1. Week 8: Ideology Hegemony Power
Media Studies:
Week 8: Ideology Hegemony Power
Marx Alienation:
Marx Assassin’s Creed:
Classroom Calisthenics

2. German philosopher and economist.
Karl Marx ( )
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

3. Advocated for a “materialist conception of history.”
Karl Marx ( )
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.
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

4. From tribal society, to feudalism, to industrial capitalism…
Karl Marx ( )
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.
Capitalist societies, for example, are divided into capitalists (who own the means of production) and the proletariat (wage workers).
Karl Marx

5. Karl Marx ( )
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.
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.
Karl Marx

7. Antonio Gramsci ( )

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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?
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?
Althusser

13. 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

14. 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).

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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…)

18. 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).

19. According to Althusser the school has replaced the church as the dominant institution of the Ideological State Apparatus. Do you agree?

20. 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).

21. 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).

22. 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…

23. 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.