Notes on Gramsci and hegemony

Antonio Gramsci (1891 - 1937)

- a leading Italian Marxist. A major theorist who spent his last eleven years in Mussolini’s prisons. During this time, he completed 32 notebooks containing almost 3,000 pages. These notebooks were smuggled out from his prison and published in Italian after the war but did not find an English-language publisher until the 1970s. The central and guiding theme of the Notebooks was the development of a new Marxist theory applicable to the conditions of advanced capitalism. This theory is often refered to as 'ideological hegemony'.

- he accepted the analysis of capitalism put forward by Marx in the 19th century and accepted that the struggle between the ruling class and the subordinate (working class) was the driving force that moved society forward. What he found unacceptable was the traditional Marxist view of how the ruling class ruled. It was here that Gramsci made a major contribution to modern thought in his concept of the role played by ideology.

- Often the term 'ideology' is seen as referring simply to a system of ideas and beliefs. However, it is closely tied to the concept of power and the definition given by Anthony Giddens is probably the easiest to understand. Giddens defines ideology as 'shared ideas or beliefs which serve to justify the interests of dominant groups'.

- The traditional Marxist theory of power was a very one-sided approach, based on the role of force and coercion as the basis of ruling class domination. It was reinforced by Lenin whose influence was at its height after the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Gramsci felt that what was missing was an understanding of the subtle but pervasive forms of ideological control and manipulation that served to perpetuate all repressive structures.

- He identified two quite distinct forms of political control: domination (which referred to direct physical coercion by police and armed forces) and hegemony (which referred to both ideological control and more crucially, consent). He assumed that no regime, regardless of how authoritarian it might be, could sustain itself primarily through organised state power and armed force. In the long run, it had to have popular support and legitimacy in order to maintain stability.

- By hegemony, Gramsci meant the permeation throughout society of an entire system of values, attitudes, beliefs and morality that has the effect of supporting the status quo in power relations. Hegemony in this sense might be defined as an 'organising principle' that is diffused by the process of socialisation into every area of daily life. To the extent that this prevailing consciousness is internalised by the population it becomes part of what is generally called 'common sense' so that the philosophy, culture and morality of the ruling elite comes to appear as the natural order of things.

It is by far the single most successful challenging governing principle in today's social life.

How is the utopian society LeGuin's describing 'hegemonic' in its framework?

A Journey through history with the haiku form

Japan in the 15th century:

1. The poetic form named "renga" was in vogue. (Renga is a poem several poets create cooperatively. Members alternately add verses of 17 syllables (5, 7, and 5 syllables) and those of 14 syllables (7 and 7 syllables), until they complete a poem generally composed of 100 verses.)

2. It was considered a dignified academic poem. Members were traditionally expected to present their verses following the medieval aesthetics and quoting the classics.

Japan in the 16th century:

1. Instead of the renga, it was the "haikai" - humorous poem - that gained notoriety. (Haikai (haikai-renga) is a poem made of verses of 17 and 14 syllables like renga, but it parodies renga introducing modern vulgar laughter. Haikai poets used plays on words and treated preferably things of daily life that the renga hadn't found interesting.)

2. The first verse of the renga and the haikai is called "hokku". Haikai poets sometimes presented their hokkus as independent poems; these were the origin of the haiku.

3. It was traditionally demanded to adopt a kigo (seasonal word: word reffering to a season) in the first verse of the renga and the haikai. Therefore, they, the poets during the 16th century, introduced a kigo in a hokku (and in a haiku) too.

Japan and Basho Matuso

1. Basho Matsuo is known as the first great poet in the history of haikai (and haiku). He too, wrote poems using jokes and word-plays, in his early stages, as they were in fashion, but began to attach importance to the role of thought in the haikai (especially in the hokku) from around 1680.

2. The school of thought of Tchouang-tseu, a philosopher in the 4th century B.C., influenced Basho greatly, and he often quoted the texts of "The Book of master Tchouang" in his hokkus.

Then come, Buson and Takahama, and the rest of the crowd

Examples of original haikus

Sleep on horseback,
The far moon in a continuing dream,
Steam of roasting tea.

Spring departs.
Birds cry
Fishes' eyes are filled with tears

Summer zashiki
Make move and enter
The mountain and the garden

or:

Short summer night.
A dewdrop
On the back of a hairy caterpillar.

A mosquito buzzes
Every time flowers of honeysuckle fall.

Four or five men dance in a circle.
Above them
The moon is about to drop.


Thoughts?

metrics: plug in now, it could prove useful

Here it goes:

1. Rhythm - the length of a line plus the way that lenght is measured: meaning how many syllables there are and how they are put together (metric feet);

2. Rhyme - masculine vs. feminine; the difference lies in the number of rhyming syllables: light/night (m) vs. exemplify/beautify (f).

metrics: plug in brains

Here it goes:

Levels of meaning:

1. Literal - a sun is a source of light

2. Symbolical/Metaphorical - a sun is a sense of warmth, belonging; a sun is a good day; postive energy

3. Allegorical - when the entire poem is dedicated to 'the sun' which reperesents, in that poem, somethin like - brightness, light, life. (so key here: the whole poem is wrapped around one big metahpor

on the subject of poets and their works

As promised,

I am going to include a bit of biographical data on the poets whose works you have to look into for homework; when analyzing the poems, you can or do not have to take into account the people these poets were when they wrote their segments: always remember that the life of the poet as a private (wo)man and the life of the poem as a shared piece are not one and the same. All are 20th century folk.

Here it goes:

1. Philip Larkin

- not the offspring of the morning bird. Educated at King Henry VIII School and St. John's College, Oxford, for many years worked as the librarian of the Hull University Library. Larking was a dominant figure in what later came to be known as 'the Movement' (a group of poets that included Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn); their work is free from mystical and logical traits that the rest of modern poetry may suffer from. Larkin's poetry examines loneliness, age, death, but the many negatives in his poetry imply positives: even though the speaker tends to be out of reach, ironic, self-depricating agonizing man.

2. Dylan Thomas

A Swansea, Wales resident. Thomas was 'discovered' as a poet in 1933 through a poetry contest in a popular magazine at the time. His poems tend to possess a stange violence when it comes to their images, a sense of powerful obscurity. The main topic he was interested in: the unity of all life - the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations to each other. He was a brilliant reader of his own poems, and many people who do not normally read poetry were drawn to hism by the magic of his own reading.

3. John Crowe Ransom

Never kidnapped anyone. Born in Tennessee, educated at both Vanderbilt and Oxford. Stayed at Vanderbilt to teach. While there, he took part in a group which met regularly to discuss philosophy and read their own poetry. Besides Ransom, other members include the now famous poetic names - Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson. He believed that science and technology were forces of destruction, that had come from the North to dominate the South. Hence, he came up with an alternative system, based on southern values, in order to protect what he treasured the most (the South as a place of leisure and stability). The system was later called southern agrarianism, and the role of poetry was to provide men and women with an alternative source of knowledge, one that they could use to combat the evils of scientific intrusion.