. 233 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
In any given hegemonic system undergoing organic crisis, a subaltern but fundamental class aspiring for state power in that system must strive to attain hegemony in civil society by making its challenge against the dominant class while conforming itself to the interests and aspirations of other subaltern classes. This would constitute class “predominance by consent” and the attainment of legitimacy of rule vis-a-vis the other subaltern classes. But, may we ask, what does “consent” mean? That is, how is this “predominance” (legitimacy of rule) obtained by consent? It is here that Gramsci’s concept of ideology helps us to understand the realm of the struggle for power in a period of crisis. According to Gramsci, hegemony (“predominance by consent”) is a condition in which a fundamental class exercises a political, intellectual, and moral role of leadership within a hegemonic system cemented by a common world-view or “organic ideology.” The exercise of this role on the ethico-political as well as on the economic plane involves the execution of a process of intellectual and moral reform through which there is a “transformation” of the previous ideological terrain and a “redefinition” of hegemonic structures and institutions into a new form. This transformation and redefinition are achieved through a rearticulation of ideological elements into a new world-view which then serves as the unifying principle for a new “collective will.” Indeed, it is this new world view, which unifies classes into a new hegemonic bloc, which constitutes the new organic ideology of the new hegemonic class and system. Yet it is not a world-view imposed, as a class ideology (in the reductionist sense,) by the new hegemonic class upon the subaltern group. Moreover, in the transformation of the ideological terrain there is no complete replacement of the previously dominant world view. Rather, the “new” world view is “created” or “moulded” by the aspiring hegemonic class and its consensual subalterns out of the existing ideological elements held by the latter in their discourses. The creation of the new organic ideology is effectuated dialectically through “ideological struggle”: the aspiring hegemonic class adopts an articulating principle which makes it possible to absorb, rearticulate, and assimilate ideological elements in the discourse of other social classes, and to unify these elements into a new collective will. In the process of struggle for hegemony, this articulating principle becomes a hegemonic principle of the emerging hegemonic class and hegemonic system. Since ideological 234 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
elements have no necessary class belonging and are, in fact, often shared by many classes, and since the new hegemonic system rests upon the ideological consensus of other social classes, hegemony is not ideological domination. As mentioned earlier, the only conclusion that can be safely derived from this process of ideological struggle regarding the problem of its class basis is that it is precisely at the point of articulation through the hegemonic principle that ideological elements acquire a class character. In other words, once articulated into the organic ideology, ideological elements of importance to and shared by different classes enter the domain of the new hegemonic class, which may claim these elements to be its own for having a place in its general discourse. Precisely herein lies Gramsci’s correlation between “fundamental class” and ideology. Nevertheless, an organic ideology is precisely that–organic, the product of an absorption of different important ideological elements belonging to no class in particular. To say “predominance obtained by consent” is to say hegemonic status within a hegemonic system cemented by a common world-view–organic ideology–and won in civil society through dynamic ideological struggle therein. Hence, in the context of a revolutionary struggle for state power, rule by consent (hegemony) can be seen as “legitimation of revolution by a higher and more comprehensive culture.” Let me add here that the acquisition of hegemony and the legitimation of revolution require from a fundamental class the important and proper execution of leadership. According to Gramsci, in fact, “leadership” precedes the other two stages in the process of rising to state power through revolution. We are now dealing with a principle of action, with strategy for revolution and with methods to attain hegemony. In particular, we come to the point in which theory and practice converge dialectically and become of practical relevance to the proletariat. For Gramsci, the working class must, before actually exercising state power, attain leadership–that is, “establish its claim to be a ruling class in the political, cultural, and ’ethical’ fields.” But for it to establish its claim to be a ruling class, the proletariat must first have become class conscious in the context of struggle for political power. Here Gramsci distinguishes between two phases in the process: first there is the corporate- economic phase in which the class identifies itself in terms of the corporate-economic interests of its integrated elements and as an economic group. Then there is the “purely 235 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
political” phase in which the class realizes that its own economic interests, in their present and future development, go beyond the corporative circle of a mere economic group, and can and must become the interests of other oppressed groups. This is the purely political phase “which marks the passage from structure to the sphere of complex superstructures.” At this point, when it becomes conscious of itself and its existence as a social class, the proletariat can then proceed to forge or develop a comprehensive world-view and advance a political programme allowing for its manifestation as a constituted political party playing a truly progressive and historical role and seeking to absorb other leading sections of the other oppressed groups and classes. At this point, in other words, the proletariat begins to engage in the struggle for social hegemony. It is important to stress that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony finds a “context of relevance” in post-1923 Western Europe (and particularly in Italy). This is due to the fact that Gramsci appreciated in great detail the fundamental differences that existed between 1917 Russia and post-1923 Western Europe. Indeed, Gramsci believed that in such distinct contexts “the class struggle then changes from a ’war of maneouver’ to a ’war of position’ fought mainly on the cultural front.” 10.6 SUMMARY Gramsci’s concept of power is grounded basically on the two instants of rheostat relations– Dominio (or coercion) and Direzione (or consensus). These two moments are indispensable rudiments, certainly the fundamental foundations of a state of balance, a state of equipoise amongst social forces identified as the leaders and the led. This state of balance consists of a coalition of classes constituting an organic totality within which the use of force is risky unless there appears an animate crisis which looms the hegemonic position and the overriding position of the leading class in the hegemonic system. Clearly, political or state rule by a hegemonic class so defined would be rule in which harmony outweighs over strongarming. 10.7 KEYWORDS/ABBREVIATIONS Marxist: Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to 236 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
understand class relations and social conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others. Consensus: a general agreement 10.8 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Research on Gramsci’s work and writing style. __________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 10.9UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. Write about Gramsci's concept of hegemony. 2. What are the difference Between Gramsci's pre-prison and prison writings? 3. Write a short note on Antonio Gramsci's 'The formation of the Intellectual\". 4. Explain Antonio Gramsci as a Marxist? 5. What is Gramsci’s theory? Long Questions 1. When did the concept of hegemony first appear in Gramsci’s Notes? 2. How was hegemony defined? 3. Discuss in detail about Gramsci’s prison writings? 4. What events let Gramsci enter political world? 5. Explain in detail about Gramsci’s life and his thoughts? 237 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. Antonio Gramsci was founding member and one time leader of a. Communist party of Italy b. Communist party of England c. Conservative Party of Italy d. Conservative Party of England 2. Extracts of Gramsci’s prison writings were published for the first time in the a. Starting of 20th century b. Mid of 20th century c. End of 19th century d. None of these 3. Gramsci distinguishes between two phases in the process, these are a. The corporate political phase and economic phase b. Purely economic phase and corporate phase c. Economic phase and Political phase d. The corporate-economic phase and Purely political phase 4. In “Formation of the Intellectuals”, Gramsci identifies two different kinds of intellectuals ......... intellectuals and .......... intellectuals? a. Social, Traditional b. Social, Organic c. Unconventional, Social d. Organic, Unconventional 5. According to Gramsci, consensus rests at 238 a. Level of political Society b. Level of Civil Society CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
c. Both of these d. None of these Answers 1. a 2. b 3. d 4. a 5. b 10.10 REFERENCES Reference’s book Peter Barry: Beginning Theory (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995). Raman Selden: A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1985). Ann Jefferson & David Robey, eds.: Modern Literary Theory (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1982). Terry Eagleton: Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983). Marxism and Literary Criticism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976). Krishnaswamy et al.: Contemporary Literary Theory: A Student’s Companion (New Delhi: Macmillan, 2000). Jonathan Culler: Barthes (Great Britain: Fontana, 1983). Website https://www.britannica.com/art/Greek-literature https://www.ancient.eu/Greek_Literature/ https://www.edutry.com/Study-material/ https://www.ancient.eu/aristotle/ https://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-poe/ https://www.britannica.com/topic/Poetics http://ignou.ac.in/ https://www.uoc.ac.in/ http://www.tmv.edu.in/ 239 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
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