According
to Frank Rosengarten
(2004) Antonio Gramsci was
born on 22 January 1891 in the province of Cagliari in Sardinia. He was born
into a family of seven and he was the fourth. He shared a passion of literature
with his sister Teresinna. He was influenced into politics by his brother’s early
embrace of socialism. After completing his elementary he went to work due to
his father’s arrest but he continued to study privately and eventually returned
to school were he was judged as one of superior intelligence. In 1911 his life
changed dramatically when he got a scholarship to the university of Turin an
award reserved for the needy students from province of the former kingdom of
Sardinia. Although he enrolled in the faculty of Letters he took a variety of
courses in social sciences and linguistics. He became a journalist and one of
the most critical and most feared voices. He is decorated for developing
military journalism. However the fascist regime led by Mussolini decided to arrest
Gramsci and sentence him to prison. The presiding judge on the trial is said to
have made the infamous statement that “We have to stop this mind from
functioning.” As he was viewed a dangerous man. His mind though did not stop
functioning but his prison years were so rich with intellectual achievement
when he wrote his prison notes.
He
sought to establish why the fascist regime was not collapsing and capitalism in
general. Gramsci’s political and social writings occur in two periods,
pre-prison (1910-1926) and in prison (1929-1935). His pre-prison writings tend
to be politically specific while his prison writings tend to be more historical
and theoretical. Gramsci was concerned about how to eradicate economic determinism
from Marxism and to develop its explanatory power with respect to supernatural
institutions. So he held that 1) class struggle must always involve ideas and
ideologies that would miss the revolution and also that might prevent it 2) he
stressed the role played by human agency in historical change, because economic
crises by themselves would not subvert capitalism 3) Gramsci was more
dialectical than deterministic. Strinatti (1995:166) “He tried to build a
theory which recognized the autonomy, independence and importance of culture
and ideology. It can be argued that Gramsci’s theory suggest that surbodinated
groups accept the ideas, values of the ruling class not because they are physically
induced or mentally induced but because they have a reason of their own.” From
Gramsci’s view the supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based on two, equally
important facts, first economic domination and secondly intellectual and moral
leadership.
Strinatti
argues that, “Antonio Gramsci defines hegemony as whereby the dominant groups
in society, including fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class maintain
their dominance by securing the spontaneous consent of subordinate groups
including the working class through the negotiated construction of a political
and ideological consensus which incorporates both dominant and dominated
groups.” The ruling class succeeds in persuading the other class to accept its
own moral, political and cultural values. The concept assumes a plain consent
given by the majority of the population to a certain direction suggested by
those in power. For example ZANU PF in Zimbabwe is famous for convincing the
population into believing that they were out to protect the interests of the
nation from British and foreign
intervention. However this consent is not always peaceful and may combine
physical force or coercion with intellectual, moral and cultural inducement.
It
can also be viewed as ‘common sense’, a cultural universe were the dominant
ideology is practiced and spread leading to the spiral of silence were the
minority do not speak out their ideas out and this is something which emerges
out of social and class struggle and serves to shape and influence people’s
minds. It is a set of ideas by which dominant groups strive to secure the
consent of the subordinate class to their leadership. Lenny (2007) reiterates
that it is, “The practices of a capitalist class or its representations to gain
power to maintain it later. Gramsci stated that the only way to perform this
labour class control is by taking over into account the interests of other
groups of society and finding ways to combine them with their own views. If the
working class is to advantage hegemony then it needs patiently to build up a
network of alliances with social minorities. The working class must unite
popular democratic struggles with its own conflict against the capital class so
as to strengthen a national popular collective will.
According
to Lenny (2007) Gramsci suggests two modes of social control. First there is
coercive control which is manifested through direct force or its threat. It is
usually needed when the state feels insecure or that leadership is fractured. For
example in Zimbabwe coercive control is potrayed by the use of the military and
the police when there are strikes like the one that happened at University of
Zimbabwe when students were striking, the strike was thwarted down by the riot
police. Then he identifies the other one as consensual control which arises
when individuals voluntarily assimilate the world view of the dominant group.
Gramsci argue that the media are the instruments to express the dominant
ideology as an integral part of the cultural environment. He also suggests that
if the working class wants to succeed in becoming hegemonic it must also create
its own intellectuals to develop a new ideology. Intellectual work for example
include instances like when the media are used to air out the ideas of the
ruling class.
From
a ‘Gramscian’ perspective, the mass media have to be interpreted as an
instrument to spread and reinforce the dominant hegemony. For example we have
the public media in Zimbabwe expressing and supporting the ideas of the former
but powerful ruling party in the public media ZANU PF and in television there
are even jingles like ‘Nyatsoteerera unzwe kutonga’ Hegemony operates
culturally and ideological through the institutions of civil society which
characterizes liberal democratic capitalist societies. These institutions
include education, the family , the church the mass media. Different authors
like Foucault, Althuser and feminists have taken Gramsci’s idea of a prominent
discourse, reinterpreting and proposing it as a suitable explanation about
culture, the construction of our beliefs, identities, opinions and relations.
Raymond
Williams after reading Gramsci’s theory deduced that the forms of domination
and correspond much more closely the normal process of social organization and
control in developed societies than the
idea of a ruling class, which are much more usually based on earlier and
simpler historical phases. These suggests that the relationship between the
powerful and the ruled is important. Thussu (2006) argues that cultural hegemony is neither monolithic nor
unified, but is a complex of layered social
structures, and each has a “mission” and an internal logic, allowing its
members to behave in a particular way that is different from that of the
members of the other social classes, yet, as in an army, each social class
acknowledges the existence of the other social classes, and, because of their
different social missions, they will be able to coalesce into a greater whole,
a society, with a greater social mission. According to Fiske, societal mission is
different from the specific missions of the individual classes, because it
assumes and includes them to itself, the whole. Like-wise, does cultural hegemony work; although each
person in a society meaningfully lives life in his and her social class, society’s
discrete classes might appear to have little in common with the life of an
individual person; yet, perceived as a whole, each person’s life contributes to
the greater society’s hegemony.
According to Gramsci's view there are on the one hand
the dominant classes who seek to contain and incorporate all thought and
behaviour within the terms and limits they
set in accordance with their
interests. On the other hand there are the dominated or subordinate classes who
attempt to maintain and to further the validity and effectiveness of their own
definitions of reality. There is therefore a continuing struggle for dominance
between the definitions of reality which serve the interests of the ruling
classes and those which are held by other groups in society. Culture, according
to this view, is seen as the product of a much more vigorous struggle than is
suggested in, for example, Althusser’s view of ideology. Cultural domination
arises from a complex play of negotiations, alignments and realignments within
society:
…the fact of hegemony presupposes that account be
taken of the interests and
the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised and that a certain
compromise equilibrium should be formed
Domination is not simply imposed from above, but has
to be won through the subordinated groups' spontaneous consent to the cultural
domination which they believe will serve their interests because it is 'common
sense'. In this sense,
Culture for Gramsci is an amalgam of coercive and consensual
mechanisms for reconciling human subjects to their unwelcome fate as labouring animals
in oppressive conditions
This is exemplified by
politics. When a politician wants to win he proposes a campaigning strategy
that will make the voters think that their concerns will be met. Thus there is
negotiation with the lower class.
As argued earlier on
hegemony is when the dominant group makes their ideas common sense. Fiske (1992:
291) noted that, “Common sense is not
something rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself”. As Fiske
puts it, “Consent must be constantly won and rewon, for people's material
social experience constantly reminds them of the disadvantages of subordination
and thus poses a threat to the dominant class... Hegemony... posits a constant
contradiction between ideology and the social experience of the subordinate
that makes this interface into an inevitable site of ideological struggle”. In
lay man’s terms the social position of the subordinate group always reminds
them of their exploited position such that the balance of hegemony is
threatened and hence need to be reinforced by re-winning it.
Critics
of the theory argue that the theory has flaws. Strinatti argues that the main
problem with Gramsci’s ideas is the same with the Frankfurt school in the
Marxist background. A class based analysis is always reductionist and tends to
simplify the relation the people and their own culture. The deterministic
framework does not allow history to contradict the theory and the
interpretation of reality becomes rather elementary. Raymond Williams
understands that culture is not only a vehicle of domination, he finds
preferable a definition of culture as a language of co-operative shaping of a
common contribution. He also states that Gramsci proposed the concept of
hegemony as a uniform static for abstract structure.
David
Harns also mentioned that Gramsci’s ideas about the role of intellectuals in
society are rather elitist and all the theory is too political and partisan to
be credible. He adds later that another problem is the lack of empiricism or
something directly related to with the people and their behavior. This is to
say that people are not given what really suits them and their everyday
encounter but are given something they wish for. This is true as suggested by
television that represents reality that is more cushioning to the everyday
troubles of life such that audiences tend to want the life they see on
television which is being advanced by the ruling class and can only be gained
after hard work.
In
conclusion we can see that hegemony is a theory that still exists in our life
as the elite of our societies use them to advocate for their views. Hegemony
according to Gramsci was a way that the ruling class spread their ideas to the
subordinate class such that their ideas carry the day and are the ones that
make more sense and in line with ethical livelihood thereby binding the society
to oneness. Thus hegemony is naturally the unseen force that binds society
together.
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