Media Studies:
Week 8: Ideology Hegemony Power
Classroom Calisthenics
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• German philosopher and economist.
• Spent the last three decades of his life
living in London.
• Author of Capital: A Critique of
Political Economy (Das Kapital) and The
Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich
Engels).
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• Advocated for a “materialist conception
of history.”
• In opposition to the “idealism” of
German philosophy of the time, which
focused on human consciousness,
spirituality, contemplation and
abstraction.
Karl Marx
• Marx insisted that “the essence of man”
could only be understood in relation to
the context of his/her economic and
social relations.
• The production and reproduction of the
material requirements of life determine
man’s survival and, therefore, existence.
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• So historical materialism maintains that
a society’s “mode of production” and
“relations of production” determine its
organisation and development.
• From tribal society, to feudalism, to
industrial capitalism…
• The division of social classes
corresponds to the mode of production of
the society.
Karl Marx
• Capitalist societies, for example, are
divided into capitalists (who own the
means of production) and the proletariat
(wage workers).
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• An important claim of Marx’s thought
is the notion that the society’s economy
base (its economic infrastructure) has a
massive impact on its superstructure
(its culture, religion, politics, media, law,
art, etc.), rather than the other way
around as it was commonly assumed.
Karl Marx
• He viewed capitalist societies as
inherently exploitative, founded on the
extraction of surplus value from the work
of labour. A more just society, he
theorized, would occur if labour itself
owned the means of production.
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
Antonio Gramsci: The Prison Notebooks
• The key concept of hegemony which we discussed briefly in relation
to Stuart Hall and British Cultural Studies is largely derived from
Gramsci’s writing.
• The study of hegemony: it is the recognition that a ruling class
influences others to subscribe to a dominant world view or “common
sense,” but it is also the recognition that this dominant view is
established largely through consent rather than direct domination.
• Gramsci sees this form of “cultural hegemony” functioning through
the institutions and rituals of “civil society” (schools, religious
ceremonies, national festivals and customs…) rather than through the
repressive command of state institutions such as the courts or the
police.
Antonio Gramsci
• The intellectuals we have now “are the dominant group’s ‘deputies’
exercising the sub-altern functions of social hegemony and political
government” (p. 12).
• They either encourage consent to the social life determined by the
dominant group, or they enforce discipline through coercive state
power on those who refuse to consent.
Antonio Gramsci
• For Gramsci we are actually all philosophers or intellectuals, whether
or not we recognize ourselves as such, because we are all attempting
to make sense of our world.
•“All men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men in
society have the function of intellectuals” (p.9).
• Philosophy then is a mode of critical thought available to all that
encourages us to recognize ourselves as “a product of the historical
process to date” and to question the “common sense” that is provided
to us by the state, religion, economic forces, etc.
Antonio Gramsci
• Gramsci encourages subordinate social groups to:
• resist adopting a conception of the world which is not their own but
is borrowed from another group.
• to acknowledge and react to the contradictions which exist between
the world view they’ve been encouraged to adopt and the reality of
their everyday experiences.
• to foster what he calls “organic intellectuals” - intellectuals of the
masses that respond to the “principles and problems raised by the
masses in their practical activity” - to generate a philosophical
movement which remains connected to and united with the everyday
experiences and reality of the masses.
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• Like Gramsci, Althusser is interested in
analyzing how dominant world views and
systems of social relations are maintained and
reproduced - why isn’t there more resistance
and struggle against the status quo given that
power, privileges and resources are not evenly
distributed?
Althusser 1918-1990
• Begins with Marx’s realization that “the
ultimate condition of production is…the
reproduction of the conditions of production”
(p.85)
• What does he mean by this?
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• Let’s take an example: let’s imagine a factory that makes chairs. In
order to continue producing chairs, the owner of the factory must
make sure to replenish a number of things:
• She must be sure to replenish or reproduce the basic materials of
chair making (wood, screws, rubber for wheels…)
• She must make sure that the infrastructure and technology required is
reproduced (machines must be repaired and maybe updated, buildings
need to be kept in good condition…)
• She must also make sure that she continues to reproduce a pool of
capable and competent labourers to work in the factory
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• Here’s where things get complicated because to reproduce a
competent labour force you must reproduce them physically (by
giving them enough wages that they can eat, clothe and shelter
themselves - and perhaps raise the next generation of workers), but
you must also reproduce them in terms of skills, competencies and
attitudes (the labourers must be obedient, content with their position
in the work hierarchy, they must know the rules of good behaviour…)
• They must arrive at the factory already ready to work.
• So importantly, the reproduction of labour power takes place outside
the firm (or factory).
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• This learning of the “rules of the established order” and how to either
submit to them or enforce them does not occur on the spot at your
place of work, it occurs through the education system and other
institutions.
• So it is not enough to simply reproduce the productive forces of
labour power, it is also necessary to reproduce the existing relations of
production (the hierarchy of who does what and who says what).
• According to Althusser, the existing relations of production
(capitalist relations of production, for example) are reproduced by two
very different sets of practices and institutions: Repressive State
Apparatuses and Ideological State Apparatuses.
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• Repressive State Apparatuses: function predominantly by repressive
power and physical violence - for example, the army, the police, the
courts.
• Ideological State Apparatuses: function predominantly by ideology.
•So what do we mean by Ideology?
• “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to
their real conditions of existence” (p. 109)
• In other words, ideology is our means of conceptualizing not the
reality of our world, so much as our beliefs regarding our place and
role within it.
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• Althusser claims that our ideological beliefs are an illusion (they are
not real), but they are formed and maintained through real, material
apparatuses and practices.
•He suggests that unlike the unified Repressive State Apparatus there
are a plurality of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs):
• the religious ISA (different churches)
• the educational ISA (different public and private schools)
• the family ISA
• the communications ISA (press, radio, television…)
• the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports…)
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• Even though they are diverse and many exist in the private rather
than public domain, “the ideology by which they function is always in
fact unified…beneath the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of
‘the ruling class’” (p.98).
• Similar to Gramsci, Althusser claims “no class can hold State power
over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony
over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses” (p.98).
According to Althusser the school has replaced the church as the
dominant institution of the Ideological State Apparatus. Do you agree?
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• The school, according to Althusser, “contributes to the reproduction
of the relations of production, i.e. of capitalist relations of
exploitation” (p.104).
• Different individuals are “ejected” out of the education system at
different points corresponding to the role they will fulfill in class
society: the role of the exploited (with a ‘highly-developed’
‘professional,’ ‘ethical,’ ‘civic,’ ‘national’ and a-political
consciousness); the role of the agent of exploitation (ability to give
the workers orders and speak to them: ‘human relations’), of the agent
of repression (ability to give orders and enforce obedience ‘without
discussion’) or of the professional ideologist (ability to influence the
consciousness of the mass).
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• Importantly for Althusser, as mentioned before, although ideology is
an “imaginary relation” it is also material - “an ideology always exists
in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices” (p.112) - it requires
institutions and rituals in order for it to take form.
• As the mathematician and philosopher Pascal says: “Kneel down,
move your lips in prayer, and you will believe” (p.114).
Louis Althusser: Ideology and the State
• And even more importantly for Althusser, it is not a case of free and
rational subjects choosing this or that ideology to subscribe to, but
rather it is ideology that “constitutes concrete individuals as subjects”
(p.116).
• So ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete
subjects (p.118).
• In other words, through a process of interpellation: ideology
‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals, or ‘transforms’ the
individuals into subjects.
• We are interpellated as subjects the moment we respond to an
ideological hailing - the moment we turn around to acknowledge the
“hey you” of the policeman, the “what a good girl” of the family, the
“you’re going to make a fine lawyer” of the education system…
Althusser and Foucault
• There are many similarities between Althusser’s notions of ideology
and Foucault’s concept of discourse, but there are also some
differences.
• Althusser concentrates entirely on the ideological reproduction of
systems of class, whereas Foucault was more broadly concerned with
other relations of subordination (sexuality and gender, race. who is
deemed mad, who is imprisoned…).
• Althusser believed that scientific knowledge could allow us to escape
the confines of ideology and see things as they really are. Foucault
saw no such outside to discourse (even science is a discourse) and
therefore resistance must come from within systems of discourse.