hegemony

is a form of control exercised primarily through a society's superstructure, as opposed to its base or social relations.

For Gramsci, hegemony was a form of control exercised primarily through a society's superstructure, as opposed to its base or social relations.

is a process, not a system or structure (though it can be schematized as such for the purposes of analysis).

Lived hegemony is a process, not a system or structure (though it can be schematized as such for the purposes of analysis)

is a terrain for the construction of political relations.

Laclau defines hegemony as a terrain for the construction of political relations (Butler et al., 44).

is an exclusion in a perpetual process (and thus incomplete) guaranteed on the one hand by the failure of any particular demand to represent the whole population, and on the other, by the split nature of every subject (and thus the inability to fully incorporate the outside in the inside).

In her view, this constitutive exclusion defines the very sphere of politics and democracy. The incompletion entailed by the perpetual processes of exclusion is guaranteed in two ways: 1. as the failure of any particular demand to represent the whole population. 2. by the split nature of every subject and inability to fully incorporate the outside in the inside.

is concerned with whole social processes and distributions of power and influence and thus goes beyond culture(in which men define and shape their whole lives) and beyond ideology (in which a system of meanings is a projection of a particular class interest).

hegemony' is a concept which at once includes and goes beyond two powerful earlier concepts: that of 'culture' as a 'whole social process', in which men define and shape their whole lives... and that of 'ideology' in any of its Marxist senses, in which a system of meanings and values is the expresion or projection of a particular class interest'. 'relates the 'whole social process' to specific distributions of power and influence' . . . (Williams 1977:108-109, 110 in Ortner '60s' 149).

is dynamic and does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not all its own.

Hegemony is dynamic , 'It does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not all its own.'

is leadership to be exercised by the proletariat (revolutionary class) over the other exploited classes.

This sense of hegemony, as articulated by Lenin, referred to the leadership exercised by the proletariat over the other exploited classes:' As the only consistently revolutionary class of contemporary society, [the proletariat] must be the leader in the struggle of the whole people for a fully democratic revolution, in the struggle of all the working and exploited people against the oppressors and exploiters' (qtd. in Anderson 17).

is not necessarily total and not everything should be reduced to hegemony.

Hegemony is not necessarily total, 'It is misleading, as a general method, to reduce all political and cultural initiatives and contributions to the terms of the hegemony.' 'Authentic breaks within and beyond it . . . have often in fact occurred.'

hegemony, n.Definitions

hegemony