Cultural Hegemony And The Philosophy Of Praxis

Escaping Cultural Hegemony & The Philosophy of Praxis One of the lingering questions about cultural hegemony I have is “How do we end it?” or, at the very least, in what ways can we remove ourselves from the apparatus of cultural hegemony and attempt to potentially dismantle it? From Gramsci’s perspective the answer is, of course, the philosophy of praxis. The concept of the philosophy of praxis contains heavy Marxist undertones – which no doubt serves the purpose of invigorating the working classes, or the “subaltern,” to create a somewhat uniform body of thought and what could be perceived of as the means to begin a revolution and end cultural hegemony. More or less, this “philosophy of praxis,” in the way I read it, encourages the beginnings …show more content…
If cultural hegemony is not necessarily something we can always see or be aware of, how can we successfully remove ourselves from it if we don’t even completely know all that it entails? Gramsci’s claim that “Even if one admits that other cultures have had an importance and a significance in the process of ‘hierarchical’ unification of world civilisation, they have had a universal value only in so far as they have become constituent elements of European culture, which is the only historically and concretely universal culture—in so far, that is, as they have contributed to the process of European thought and been assimilated by it” (Prison Notebooks 416) has stuck with me throughout thinking through the elimination of cultural hegemony. Is communist or socialist thought from people of color, queer people, women, and so forth still just contributing to the “process of European thought?” considering, in their current forms, these ideas often stem from European thinkers? Gramsci would say the philosophy of praxis would be the end of cultural hegemony and the start of a society for the masses, but I’m still not clear on how to achieve a philosophy of praxis that doesn’t find itself contributing to cultural hegemony, at least in an era of hyper-connectedness of ideologies, as well as economic and …show more content…
Maybe it’s not that a philosophy of praxis is necessarily impossible or unobtainable, but rather I’m attempting to rethink where that philosophy might come from. A true philosophy of praxis, or as Gramsci puts it a philosophy that is “a new way of conceiving the world [where] this conception is no longer reserved to the great intellectuals, to professional philosophers, but tends rather to become a popular, mass phenomenon, with a concretely world-wide character, capable of modifying (even if the result includes hybrid combinations) popular thought and mummified popular culture” (Prison Notebooks 417) cannot, in my opinion, ever be bred from the minds of those in Western societies, nor from socialism or Marxism or any other preexisting European ideology – it should be a completely organic and original body of thought formed by those who were robbed of their ability to congregate and form such concepts like Marxism or socialism in the first place. In all, I still remain weary of Marxism’s place in a philosophy of praxis; not in a way that means it serves no place, but that ultimately, a philosophy of praxis needs real input and real organic ideas from women, people of color, queer people, Indigenous people, and any non-White, Western European men – and not just input through a Marxist lens. Perhaps a fusion of collectivist, Marxist, and socialist