Post Class 3-27-2010

After reading Jean's description of class on Thursday, I'm a little disappointed I could not be in attendance. Hebdige had a few concepts I had not covered in my previous post that I would have loved to discuss in length in class. But, duty called on the lacrosse field, and thus is life. Instead, I will do my best to provide some insight on our Tuesday class, during which we discussed Althusser and Karl Marx. Let's focus on Marx. Someone we have been well adjusted to since CMC 100. We love him at this point. I'd like to combine Hebdige's article on hegemony and Marx's article on ideology so we can think about a theorist we read earlier in the semester: Jurgen Habermas. To directly borrow a quote from our original powerpoint on Habermas, "Hegemony never sees itself as 'political' or 'ideological.' " Hegemony is dictated by those who have power in our society. Let's not forget Marx's golden rule: those who have the gold rule. We live in a capitalist country and those who have the gold dictate hegemonic ideologies. In a capitalist society, the rulers (money holders) never need to stop and question their politics or ideologies if they are the ones dictating, manipulating, and enforcing those ideologies. I feel like we would be living in a utopia if hegemony did see itself as political and ideological - then, perhaps hegemony would care about the current sociological barriers that divide our country.

My ideas may be quite generalized and unspecific right now, but I'm failing to think of detailed examples or analogies at this point. If anyone can build on this thought, I would greatly appreciate it.