Ideology and Hegemony

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Ideology and Hegemony
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Marx Engels

• Ideology as distortion caused by the mode of
  production (economic structure).

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Camera Obscura
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Base and Superstructure

• The mode of production (base) gives rise to the
  social and cultural institutions (superstructure)
  that legitimate it.

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Superstructure
Base
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Hegemony

• The ruling class moral and political claims to
  leadership.
• Hegemony is not domination, which operates by
  force, most commonly the states monopoly on
  violence. Instead, its intellectual and moral
  (Gramsci, 44)

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Hegemony (cont.)

• Hegemony is a process, not a fixed situation
  ideological struggle is a continuing feature of
  any society in which one social group has
  dominance over another (Cormack, 11).
• A social group can, and indeed must already
  exercise leadership before winning governmental
  power (Gramsci, 44)

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Utopia and the imagination of the child

• Coercion melts away in the magic palace of sweet
  harmony and repose the palace raised and
  administered at a distance by the father, whose
  physical absence is designed to avoid direct
  confrontation with his progeny. (Dorfman and
  Mattelart, 149)

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Ideological Structure (Gramsci)
Everything which influences or is able to
influence public opinion, directly or indirectly,
belongs to it libraries, schools, associations
and clubs of various kinds, even architecture and
the layout and names of streets (Gramsci, 46).
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