1. Marxism: Base & Superstructure Ideology & Hegemony
Althusser, Louis ( )
Marxism: Base & Superstructure Ideology & Hegemony
Antonio Gramsci( )

2. Marxism: Topics & Schools on Focus
Vulgar Marxism:
Karl Marx; Lenin, Engel, Georg Lukacs
Russian Formalism Prague
school
Dialectic Materialism, Class & Commodification
Frankfurt School [Beginning]
Adorno, Benjamin
Consumer Society, Mass Culture
Western Marxists: Althusser’s theory of Ideology & Gramsci’s Hegemony
Literature & Society
American & British Marxism: Jameson and Eagleton
Marxist Literary Criticism
Foucault
Literature as Discourse

3. Outline Marx: Q & A & Key words
A. Superstructure and Base: Debates and Related Issues
B. Ideology
Ideology defined
L. Althusser
Examples of Ideology
C. Social Structure vs. Social Formation and Over-Determination
D. A Marxist Reading: More Examples for Analysis;
The Great Gastby (excerpt)
A. Gramsci
Examples of hegemony
References ν ν ν ν

4. Marx: Q & A What is materialist determinism? (chap 5: 82-)
What are the evils of capitalism according to Marx? (e.g. chap 5: 83; chap 6: 83)
Is class relation—or relation of production—still relevant today?
Why do we desire more than we need? Why are commodities fetishized?

5. Key Words Materialist determinism
Base and superstructure -- reflection, homology and relative autonomy
Relations of production, means of production, mode of production
Exchange value, use value and symbolic value
Laborer and labor power, Alienation and reification
Ideology and hegemony

6. Superstructure vs. Economic Base in the History of Marxism:
Marx, Lenin  Stalin’s politicization of literature;
Marx, Lenin  Western Marxism (e.g. Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin, Adorno)
(chap 5: 84; chap 6: 84)
Poststructuralist Marxism -- Althusser;
Neo-Marxists’ use of Gramsci (after 70’s)
(lit. as propaganda)
Realism vs. Modernism debate; their critique of culture industry and belief in human agency (variations of reflectionism)
Over-determination
Conflicting Hegemonies

7. Literature & Society (1)
Literature of Commitment & Reflectionism (chap 5: 87-89)–
Functions: criticizing the wrong, and bringing changes. (critics as a warning system or a mentor)
Mode: realism as a preferred genre? (88)
Related questions about “political correctness”
-- What are the functions of literature?
-- Is good literature politically committed literature?
-- Does literature have to “reflect” its society, or help promote a certain political cause? (e.g. The Education of Little Tree; ref. Forrest Carter 1, 2)
-- On the other hand, can literature or art works be completely un-political or negative?

8. Literature & Society (2)
Ways of reflecting society indirectly
not through content but through forms (e.g. fragmentary form as a way to reflect social fragmentation);
incorporating different ideologies
the political “unconscious.”

9. Are we blind to our own ideologies?
Why?

10. Ideology Defined
“rigid set of ideas”; e.g. somebody refrains from eating meat “for practical rather than ideological reasons.” 落入意識形態之爭 –-(general usage) negative
ruling ideology: legitimating the power of the dominant group — (Marx) negative (chap 5 86)
sets of ideas to justify certain organized social actions --could be positive or negative ( like “hegemony”) (chap 5 86)
＊sets of ideas to misrepresent the world (and our relations) to us, in order justify certain actions while masking their real nature. – negative  They look natural (chap 6: 84-85)

11. Althusser, Louis (1918-1990) Born 1918 in Algiers;
Joined the Communist Party in Paris in 1948.
Attempted to reconcile Marxism with Structuralism.
Influential works: For Marx (1965) and Lenin and Philosophy (1969).
Note: Murdered his wife in 1980, and was confined to an asylum till his death in 1990.
(source)

12. Althusser’s Revision of Marxism
Ideology:
Sees Ideology – not as just ideas or “false consciousness” (which implies “true consciousness”);
Subjectivation: Explains both social structure and individual’s subject position in relation to ideology.
Social Formation:
Against reflectionism, argues for Literature’s “relative autonomy” from Base; it is determined by Base in the last instance (ultimately) (more later)

13. Why is it natural? Why are we blind?
We are born into ideologies, “always already interpellated” as subject (We take different subject positions in ideologies.)
Ideologies speak to us and for us.
Blind –
ideologies disguise real relations; present ‘imaginary’ relations.

14. Ideology: Subjectivation (Defined by Althusser)
Subject = Being subject to Ideology: Ideology has the function of constituting individual as subjects.
(not used) Interpellation –a.正式質問(官員) the formal right of a parliament to submit formal questions to the government
(used) Interpellation the police act of interpelling someone; a policeman hailing us “hey you!”  guilty subject. Ref.)
Systematic Control by Consent: Ideology is not any idea; it should be a system of ideas (representation) produced by some institutions (state apparatuses 國家機器) ISA
(chap 6: 85)

15. Ideology: Misrepresentation (Defined by Althusser)
Ideology as Misrepresentation: Ideology is a ‘Representation’ of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence.
(Mis-Representation, or Mis-Recognition from Lacan’s idea of mirror stage. Society produces us as subject in its own image. Chap 6 p. 86)
(chap 6: 85)

16. Ideologies: Examples
Ideology is not a singular idea; it works in a system
to justify some power, support some relations.
Which of the following are part of a certain ideology
-- produced by some ISA, distorting some reality ?
Nationalism; patriotism; cosmopolitanism used in ads
“The Taiwanese” populism;
Supporting the school as an ISA in patriarchal society;
Supporting the authorities of a certain Church or priest; confirmed by church services.
--so the myth of 女媧補天 is a mere superstition.
--so I can love anyone I’d like.
--so we should not expect men to comfort or support others.
我以身為台灣人為榮。我以身為美國人為榮。
我是世界公民。
2. 阿扁是台灣之子，是全民的總統。
3. 一日為師，終生為父。
4. God is truth.
5. The Earth is round.
6. It is human to love.
7. Men are from Mars; women from Venus.

17. Social Structure— of Vulgar Marxist
Ideology: the ruling ideas of the ruling class imposed on the other classes.
Superstructure
e.g. Literature of the middle class,
of proletariat
Parallel, reflect
Base(as foundation, center)
relations of production,
means of production

18. 1. Literature/Culture & Economic Base
Social Formation — for Althusser
1. Literature/Culture & Economic Base
relatively autonomous from;
reflect, embody, perform, transform, critique
Social Levels
Multiple Ideologies
2. Social Multiple Causality: Over-determination

19. Social Formation -- de-centered
State Apparatuses (Repressive & Ideological)
Base
Superstructure
Police
School
Army
ISA
Court
RSA
Literature
Family

20. Lit. work: Relative autonomous
over-determined;
economic influences mediated (媒介) through various ISA’s
Base
Lit. History, Genre
Author/Reader
Text
Ideologies
Superstructure
Literary MP；
Lit. RP；
Publisher
Promotion
School

21. How do we do a Marxist reading??
(ref. chap 5– p ) Power/Class Relations shown in the text, its character relations, setting, as well as its background
The role of capitalism, workers, commodities
ideologies
-- identifying them and the social practices which support them;
-- discover contradictions between different ideologies

22. Ideology: an Artistic Example
From Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538)

23. Venus of Urbino (1538) Revises Giorgione's The Sleeping Venus (1510)
Titian’s:
“a flesh-and-blood beauty, awake and fully aware of the viewer's presence.” (ref)
An allegory of “lustful love” (with signs of her hand, rose)
Celebration of marital love
(with signs of praying, white dress, the dog—loyalty, and myrtle (桃金娘)—constancy

24. Ideology: an Artistic Example
To Manet’s Olympia (1863) pay attention to her gaze, her hand, the black woman and the black cat.

25. Ideology: an Artistic Example
Manet’s Olympia
--multiple ideologies:
sexual capitalism (prostitution) presented, and critiqued?
-- Not Venus, nor Eve or Danaë, a real prostitute;
-- the woman’s direct stare and upright pose, the strong hand
The blackness inscribed as a contrast. (no backdrop to suggest any symbolic or mythic depth of this space,

26. Ideology: some CF’s
創蘋記

27. Contemporary Ideology of Love : stereotypes
Love = motorcycle or car supporting tolerant and strong men vs. wayward or weepy women

28. Commodification of Love – no fixed or human object of love
遠傳電信-預付卡-愛情告白 (cell phone as my dear )
遠傳電信-i拉列369費率-愛情無價 (because the cell phone rate is cheap)

29. The Great Gatsby: General Introd.
Setting: in New York City and Long Island in 1922.
1920’ (Roaring 20’s): is a time when the American society experienced a cultural and lifestyle revolution. In the economic arena, the stock market boomed, the rich spent money on fabulous parties and expensive acquisitions, but they are morally irresponsible. (e.g.)
Narrator: Nick Carraway going to the East as an initiation to the world of wealth and corruption.

30. Jordan Baker’s “carelessness”
Nick: You're a rotten driver, either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't to drive at all.
Jordan: I am careful.
Nick: No you're not.
Jordan: Well, other people are.
Nick: What's that got to do with it
Jordan: They'll keep out of my way, It takes two to make an accident
Nick: Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself?
Jordan: I hope I never will, I hate careless people. That's why I like you.

31. The Great Gatsby: General Introd. (2)
Symbols: East Egg (the rich area for the aristocrats) and the West Egg (the newly rich ) on Long Island, parties, green light and, the valley of ashes
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg: “blue and gigantic---… They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose.”

32. The Great Gatsby: General Introd. (3)
Nick– refrain from judgment at the beginning rejecting humans at the end.
“I would want no more privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only my neighbour, Gatsby, would be exempt from my reaction. … For Gatsby turned out all right in the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dream.”

33. G’s Passion vs. the Moral Desert & Paralysis
Foul dust -- undesirable desire
Daisy and Tom’s marriage
The superficial parties
Tom’s for Myrtle (his mistress, who fight with him all the time);
Nick’s relationship with Jordan Baker;
How about Gatsby’s love for Daisy?
And Nick's interest in Gatsby the bootlegger, hoodlum, millionaire and what he represents  The American Dream (green backs + Nature)??

34. Literary Example -- The Great Gatsby –first reunion (clip 51:00)
How are images of romance and money intertwined in the first excerpt?
Contradiction 1:
Images of wealth: D’s brass buttons, G’s gold toilet
Images of romance: beauty, tears, light, flowers,
Images of social power + nature: Images of nature + names, guests in G’s mansion  which represents his social power
G’s romantic sentiments throwing clothes at Daisy

35. Literary Example -- The Great Gatsby –first reunion (clip 51:00)
Contradiction 2: alienation or splitting of the signifiers (their exchange values) from the signified (the black market).
S-ier (1): G’s house catching light, splendor  S-ied: how he earns the money.
S-ier (2): Daisy’s evaluation matters. (“Rich girls don’t marry poor boys”)
The symbol: the green light --1. green pasture, 2. green light (= Daisy), 3. green bills

36. Literary Example -- The Great Gatsby –the past
What does “the past Daisy” mean to Gatsby?
He has to go back to the past to sort things out.
Images of ascendance (ladder) to life and wonder (“milk of wonder”);
Daisy– “perishable,” only an incarnation of something else.  social position or fullness of life, or both?
Nick’s response: An elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words (Dream –regressive, inarticulate)

37. The Great Gatsby –the ending
Green light –again more important than Daisy
“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believes in the green light, the orgiastic (狂飲作樂的) future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms out farther so we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.”

38. The Great Gatsby: undesirable desire (2)
Daisy—actually undesirable, too.
G (about Daisy): “Her voice is full of money”
N: “It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the cymbals’ song of it High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl.”
The undesirable to replace the unnamable.
The American Dream for Fitzgerald – pure at first but polluted by materialism
But is American Dream desirable?

39. GG in the context of Modernism (for your reference)
The moderns -- a simultaneity of incongruities and paradoxes.
Modernism was defined as a time of "refusal"--of middle-class pieties, scientific or philosophic certainty, propriety, tradition, and faith (Hoffman 32-33, 40 qtd Kaplan 145).
 setting up untraditional tradition; looking for undesirable desire.

40. GG in the context of Modernism (for your reference 2)
Undesirable desire is a guilty pleasure, not a mere paradox or incongruity.
The trope of undesirable desire provided a covert means of getting in on cultural debates over national belonging, of participating--through the construction of desirable and undesirable love objects--in the national debate over who was and was not a desirable American and why. (Kaplan 147)  American Dream as a means of self-justification

41. The Great Gatsby and The Ideology of American Dream
The Dream’s Material Base: Capitalist pursuit and acquisition. (the real condition)
Imaginary Relation represented by Gatsby and the green light – the fallible but desirable “We [The Americans] turn out alright at the end.”
 Daisy and Tom, the undesirable.
But the problem is that it’s hard to distinguish them from each other.

42. From Ideology to Hegemony
Gramsci: considers the role of the organic intellectual and competing hegemonies (heterogeneous and always being modified).
Hegemony = Dominant Ideology, but not always controlling us.

43. Antonio Gramsci ( )
Supporter of Russian revolution and activist in socialist transformation throughout the advanced capitalist world.
Arrested in 1926, kept in prison 1928 – 1937, where he wrote the Prison Notebook.

44. Hegemony: control by consent
Chap 6: 88-89)
Ideological leadership; consensual control;
"...Dominant groups in society, including fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class, maintain their dominance by securing the 'spontaneous consent' of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which incorporates both dominant and dominated groups." (Strinati, 1995: 165)
(source )

45. Gramsci– hegemony not secure
not given to the dominant group, but "has to be won, reproduced, sustained."
Hegemony can only be maintained so long as the dominant classes succeed in framing all competing definitions within their range... so that the subordinate groups [get] either controlled or contained within an ideological space (13; Norton 2455.)

46. Hegemony: examples –images of the Blacks
Winning spontaneous consent through granting of superficial 'concessions' (Strinati,1995:167 qtd Mystry).
This involves the dominant group making 'compromises' that are (or appear as) favourable to the dominated group, but that which actually do nothing to disrupt the hegemony of the dominators.

47. black images in US Culture
I. Three stereotypes: Mammy, slaves, clown (e.g. TV minstrel show) spontaneous consensus to their slavery or inferiority.
II. Positive images based on normative white ideals
Images in late 80’s: e.g.
--the middle-class household of
The Cosby Show points out that
there is 'nothing black' about
the Huxtable's lifestyle
(Mercer 1989:6 qtd in Mystry).

48. Strategies of containment
Sympathy shown for the minorities,
but with the whites as the real heroes.
Counter Hegemonic Practices: e.g. Hip Hop.
e.g. Cry Freedom;
The Last of the Mohicans,
Dances with Wolves

49. References
Louis Althusser Archive
Kaplan, Carla “Undesirable Desire: Citizenship and Romance in Modern American Fiction” Modern Fiction Studies 43.1 (1997)
An Introduction to Gramsci's Life and Thought
Antonio Gramsci
Mistry, Reena. “Can Gramsci's theory of hegemony help us to understand the representation of ethnic minorities in western television and cinema?”

50. References Chap 5. Chap 6 Karl Marx Life and Philosophy
“Marxism”
Dobie, Ann B. Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. Boston: Heinle, 2002.
Chap 6
“Political Reading”
Literary Theory: The Basics. Hans Bertens. NY: Routledge, 2001.
Karl Marx Life and Philosophy
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
Song “Suicided by Society”
animation: LoveSong of J. Alfred Prufrock Rev. Animation