hegemony which China currently extends over Mongolia and Tibet. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. The term hegemony is today often used as shorthand to describe the relatively dominant position of a particular set of ideas and their associated tendency to become commonsensical and intuitive, thereby inhibiting the dissemination or even the articulation of alternative ideas. First published 01 November 2001; last revised 07 February 2005. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=501, accessed 01 October 2020. The Literary Encyclopedia.WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME. Rather, culture is heterogeneous both in terms of the different kinds of texts produced and the different meanings that compete within texts. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! The term hegemony is today often used as shorthand to describe the relatively dominant position of a particular set of ideas and their associated tendency to become commonsensical and intuitive, thereby inhibiting the dissemination or even the articulation of alternative ideas. This broader meaning was coined and popularized in the 1930s by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who investigated why the ruling class was so successful in promoting its own … The building, maintenance or subversion of a common conception of the world is an aspect of ideological struggle involving a transformation of understanding through criticism of the existing popular ideologies. The site only generates revenue after someone clicks on a link and makes a purchase/ performs an action on the resulting page! Domination is thus exerted not by force, nor even necessarily by active persuasion, but by a more subtle and inclusive power over the economy, and over state apparatuses such as education and the media, by which the ruling class’s interest is presented as the common interest and thus comes to be taken for granted. Neo-Gramscian hegemony theory has been challenged on the grounds that Western culture no longer has a dominant centre either in terms of production ormeaning. By Nasrullah Mambrol on October 10, 2017 • ( 2 ) Hegemony, initially a term referring to the dominance of one state within a confederation, is now generally understood to mean domination by consent.

1. hegemony - the dominance or leadership of one social group or nation over others; "the hegemony of a single member state is not incompatible with a genuine confederation"; "to say they have priority is not to say they have complete hegemony"; "the consolidation of the United States' hegemony over a new international economic system". Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony thus involves an analysis of the ways in which such capitalist ideas are disseminated and accepted as commonsensical and normal. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Copyright 2002-2019 Postcolonial Space | All Rights Reserved | Powered by. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.
This refraction is a precise demonstration of one mode of hegemonic control.

Hegemony, initially a term referring to the dominance of one state within a confederation, is now generally understood to mean domination by consent. Consent is achieved by the interpellation of the colonized subject by imperial discourse so that Euro-centric values, assumptions, beliefs and attitudes are accepted as a matter of course as the most natural or valuable. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. By Nasrullah Mambrol on October 10, 2017 • ( 2 ). Hegemony is the dominant influence of an civilization, society, nation or elite over others. From the Greek for ‘authority’ or leader, the term hegemony usually signifies the dominance of one state over another, whether this dominance is acceded to and is therefore formal, or is the consequence of arbitrary imposition. Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. Yet, Gramsci’s key observation was that in advanced capitalist societies the perpetuation of class rule was achieved through largely consensual means—through intellectual and moral leadership. The term hegemony is today often used as shorthand to describe the relatively dominant position of a particular set of ideas and their associated tendency to become commonsensical and intuitive, thereby inhibiting the dissemination or even the articulation of alternative ideas. Lecturer in English PSC Solved Question Paper, Marxist Literary Criticism: An Overview – Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Marxist Literary Criticism: An Overview | Literary Theory and Criticism, NTA UGC NET English June 2019 Questions and Answers. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. In these notebooks – published in English in According to this theory, there is a strand of meanings within any given culture that can be called governing or ascendant. Via his concept of the national-popular, he also showed how hegemony required the articulation and distribution of popular ideas beyond narrow class interests. Hegemony is not a static entity but is constituted by a series of changing discourses and practices that are intrinsically bound up with social power.

Within Gramscian analysis, a hegemonic bloc never consists of a single socioeconomic category but is formed through a series of alliances in which one group takes on a position of leadership. A hegemonic class is one that is able to attain the consent of other social forces, and the retention of this consent is an ongoing project. Searching for a method of communicating the values of Western civilization to Indians which avoided offending their Hindu sensibilities, the administration discovered the power of English literature as a vehicle for imperial authority. In their post-Marxist revision of the concept of hegemony Laclau and Mouffe put aside the final determination of social and cultural relations by class, which for them does not determine cultural meanings. The following are illustrative examples of hegemony. This Englishman was, at the same time, the embodiment of universal human values. ‘The strategy of locating authority in these texts all but effaced the sordid history of colonialist expropriation, material exploitation, and class and race oppression behind European world dominance . In particular, the past thirty years have seen the fragmentation of lifestyle cultures through the impact of migration, the ‘reemergence’ of ethnicity, the rise and segmentation of youth cultures and the impact of gender politics. window._mNHandle.queue = window._mNHandle.queue || []; (Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/hegemony). CFP - Post-1945 Women's Writing (British and American), CFP - Scandinavian (Nordic) Literatures and Cultures, CFP - Hispanic South and Central American Literatures and Cultures, CFP - Nineteenth Century French Literature and Culture, CFP - Arabic/ Middle Eastern (incl. Right across the Western world, it is argued, we have been witnessing the end of anything remotely resembling a ‘common culture’. window._mNHandle = window._mNHandle || {}; Author of "ISIS: Ideology, Symbolics and Counter Narratives" (2019) Masood Raja is an associate professor of Postcolonial Literature and theory at University of North Texas. Here, the ‘social’ is not understood to be an object but rather a field of contestation in which multiple descriptions of the self and others compete for ascendancy. consequence of arbitrary imposition. usually signifies the dominance of one state over another, whether Gramsci’s discussion of hegemony followed from his attempts to understand the survival of the capitalist state in the most-advanced Western countries. As Viswanathan puts it, the ‘split between the material and the discursive practices of colonialism is nowhere sharper than in the progressive refraction of the rapacious, exploitative and ruthless actor of history into the reflective subject of literature’ (22–23). From the Greek for ‘authority’ or leader, the term hegemony Hegemony, the dominance of one group over another, often supported by legitimating norms and ideas. Further, it needs to be constantly re-won and re-negotiated so that culture is a terrain of conflict and struggle over meanings. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. Hegemony received particular prominence in cultural theory The Literary Encyclopedia. © The Literary Dictionary Company Limited. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Clark, Robert. ISSN 1747-678X. Hegemony. . medianet_versionId = "3121199"; Postcoloial Space displays merchant affiliate links and contextual ads. Hegemony, Hegemony, the dominance of one group over another, often supported by legitimating norms and ideas. following the postwar publication of the Prison Notebooks Examples would be the hegemony A classic example of the operation of hegemonic control is given by Gauri Viswanathan, who shows how ‘the humanistic functions traditionally associated with the study of literature – for example, the shaping of character or the development of the aesthetic sense or the disciplines of ethical thinking – can be vital in the process of sociopolitical control’ (1987: 2).

Such control was maintained by the British government when it took responsibility for education in India after the Charter Act of 1813.

the English literary text functioned as a surrogate Englishman in his highest and most perfect state’ (Viswanathan 1987: 23). These cookies do not store any personal information. Gramsci, Antonio. For Gramsci, from whom cultural studies appropriated the term, hegemony implies a situation where a ‘historical bloc’ of ruling class factions exercises social authority and leadership over the subordinate classes through a combination of force and, more importantly, consent. 1971 – Gramsci addressed a fundamental problem in Marxist thought: this dominance is acceded to and is therefore formal, or is the the Italian fascists. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Fundamentally, hegemony is the power of the ruling class to convince other classes that their interests are the interests of all. https://www.britannica.com/topic/hegemony, http://postcolonial.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Postcolonial-Concepts_-Dominance-and-Hegemony.mp3, Postcolonialism: Free Online Course on my YouTube Channel, ENGL 2331 – 001: World Literature, F 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Instead, hegemonic and counter-hegemonic blocs are formed through temporary and strategic alliances of a range of discursively constructed subjects and groups of interest.