2.4 (October 2002): 383-386
© 2002 National Communication Association

Antonio Gramsci and Hegemony in the United States

Mark Browning

Lee Artz and Bren Ortega Murphy.  Cultural Hegemony in the United States.  Foundations of Popular Culture 7.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000.  ix + 338 pages.  Bibliography and index. $39.95 (paper).

      A scan through the tables of contents of any number of composition, speech, and literature textbooks published over the past decade reveals the increased awareness of the importance of multiculturalism, tolerance, cultural diversity, pluralism, or whatever else one might want to term the appreciation of difference within contemporary society.  That Western culture has grown increasingly diverse over recent years cannot be questioned.  Neither can it be questioned that the academy has responded with considerable interest to this diversity.  What can be questioned, however, is the theoretical rigor of this response.  Despite the best efforts of well meaning academics, both in the scholarly literature and in the classroom, much of the diversity effort being offered on campus sounds suspiciously like Rodney King’s plea: “Can’t we all just get along?”  As noble a sentiment as that might be, it fails to be of utility when one encounters the thornier issues of diversity where cultural differences intertwine with entrenched political and economic interests.

      In Cultural Hegemony in the United States, Lee Artz and Bren Ortega Murphy, both from the communications department at Loyola University, present Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony as a tool for understanding the more intractable of diversity issues.  Gramsci (1891-1937), the founder of the Italian communist party, created in his idea of hegemony a theory of social power with appeal to both Marxists and non-Marxists.  As something of a precursor to postmodern theorists, Gramsci questioned the possibility of objective knowledge and championed the role of ideology in the creation of knowledge.  In evaluating social structures, Gramsci relied heavily on his idea of hegemony.  The key to this theory is the premise that many societies have maintained social hierarchies not through coercive force but through a process of consent and acquiescence.  A rather mundane example of this theory might be found in the case of a small dog that allows itself to be dominated by a larger dog because of the benefits accruing from that subservient relationship.  In human situations, one group might willingly subordinate itself to another when the arrangement produces material benefits, political stability, and cultural coherence.  Cultures, in Gramsci’s scheme, cannot be separated from the ideologies and social systems from which they emerge.  Likewise, ideologies cannot be divorced from their cultures.  The two interlock in complex and often unexpected ways.  “No ideology is natural or simply dominant or subordinate but occurs in a complex web of social relations.  Ideologies of a stable hegemony are so ingrained that even challenges can reinforce relationships and re-create practices that favor dominant interests” (31).

Artz and Ortega Murphy arrange their book in a manner that renders it accessible for sampling.  The initial chapter stands as a capable introduction to Gramsci, his theories, and their interplay with such theorists as Lukács and the members of the Frankfurt School.  With both theory and background well presented, the book moves through three chapters that apply the idea of hegemony to a series of important conflicts in United States society:  race, gender, and social class.  While the initial chapter presents the background material in a manner that requires of the reader a considerable sophistication in communications theory, the three “topic” chapters present a wide range of applications in a manner that will prove accessible to virtually any reader. 

The strength of this book lies in these applications.  In repeated cases, the authors draw on familiar manifestations of popular culture—Hollywood movies, television advertisements, professional sports, supermodels—in order to exemplify Gramsci’s theory and then work out its implications.  One example of these applications is the thirty-page exploration of the portrayal of African-Americans on television.  This section begins with a critique of network news coverage of race issues before proceeding into a survey of comedy television programming that ranges from Amos ‘n Andy to The Cosby Show.  While the authors predictably point to negative portrayals of African-Americans in older programs, their hegemonic reading of The Cosby Show is similarly adverse, declaring the Huxtable family to be “hermetically sealed in an ‘idealization of racial harmony, affluence, and individual mobility’ that is beyond the reach of millions of black Americans” (121).  In the world that Gramsci’s theory describes, The Cosby Show, far from serving as a positive image for African-Americans, is described as a contributor to the continued power of the privileged (white) establishment, while Bill Cosby is portrayed as complicit in the preservation of the hierarchy.  One weakness of the race chapter is its reduction of all racial issues in the United States to the familiar black-white dichotomy.  Given the complexity that the authors proclaim and embrace at various points throughout the book, this simplification seems unfortunate.

Where the three “topics” chapters present a limited number of extended applications of the theory, Artz and Ortega Murphy provide a host of briefer applications as well.  The body of the book is punctuated with brief “sidebar” articles that present a particular related case study in perhaps 250 words.  These sidebars involve topics as diverse as Malcolm X, children’s toys, gender-specific clothing, secretaries’ day, office design, and sports stadium skyboxes.  The book’s final chapter suggests further applications to which on might direct these ideas.

Cultural Hegemony in the United States, while a coherent whole, seems almost to divide into two separate works.  This observation is not intended as a criticism.  Instead, the book seems to fulfill two related, but significantly different purposes and would thus prove useful to the reader at different times.  The first work is made up of the first and last chapters, which serve as a fine introduction to the history of Gramsci’s thought and a call to its further application. The second work comprises the three “topics” chapters, which can be taken singly or together to provide a wealth of examples working out Gramsci’s theories.  This second work, which can be profitably read by theorist and non-theorist alike, stands as the more valuable of the two. 

While Cultural Hegemony succeeds in working out Gramsci’s theory through application to three of the most difficult and long-standing conflicts still affecting the United States, the authors’ omission of any meaningful discussion of religion—it does not even appear in the index—as a field for application of these principles seems disappointing.  Given the internal cultural conflicts of the 1990s and the eruption of violence with roots in Islam, the religious application of hegemony seems an unfortunate omission.  In fairness to Artz and Ortega Murphy, theirs is not presented as a definitive account of all applications of hegemony in the United States.  Quite to the contrary, they point out the fluid and complex aspects of this account when they assert that because of “mass society’s cultural diversity and complexity, hegemony must continually be stitched together at many seams and thus has many points where it may unravel” (28).  Artz and Ortega Murphy have made a significant contribution both to the academy and to society as they recognize and draw to wider attention the incredible complexity of this fabric that comprises diversity studies in the United States and they provide tools for understanding this fabric.

Mark Browning is Professor of English at Johnson County Community College.