Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 21:53:58 -0600
From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Public Intellectuals


steve.devos wrote:
> 
> Hugh
> 
> An inaccurate rendition of Gramsci - check out work of Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto
> Laclau for more direct and acceptable rendition of the Gramscian position. The
> very notion of 'hegemony' is contrary to the notion of 'violence and
> revolution', Gramsci was deeply democratic...
> 
> regards
> 
> sdv
> 
Recognising this may obscure as much as it reveals, here are various
definitions of the concept 'hegemony' from a web site on Gramsci:

definition #1 working definition by Mohammed ElNahal

"Given intellectual currency by the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci,
the word (a translation of egemonia) refers to the pervasive system of
assumptions, meanings, and values - the web of ideologies, in other
words - that shapes the way things look, what they mean, and therefore
what reality is for the majority of people within a given culture."   

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition: "preponderant
influence or authority over others," usually by the elite


definition #2 Gramsci 

"In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci [applies the term] to the way in which
the bourgeoisie establishes and maintains its rule." 

from A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. Tom Bottomore 

definition #3 Irena Makaryk: 

"For Gramsci the bourgeoisie exercises hegemony over other classes in
capitalist states. While the bourgeoisie may dominate society through
political and juridical institutions (its rule enforceable through the
police and the military), it leads through hegemony in the private realm
by presenting itself as representative of the 'universal' advancement of
society. ... To the division between the state and civil society,
Gramsci assigns the oppositions of force/consent, authority/morality,
coercion/persuasion, domination/hegemony. A subordinate group, its
identity established in economic terms, will achieve intellectual,
ethical and political fulfilment by realizing that its own interests
'transcend the corporate limits of the purely economic class, and can
and must become the interests of other subordinate groups too' (181). If
the leading group is fundamental to the stage of economic development
and if it allies itself with other subordinate groups by making economic
sacrifices to them, it will achieve hegemony as a step toward state
power. 

Hegemony is established and maintained at the intellectual, cultural and
ideological levels. Gramsci defines intellectuals as those who perform a
directing and organizing function." 

>From Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory, ed. Irena Makaryk 

definition #4 person 4

dictionary definition: 

The American HeritageŽ Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition

heˇgemˇoˇny (hî-jčmše-nę, hčjše-mo´nę) noun  plural heˇgemˇoˇnies

The predominant influence of one state over others.

[Greek hęgemonia, from hęgemon, leader, from hęgeisthai, to lead.]

— heg´eˇmonšic (hčj´e-mňnšîk) adjective— heˇgemšoˇnism noun—
heˇgemšoˇnist adjective & noun