Fun with Marxism: Hegemony

Something that Williams said got me thinking... The word "normal" (1277). While I know that he meant the normal way of interpreting "rule," but it made me start thinking about power being a normal thing, a natural thing. It is given and taken and, if it is truly interconnected with everything else in society, and if it is also indissoluble from the "specific activities and products of real men" (1275), then is it, then, natural?

If power and the power struggle is, indeed, natural, then what is it about humans that has us hardwired to either crave or bow to power? Is it our need to be part of a structure (and not to be banished from the polis)? It also seems that if this is true then maybe (though I hate to admit it) Jameson was right. From this standpoint, too, the other theories are more abstract than Marxism. Marxism has a firm grounding in what is knowable and calculable, even if the realm of changing idealogies takes us more into the abstract (especially when the extremes of various class systems ebb and flow).

The other question is how can we allow our class values to "override" our personal values? Yet this takes me back to last week and feminism. We allow a lot of things to override our personal values in order to belong.

Why Do You Always Write These Strong Women Characters?

Robot Chicken

When reading Barry's rendition of the feminist movement I flashed back to Tony's post all those weeks ago about everything being chicken. I think, however, that a lot of these activistic theories are more like the meat grinder. They are looking for ways to expose the current structure as a fraud, to point out that the center we have depended on since our infancy is an illusion to keep us in our place, whether that center is capitalism, patriarchal promulgations, or simply religion (and I seem to be, along with many of my classmates, a vulgar Marxist, and I don't seem to have a problem with it).

I also see in feminism a similar paradox to those of the post-structuralists: if language is male constructed, yet it must be used in order to communicate, then the domination succeeds. It has put the female sex into a bind that we cannot escape from...If language is male constructed. However, I think that this argument over language is trivial. We can only be dominated by language if we choose to be. Those male writers with their strangle hold on language can sit back in their chairs and laugh as the "fairer sex" uses their own clubs to beat them with (phallic symbolism notwithstanding).

I think that the real argument here, though, is how women are perceived by men and women, both in how they are written as characters and how they are seen by other characters (the male gaze?). It might also be wise to take an androcentric approach. How do men see themselves? And how does that sense of manliness, or lack thereof, make them react toward women?

Side note: I was in Chili's the other day having dinner with my sister. We sat at the bar because it would, otherwise, have been a twenty minute wait. This bartender (who looked like he had just cut his first tooth) came up and said, "So, what would you girls like to drink?" My first impulse was to slug him. I have no idea what his intent was in calling us girls. He may have meant it very innocently, but--to me--it was tantamount to a white man calling a black man "boy." It shows a complete and utter lack of respect, and it shows a sort of "natural" chauvinism that tends to be bred into men. When I worked for the airlines, we were always called "girls." Even the flight attendants who were older than fifty (or older than the pilots) were "girls." So, yes, semantics, but this is language that can be identified and, hopefully, avoided.

According to Barry, men and women are both slaves to sexism. So, wouldn't it benefit everyone if we just cut it out? I think that feminist theory, even as more of the kinks are worked out, is a valuable instrument to do so.

blah blah ginger, blah blah blah...

Once I got past Jameson's claim of supremacy of Marxism over all other theories (Marxism is the brand of theory that nine out of ten Marxists recommend), I was able to nestle into the warm bosom of (anti?) sociopolitical repression.

The main point in Jameson my brain glommed onto was that necessity creates dependence, just like how a domesticated animal comes home after a quick jaunt around town because it knows where its meal is coming from. It was also the reason that tribes were created: we keep each other warm, safe and fed, and we'll choose the most intelligent, and the best hunters, among the group to run everything. It made sense then, and it makes sense now. The only difference is that now it's sort of humiliating. We are willing slaves ("crumbs, crumbs, crumbs!").

I, in spite of this realization of gentle enslavement, prefer Althusser's off-brand version of Marxism (what is voluntary slavery, after all, if not compromise). There's that notion in physics that every action must have an equal and opposite reaction, but since when are things so clear-cut? A single moment in time is created by a confluence of events leading up to that moment, and each piece of art (especially writing) has an infinite amount of influences. The French Revolution didn't start because Marie told them all to eat cake.

Indeed, we are all a product of our times and economic status, and what we write about tends to reflect this. Marxism is definitely one of the better lenses through which a piece of literature can be read. We are, after all, severely repressed, and repression tends to produce some of the best (if not most interesting) art.

Post-modernism helps reduce blood pressure

Barry and Jameson both point out that the modern period was an artist's way of dealing with the anxiety of their particular time, and it seems that this anxiety was dealt with through a deep and meaningful interpretation of the world.

Post-modernism, on the other hand, deals with this anxiety by jumping into the pool of superficiality and rampant consumerism, by simply ignoring that there is any anxiety by a complete and total disconnect. The post-modernists seem to be saying that there is no way to go back, there is no way to improve the present, all we can do is deal with the now, and the now is so depressing that we have to do a little airbrushing. The new superficiality also seems to escape this anxiety by over-emphasizing reality and by making a joke of it.