Gramsci sought to bring autonomy to the conversation with his concept of hegemony. Within traditional Marxism, it is understood that the superstructure is imposed on the proletariat, but Gramsci thinks that it is important to recognize that the proletariat, or historically marginalized, in many ways, consent to the hegemonic structure by just living and participating within it. Before reading more about Gramsci, this is where I would get worried and think that people would start to blame the victim because if we continue with this mindset, it becomes easy to say that marginalized groups consent to their oppression, but to Gramsci, if you consent to hegemony then you could change it. I’m unsure if I am 100% convinced with this reasoning, but hopefully, I can learn more to understand it better.
I have the opposite problem with Althusser’s work on ideological state apparatuses. It elaborates on the superstructure, but lacks autonomy. Are there scholars who draw from both to make up for what the other lacks? Althusser's work seems revolutionary for the time given that he helped add ideology to Marxist thought, but if we can't change ideological state apparatuses then what do we do with the concept?
Comments
Post a Comment