Required reading:
- Williams, Raymond Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. 1977.
(Parts I [particularly Chap. 1,2,4] & II; [particularly Chap. 1,2,4,6,7,8])
These notes are the twelfth in a series of fifteen lecture for my class Culture and Communication. This develops a set of lectures on the most powerful critiques of structuralist thinking about cultural patterning and systematicity in interaction.
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Over the semester we have seen three models of sociability, that
is of what it is that can keep human beings together, in communication:
At the same time we have discussed two types of arbitrariness: arbitrariness in perception and classification (through Benedict) and in the identification of distinctions about human beings (through the readings on gender [which could also have been readings on race]). In both cases we approached the issue of the consequences of this arbitrariness but left aside the matter of the processes that allow for this arbitrariness to maintain ("reproduce," "reconstruct," "reconstitute") itself.
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HEGEMONY
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Addressing this matter of the maintainance of arbitrariness across the generations and when this arbitrariness is hard on large groups of individuals within a population opens question of power within social fields, societies, zones of interaction, etc.
In one way of another, the classical versions of the models of sociability left aside the issue of differentiation within the body politic and inequalities in resources or power. More recent versions have tried to deal with it in a variety of fashions. This is Williams's concern (p. 108).
First we must understand the nature of the power. We can then explore one of the ways of doing this.
- A development on one of Marx's
most famous pronouncement:
- Note the implicit (but very close to the surface moral tone: this analysis is by no means value-neutral in its rhetorical presentation. This is an analysis intended to move people to action (education). It is also an analysis that does not point at the principles guiding its moral choices.
- How does such an analysis apply to the United
States? America?
- Underlying this statement is a classical puzzle
in Euro-American political philosophy: how is one to understand political
rule (outside of pure relationships of brute force) and how is one to
constitute new forms of political rule that are both grounded in the
nature of humanity and in the moral choices in favor of individual freedom
and self-actualization that "we" have made?
- One of the earlier statement of the nature of
this puzzle can be found in Rousseau
discussion of the "social
contract" that starts with the striking paragraph:
MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. [...] What can make it legitimate?.
Rousseau (The social contract, 1762) - The earliest major attempts to constitute
forms that would be both natural and moral were argued during the
American revolution
- Declaration
of Independence (examine such phrases as "self-evident
truths," "men created equal," "Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed"...
- Declaration
of Independence (examine such phrases as "self-evident
truths," "men created equal," "Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed"...
- One of the earlier statement of the nature of
this puzzle can be found in Rousseau
discussion of the "social
contract" that starts with the striking paragraph:
- What happens when you start doubting that there are in fact no condition
under which "consent" can be considered as given by all
the governed? And, in particular, what happens in complex societies
when it can be shown that people occupying different positions have
different interests that must somehow conflict with each other if in
fact these positions are mutually constituted through the division of
labor (or even simple coexistence within the same geographical area)?
what are the processes through which ruling classes (genders, ethnic
or racial groups, etc.) impose their "ideas" to the ruled
classes?
- Is it enough to hold political power in order to impose ideas?
What are ideas anyway, and what role might they play in the reproduction
of class (gender...) positions?
- Gramsci
and hegemony
- In his words
- the ruler and the ruled
- the limits of economism (crass materialism)
- (as summarized by Williams)
- In his words
- Bourdieu and
reproduction. The emphasis here is on hegemony as a way
of thinking (relating to ideology) that operates through processes
of internalization that Bourdieu borrows from the dominant interpretations
of G.H. Mead's social psychology.
- Gramsci
and hegemony
- Williams and culture as "active experiences
and practices" (p. 111) leading to "studies of different types
of institution and formation in cultural production and distribution,
and in the linking of these within whole social material processes.
- Williams develops the theories of culture that we have been discussing
starting with the classical concerns with patterning in human communicational
systems (languages and Saussure; cultures and Benedict [see some
reflections
of culture and consciousness]) to a concern with the mechanisms
that may be involved in establishing and maintaining them, particularly
in complex societies.
- the fundamental nature of the division of labor and its
practical consequences (p. 108): the formation of "classes"
of people with
- different interests.
- different resources.
- different accesses to the means of expression.
- An emphasis on
- language as practical action (see also K. Burke (1966, 1969) on rhetoric for a non-marxist approach; Austin on speech acts);
- ideology as process
- "hegemony" (Chapter 6):
- Note that this definition is drifting
towards an internalization theory (as it will become in
Bourdieu's theory of the habitus) (p. 110)
- The problem may have to do,
in Gramsci's writing with the appearance that the working
classes do not "understand" their conditions.
Given the theories of language we have been discussing,
it should be clear that the appearance of non-understanding
is mostly produced by the absence of a particular type
of analytic language that is in fact only found among
certain intellectual classes.
- The problem may have to do,
in Gramsci's writing with the appearance that the working
classes do not "understand" their conditions.
Given the theories of language we have been discussing,
it should be clear that the appearance of non-understanding
is mostly produced by the absence of a particular type
of analytic language that is in fact only found among
certain intellectual classes.
- Note that this definition is drifting
towards an internalization theory (as it will become in
Bourdieu's theory of the habitus) (p. 110)
- The import of this critique is that it establishes that one cannot
differentiate culture from society (motivation from action; personality
psychology from the social sciences) (as this was done by Parsons).
- One is moving beyond the distinction
between
(Williams p. 55, 59."what people say" and "what people do" - Neither "say" or "do" are primary. Language is one of the most powerful tool that an agent can use to produce something in his/her social situations, that is, with others similarly at work.
- Here again (40-41) Williams bows to
internalization theories but talks about "social facts"
"available in manifest communication."
- ["teleology" in system theory?]
- Williams gets close to "constructivism"
as it was to be developed by Berger & Luckman (1966).
BUT hegemony
dominance (consciousness IS_NOT ideology p. 109)
- One is moving beyond the distinction
between
- Williams develops the theories of culture that we have been discussing
starting with the classical concerns with patterning in human communicational
systems (languages and Saussure; cultures and Benedict [see some
reflections
of culture and consciousness]) to a concern with the mechanisms
that may be involved in establishing and maintaining them, particularly
in complex societies.
- but no theory of legitimate hegemony (sovereignty?),
and thus no theory of education.
- Williams operate fully within the political Marxist mode of using heavy moral language (including the word 'hegemony') to refer to common processes in all human societies.
- There is little evidence that Williams directly addresses the grounds of his moral stance, nor that he discusses why he might expect his readers to accept the implied stance. This is common in "Marxist" writing and should be analyzed as the symbolic marking of a voice, a rhetorical genre.
- Given the relative success of more or less Marxist analyses of social processes, one might also analyze this genre in terms of hegemony.
- But the very moral character of the writing, and its shaping as a call for action, raises the question of the principle of legitimacy: if the ruling ideas were simply the ideas of the ruling classes, then there would be no ground for challenging them except perhaps a raw, biological, "will to power" (sociobiology and the attempt to maximize one's personal genes)
- But Marxists, like Christians, and Democrats of
all stripes (as well as Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, etc.) precisely
reject this stance towards society: society is specifically made
according to principles we can specify and then use to measure our
products in our dialogues.
- A controversial case: political struggle through
the same hegemony
- Elian Gonzales:
convincing/conviction (particularly at the time of the raid and
in the description of the various actors) through symbols of
- gender: a female immigration officer / Marisleysis as natural mother;
- kinship: a natural father / a woman who had no children (Janet Reno);
- ethnicity: spanish speaking / (Marisleysis as speaking in English); [but no mention of color];
- political legitimacy: the law / democracy
- medicine (physical): a flight surgeon [no mention of gender];
- medicine (mental): a child pyschologist;
- child: toys (often referring back to mental health, e.g. playdo) / toys (with reference to abundance);
- ideology in Time reporting: "No one would be asked to choose between freedom and love" (April 17, 2000)
- etc.
- This "analysis" (or "deconstruction" in 1980's language) can highlight all the ways through which the means used in this controversy are artifical and arbitrary to any "absolute" or "substance" thereby pointing at a pure issue of raw power (who can point the bigger gun/who can riot effectively).
- It is absolutely ineffective in helping anyone involved decide what to do next. In this sense deconstruction is unable to help anyone involved in practice or applied work in formal institutions (education, medicine, politics). To this extent it fails to account for the human condition for we are always involved in practice even in the less "formal" institutions (families, friendship groups, etc.) in which we are continually at work
- Elian Gonzales:
convincing/conviction (particularly at the time of the raid and
in the description of the various actors) through symbols of
| Some questions
(in the context of this course) |
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