Page Against The (Culture) Machine

The work of Antonio Gramsci and his concept of Hegemony is probably one of the most import concepts for this research project to understand and apply. Gramsci is about as Marxist as you can get and for this he deserves respect! Anyone who has to do prison time fme>or their beliefs deserves to be heard. How many of the people who later criticised and argued with him would have spent time in jail to do so? Not many i bet! However that doesn't make him right or necessarily even relevant. Here I will try and unpick his work and see if he does have anything to say about the modern media landscape.


In researching the man and his ideas I found this great, yet old, documentary on his life and works here: 


Gramsci was a largelyassociated with the idea of 'Cultural Hegemony'. He didn't create the term Hegemony, which has been around since the ancient Greeks, which means 'the political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others.' (Oxford English Dictionary).  Gramsci uses the word Hegemony when talking about modern forms of government to talk about cultural or ideological control to gain consent from the people. Governments and the Elite today, Gramsci would argue, mostly stay in power, or at least powerful positions, by operating a form of 'Cultural Hegemony' in which people are dominated, culturally, by the ruling class and through the social norms provided by things such as the media and culture this keeps people subjugated to the status quo. 

(Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony#Political_science)
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe defined hegemony as a political relationship of power wherein a sub-ordinate society (collectivity) perform social tasks that are culturally unnatural and not beneficial to them, but that are in exclusive benefit to the imperial interests of the hegemon, the superior, ordinate power; hegemony is a military, political, and economic relationship that occurs as an articulation within political discourse.^[40]

The distinction here is an important one. Gramsci was offering a socialist/ Marxist alternative to Leninism. He noticed the differences between the western European upper classes, who won tehir power by coercion and ideological persuasion and the upper classes of Russia, who took power by force. This allowed to conceive of his idea of a Hegemony of culture. The fight for control of this culture would be the crucial path to revolution.

Just like Adorno's analysis of the Media, its also not hard to find examples of these things happening in our day to day lives:

- The American war on terror and the corresponding output of news, films and tv shows that all present this as necessary, normal and part of a democratic process.
- American cultural Imperialism generally. The cultural influence of the worlds most powerful country is felt everywhere.
- Newspapers that help politicians win elections.
- Films that feature 'typical families'. Disney films.
- TV game shows. That celebrate the individual pursuit of 'winning money'
etc etc

But crucially you see the dominant values of a society played out on a day to day level within the News and the Press. The way that the dominant news institutions select and frame stories is hugely complementary and inline with the dominant views and viewpoints of the establishment.

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"For gramsci the word Hegemony explicitly means 'Leadership'" - Peter Thomas.

The following videos from Peter Thomas are excellent overviews of Gramsci's ideas. If you have a spare couple of hours then enjoy !