Antonio Gramsci

Hegemony is rooted in the struggle for power and influence in a given community. In 1971, Antonio Gramsci wrote in “Selections from Prison Notebooks”, that the ruling class dominates the lower class through intellectual rule. Gramsci added, “The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as domination and as intellectual and moral leadership.” This is the foundation of his ideas about cultural hegemony, intellectual and moral leadership. Gramsci started the conversation about hegemony with his theory behind the intellectual and the state. The idea of the “organic intellectual” (Gramsci, 1971) is that every social group forms an intellectual tower and people naturally fall within it. This group of intellectuals serves an essential…

POLITICAL HEGEMONY This week’s readings start with Antonio Gramsci who was a very influential Marxist theorist and politician that his ideas are still relevant today. Gramsci followed the Marx but he added much more to the Marxist tradition in terms of explaining why Western societies didn’t experience the revolution. He introduced the concepts of civil and political society as two main parts of the superstructure and most importantly he defined hegemony as the mixture of coercion and consent.…

A brand takes the most idealized version of societally bound standards and commercializes a privileged race, class, or gender to increase momentum of hegemony and racial capitalism. This, as both philosophers Antonio Gramsci and Cedric Robinson would explain, is a direct effect of the formation of prioritizing a particular race and class thus manipulating our culture’s beliefs and values. In Black Marxism, Professor Cedric Robinson traces the concept of competition between races back to the…

The Handmaid’s Tale lays out a future dystopic world where a ¬¬new elite has come to power on the ostensible basis of religion. The story follows a young woman and her struggle to deal with the society built around her and her soci¬¬¬al position within it. This struggle provides a new insight when examined through a Marxian lens, with an emphasis on the theories of Gramsci and Althusser, by providing illumination on the novel’s existing political hierarchy and the basis for the struggle itself. …

As evident by the influence of education in forming class structure, the pigs (here Bourgeoisie), take advantage of the fact that the other animals are not as learned as themselves and they make sure that they remain like that. As Antonio Gramsci also puts in his essay, “There is no unity between school and life, and so there is no automatic unity between instruction and education” (qtd. Gramsci, 52) The pigs who understand that practical education can cause other animals to cause a rebellion,…

Antonio Gramsci Introduction Antonio Gramsci was born on January 22 of 1891, in Sardinia, Italy. Gramsci’s journey began in 1915 where he became a journalist for the Italian Socialist Party. However, it was not until 1921 when Gramsci had become a prominent member of the party which split into the Italian Communist Party. On November 8th of 1926 he was arrested for speaking against fascism. Gramsci’s familiarity began in the confine of Regina Coeli prison. His long sentence resulted in his…

able mediate and provide an avenue for their grievances tying into the first essay mentioned in the above. Though Gramsci’s analysis was more concerned with the political realm, he would also note the cultural effects of hegemony by noting the ideological apparatus on how the dominant intellectuals sell their visions. In relation to the state, Gramsci’s theory of hegemony would come to illustrate the purpose of intellectuals “guiding” the common man into abandoning his native tongue and speaking…

The first strategy is the “War of Movement” or a phase of open conflict between classes, where an outcome is decided via direct clashes between revolutionary fractions and the State. Using Russia as an example, Gramsci asserts for Russian people “the state was everything, as Russian civil society was primordial and gelatinous” with little hegemony thus the War of Movement was a successful strategy in Russia when used to overthrow the state (1995:238). In contrast, in the West “The War of…

4. Various Responses to Miliband-Poulantzas Debate 4.1. Ernesto Laclau: Methodological and Epistemological Problem Robin Blackburn (2014) described Ernesto Laclau as “the outstanding Argentinean political philosopher ... the author of landmark studies of Marxist theory and of populism as a political category and social movement. ... Used the work of Antonio Gramsci to reject what they saw as the reductionism and teleology of much Marxist theory... a ‘post-Marxist’ and an advocate of ‘radical…

the aristocracy and the Church that were prominent in the everyday life and politics of the people. Because they were critical of those in power, they would often be met with punishments of maiming and even death (Behan 95). However, Dario Fo was not met with these same fates despite his critiques of those in power. Instead, he was able to devise theatre in found spaces, such as factories, especially in the early performances of Mistero Buffo. In fact, he was protected by the loyalty of his…