Pre- class Hebdige

For this reading of Hebdige, I would like to focus more on the first part of the reading: (i) From Culture to Hegemony. First of all I enjoyed seeing how Hebdige took us through the understanding and changes in meaning of the word “culture”, from a feudal ideal of hierarchically ordered community to a future of socialist utopia to the understanding of a particular way of life. Nowadays, as he puts it, we comprehend this word as the study of a society and its total way of life. This term, culture, which we are all part of and study other ones too is engulfed in ideology. I like how he refers to other theorist like Barthes and Althusser, particularly when the later mentions in his description of ideology that it is perceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects but which act beneath consciousness. And again relating to previous reading we have done such as Marx and Althusser on ideology we have come to the understanding that those who have more say, more power, the ruling class impose their dominant ideology. Those who have less power to produce or impose their definition of the world on the world are nonetheless still in ideology but that of their own group on top of the one of the oppressor.

As I was reading this I could not help but relate to this passage from a book I am currently reading Franny and Zooey by J.D Salinger:

“It isn’t just Wally. It could be a girl, for goodness’sake. I mean if he were a girl, he’d have been painting scenery in some stock company all summer. Or bicycled through Wales. It’s everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so- I don’t know- not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.”

I really enjoyed reading this passage because it sent right back to CMC and to the idea that we are stuck in ideology and no matter how hard we try and leave it we just enter a new ideology. Like Franny’s character I think it is sad-making. The importance again is being aware of such things and that we do thing maybe because we enjoy them a little yes, but mostly because ideology has, with time made us enjoy them by being engulfed in it.