3. Hegelian Dialectics
This is often explained as the dialectical movement from THESIS
to ANTITHESIS to SYNTHESIS (a unifying, transcendent
Absolute, as in Plato)...although Hegel himself never actually used
these terms, preferring Abstract, Negative and Concrete.
The process by which self-consciousness is transformed
(“sublated”) into Absolute Knowledge or Spirit (which Hegel also
termed “Science”)
For this to happen, one self-consciousness must first come to
recognize another self-consciousness that negates or contradicts the
first. A struggle ensues until one is subordinated to the other and
they fuse into a third, interdependent form.
4. In The Philosophy of History (posthumously
published, based on lectures given beginning in
the 1820s): Hegel’s notion of dialectics is
pressed into the service of explaining historical
progress through contradiction, negation and
sublation.
“Spirit does not toss itself about in the
external play of chance occurrences; on
the contrary, it is that which determines
history absolutely, and it stands firm
against the chance occurrences which it
dominates and exploits for its own
purpose.”
5. The French Revolution:
I. Revolution (violent overthrow of monarchy)==>
II. Reign of Terror (violence turned in on itself, imperiling
the goals of the revolution: note that this negation, as in
all Hegelian negations, comes from within the original
abstraction)==>
III. The Constitutional State as rational system for
guaranteeing freedom and equality.
This is a teleological system: history unfolds
according to dialectical processes that progress
toward Aufhebung or sublation/“lifting up”
(eventually, the transcendence of earthly history;
the end of history itself).
6. This transcendence toward
an absolute, unifying Ideal
would resolve all
contradictions (including
subject/object of knowledge,
being/ becoming,
life/death,body/spirit, etc.
7. Following Hegel’s death in 1831, the
atheistic Left Hegelians (including a
young Karl Marx) accused Hegel of
“standing on his head” and getting
dialectics all wrong. Marx sought to
turn Hegelian Idealism “right side
up”and insisted on DIALECTICAL
MATERIALISM (class struggle)
instead as the engine of history.
For historical materialists, such as
Marx and Friedrich Engels, social
being precedes social consciousness.
Hegel’s ‘Headstand’
8. Karl Marx
• Marx argues that for a given societal organization to remain
in place, the means of production need to be reproduced.
• Labor is reproduced when workers are given a means of
sustenance (i.e. wages) in order to ensure that they
continue to work.
• In the dialectic of Superstructure and Infrastructure, the
dominance of the Superstructure is determined by the
complicity of the Infrastructure.
But how does this happen? What makes workers in a
democratic society contribute to their own subjugation?
9. The “House that Marx Built:” How Capitalism Works
[Relations of production
and means of production]
10. “Let us suppose that we had carried out production as
human beings. Each of us would have in two ways
affirmed himself and the other person. 1) In my production
I would have objectified my individuality, its specific
character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual
manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when
looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure
of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the
senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your
enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct
enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a
human need by my work, that is, of having objectified
man’s essential nature, and of having thus created an
object corresponding to the need of another man’s
essential nature. ... Our products would be so many
mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.”
(Comments on James Mill, 1844)
11. Alienation of labor
In a privately owned system, the worker is an instrument,
reduced to a function of his/her labor rather than a subject
endowed with individual agency. Marx thus distinguishes
four types of alienation [Entfremdung]:
1. Social alienation of people under Capitalism from their
“human nature” [Gattungswesen, or “species-being”]
2. Alienation of one worker from another.
3. Alienation of the worker from his/her labor power
4. Alienation from the product of that labor.
17. The global system of jeans: from cotton field to mall
Raw Cotton: Sourced from/harvested in US, Mexico, Central Asia, etc.
Raw cotton shipped to China for refinement
Refined cotton shipped to Malaysia and spun into yarn
Yarn shipped to Thailand and made into denim fabric
Fabric sent to Singapore for cutting, then shipped to Indonesia
Fabric panels cut, sewn and otherwise assembled in Indonesia (assembly includes
labels from India, zippers from Hong Kong, buttons and rivets from Taiwan,
embroidery from Singapore, etc.)
Completed jeans sent back to Singapore, affixed with different brand tags, shipped to
world markets
27. Marxian Literary Criticism
This dimension of the text is its ideological construction, or
its “political unconscious” (Fredric Jameson) which is “silent”
(Terry Eagleton)
Invested in uncovering what the text hides, i.e. not that
which is intentionally concealed, but that which the text
cannot know about itself.
28. Marxian Critical Questions
Whose perception is voiced/empowered/central
and whose perception is
silenced/disempowered/marginalized?
Do characters affirm or resist bourgeois values?
Does the text reflect or resist a dominant ideology?
What are the economic and political conditions for
the production and dissemination of the text?
29. The text emerges not as a pure
outcome of authorial intention, but
rather as a symptom of a field of largely
unconscious political and economic
forces.
30.
31. The Frankfurt School
• Began in 1924 at the Institute for Social Research at the University of
Frankfurt.
• Initially concerned only with studying the work of Marx and Engels and
promulgating Marxism as a revolutionary ideology.
• Max Horkheimer assumed the directorship in 1930, shifted focus from
orthodox, ahistorical Marxism to what he termed CULTURAL STUDIES
and CRITICAL THEORY.
• Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno co-wrote The Dialectic of Enlightenment
(in which “The Culture Industry” appears) in 1944/1947 as an extended
critique of mass culture as both a direct outgrowth of and a betrayal of
Enlightenment ideals.
32. • For Horkheimer and Adorno, the culture
industry must be understood as disseminating
false consciousness in the service of the
totalitarian impulses that subtend all modern
capitalist societies.
• This hegemonic power derives chiefly from the
extent to which the companies responsible for
producing and broadcasting/distributing
information and entertainment are
economically bound up with other capitalist
interests (e.g. defense, industry, finance).
• Given this industrial
33. Hegemony
The domination and control of one group of people over
another.
“...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.”
—Antonio Gramsci
34. "To the extent that the ownership of and
control of...broadcast stations falls into
fewer and fewer hands, the free
dissemination of ideas and information,
upon which our democracy depends, is
threatened."
—FCC Chairman James Lawrence Fly, 1939
35. According to Fortune, as of 2012, The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the US, with News C
orporation, Time Warner, Viacom, CBS Corporation, and Comcast’s NBCUniversal ranking second-sixth respectively.
The Media Oligopoly (from The Nation, 2006)
