Bennett and Hall offer a revision of ideological approaches to popular culture as inspired by the writings of Gramsci and the concept of hegemony. What new perspectives strike you as most interesting from these discussions, and how might they offer answers to the social role of popular culture? How do these ideas fit with the debates over ideology we discussed in Tuesday’s class? Do other questions linger from their accounts?
Theories of Popular Culture
Class blog for AMST0355, Spring 09, Middlebury College
Bennett and Hall present several important critiques of Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. I felt one of the most important critiques was the problem with the word consensus. Gramsci used the term active consent. I believe this means an educated decision. Hall highlights that certain groups are excluded from the theory of this consensus. I believe this challenges the notion of active consensus when analyzing popular culture as a whole. This ties into Tuesday’s discussion about revolution and reform.
Gramsci also discusses the way dominance is achieved. One of the steps he gives is assimilation as a means to conquer ‘ideological’ traditional intellectuals. I believe this is more along the lines of reform rather than creating a revolution. I believe that this is a problematic. Assimilation implies sacrificing a portion of the original ideology. This is required to gain ‘dominance’. This however is not changing or creating a new ideology or consensus, it is simply conforming to the original dominate ideology (active consent).
Based on these readings I believe the social role of popular culture is to break away from and challenge hegemony. However I do not think the current structure of popular culture allows it to do so.
Tony Bennett summarizes Gramsci’s key argument as the following: “the bourgeoisie can become a hegemonic leading class only to the degree that bourgeoisie ideology is able to accommodate, to find some space for, opposing class cultures and values.” (Reader, 95) In other words, hegemony is not simply a one way street. When a particular social group becomes the dominant one, in order to maintain their dominance they must balance force with consent.
Now I know what you’re thinking (and what these scholars proposed as well) – consent doesn’t mean “change.” That is to say (as we discussed on tuesday), the dominant ideology will ultimately be reinforced no matter what – the only difference is that you think your opinions and ideas matter. That the masses are made to view the way things are is the way things out to be.
Gramsci and Bennett would say no, that’s not entirely true. That the status quo/dominant ideology the ruling class has consented to is a negotiated or compromised version of the original.
I agree that the dominant group is trying to “educate” the masses so that their ideology is similar to the dominant ideology. I think Gramsci makes a very persuasive analysis of to how they do this – through “positive education” (schools and rewards for praisworthy activity in the law) and “negative education” (the law will punish anything that is not approved by the dominant class.)
However, I also like the Gramscian notion (expressed in Bennett) that at least cultural practices are “movable” – that is to say a practice that is associated with a particular group one day might be connected to values of another group the next. Think about poetry, for example – it started out no doubt amongst the educated bourgeoisie elite, but then it found its way into the hands of urban youth and black America in the form of “hip-hop.” Very different values expressed in each, yet the essential practice is the same. This begs the question how much does a cultural practice itself actually shape ideology?
This whole question of “is our voice really being heard?” is a terribly important, especially in times. Is the ruling class actually meeting the demands of the masses? Or is it simply making it “seem” like they are make some conciliatory changes? Or, further yet and perhaps more importantly, is the ruling class (and the state) educating the masses to the point where the masses actually come to want what the ruling class wants? I’m not sure which side I’d choose.
The most remarkable aspect of Gramsci’s argument is that it describes popular culture as a site where both the bourgeois and the working class struggle for hegemony. This argument is different than the Classical Marxist view that describes popular culture as a site of bourgeois’ social domination over the masses. As Tony Bennet agrees, Gramsci shifted the emphasis in the debate of popular culture to “struggle for hegemony” rather than “the subordination of the masses” through social domination. According to these new Marxists, “the field of popular culture is structured by the attempt of the ruling class to win hegemony…” (Storey 221) Gramsci enables the masses to respond to their social domination by the elite through his description of popular culture as a tool consciously used by the class-conscious working class.
Even though classical Marxism only focuses on the social domination of the masses in the discussion of popular culture, I think that Gramsci’s point does not contradict with but in fact complements the classical Marxist argument. This is mainly because it is loyal to Hegelian historicism that describes history as the platform of endless struggle between social forces. Classical Marxism also values Hegel through its incorporation of historicism into its critique of capitalism. Classical Marxist critique suggests that the working classes will rise against the bourgeois because of the never-ending nature of the historical conflicts between social classes. Going back to Gramsci, the subordinate masses are not merely dominated by the elite but are capable of forming sites of resistance (namely popular culture). Therefore, popular culture does not victimize but in fact strengthens the socialist resistance.
I found the Gramscian notion of the State as an educator as a helpful starting point through which we can refine Tuesday’s discussion of ideology. As Bennett writes, Gramsci strikes a balance between Marxist/Structuralist visions of pop culture – wherein pop culture is a tool meant to narcotize the masses, to blind them to their exploitation – and the Culturalist tradition – that views pop culture as an organic byproduct of the time period. In lieu of an all-pervasive, omnipotent and uncontested ideology that serves the purpose of the ruling class, Gramsci proposes that the bourgeois and working classes are in a constant state of flux in relation to each other, and that the power exerted upon the dominated class is borne of a mix of coercion and persuasion.
This last point is particularly important, considering our discussion of ideology on Tuesday. Althusser’s contribution to our understanding of popular culture furthered the Marxist conception of pop-culture as a tool of the ruling elite. Though his argument was more nuanced than the theorists we had read before, he still was of the mind that culture’s composite parts – some of which are categorically “ideological state apparatuses” – aid in perpetuating the subjugation of the masses. Gramsci, however, contends that the elites actively attempt to endear themselves to the working classes for the sake continuing their position of relative power. Culture, according to Gramsci, is actually contested, and the working class actually has a say in the form it takes.
I like Gramsci’s assertion that classes rule via two main actions, “force and consent”. It calls to mind the ideas of the Frankfurt school (specifically Adorno), in that all society is simply being tricked into thinking that the system is working for them. While these people (us) feel that they are consenting to rule and therefore have a share and a say, it’s suggested that the dominance enforced by consent can be just as powerful as that enforced by force. The idea of schools as dominance via consent and the courts as dominance via force is easy to see in our society, and relates nicely to our discussion on Tuesday.
Gramsci also speaks of the “life of the State”, which is “a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibra…in which the interests of the dominant group prevail, but only up to a certain point.” Basically, pop culture is painted here not as the tool of the elite to keep the masses at bay, but as a give and take (albeit one in which one group consistently takes more) in which both sides partake. As Will noted above me, this is an interesting mix of Marxist and Culturalist ideas – and one I can grasp.
Gramsci disputed the notion that “cultural forms can be assigned an essential class-belongingness and contest[ed] a simply ‘bourgeois versus working class’ conception of the organisation of the cultural and ideological relationships.” In doing so, Gramsci expands the framework on which culture can be judged and analyzed, requiring a deeper attention to the ever-changing relationships between different cultural groups.
This ties into Tuesday’s discussion of Althusser’s ‘problematic’ concept. Gransci suggests that cultural practices are ‘movable’ (i.e. ‘that a practice which is articulated to bourgeois values today may be disconnected from those values and connected to socialist ones tomorrow’), thus the same ‘problematic’ can affect different groups at different times. Bennett presents as an example the concept of nationalism, a potential problematic, which he argues could be considered a socialist cultural trait, rather than belonging to the bourgeois. A more contemporary example is the exploding popularity of the UGG shoe. Originally worn exclusively by ranchers in the Australian outback, they became the exclusive hot item among celebrities. Then they were passed down to middle-class teenage girls.
I feel that with every theorist’s revision of past theory, we get closer and closer to a model for cultural analysis that I can actually map onto popular culture as I see it today. And I feel like a major part of this progress has to do with the growing acknowledgment of the complexity of the situation on the part of our dear theorists.
With the writing that turned me off, theorists either issued statements that blanketed popular culture with too much simplicity or focused on too specific an aspect of culture for their approach to be analogous to a wider slice of culture (as with Adorno, for instance; if all culture was either as good as Beethoven or as bad as the worst Tin Pan Alley production, then we could get cultural studies out of the way in about 5th grade).
Althusser struck on some degree of this complexity in his description of ISA’s and RSA’s as an interconnected web of ideological reinforcement. Gramsci further acknowledges the complicated and fluctuating state of culture with his hegemonic theory, and I felt Bennett did a fantastic job of making it explicitly clear that considering more than one narrow-minded aspect of popular culture is the key to true understanding.