Page 43 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 43
changing the mind
similarly, the ideological elements articulated by a hegemonic class do not
have a necessary class belonging” (p. 67). It would take much more than
this brief paper to confirm this assertion, especially if are talking about sig-
nifiers from the cultural domain. Throughout the post-war period, when
the Western world was a social space for great achievements, frivolities and
symbolic turns in the arts, but also the space for a fascinating growth of the
popular culture, we had to deal with the hegemonic pressures due to the
imposing influence of the ideological as well as political difference between
the “two worlds”. The rule of “ideology” was of course superficial as far as
culture and at least a part of social sciences were concerned. The character-
istics of the above-mentioned Gramscian meaning of the term of hegemo-
ny were perceptible in the views on culture and art exactly in that period.
From this perspective, I can fully agree with the following account:
As the higher culture of the West was largely a product of a pretech-
nological age, it is scarcely any wonder that those who wish to sus-
tain the one should find themselves in the position of advocating the
other. Hence, from Mathew Arnold to F. R. Leavis, from Raymond
Williams to Richard Hoggart, from Theodor Roszak to Charles Re-
ich we are confronted with men whose commitment to cultural val-
ues seems ineluctably welded to a nostalgic regard for an organ-
ic community, whose work and culture are two aspects of a unified
life. And since both left and right wing critics have been so deceived
in their belief that a shorter working week would be the key to a new
and fuller existence, the right has turned to the past, ignoring all
too often the social cost of pretechnological culture, and the left to
some distant future in which temporary restrictions would give way
to a fully realized classless culture, unguided by rationalistic stric-
tures (Bigsby. 1976: p. 16).
Such insights accumulated in the 1970s, especially after the demise of
tumultuous political activities that left no artistic field in the Western world
untouched. It became visible that cultural and political hegemony in their
interdependency disrupt any clear meanings of such ideological notions as
progressive and conservative, beautiful and ugly, political left and right, etc.
Although we may find certain differentiating signifiers within the cultural
and artistic fields that undoubtedly set apart different politics, which again
reflect some hegemonic “values,” we usually cannot be certain to which po-
litical tendency some social effects of any breakthrough artistic praxis will
appeal to. The post-modern plurality, no matter how we grasp it in theoret-
41
similarly, the ideological elements articulated by a hegemonic class do not
have a necessary class belonging” (p. 67). It would take much more than
this brief paper to confirm this assertion, especially if are talking about sig-
nifiers from the cultural domain. Throughout the post-war period, when
the Western world was a social space for great achievements, frivolities and
symbolic turns in the arts, but also the space for a fascinating growth of the
popular culture, we had to deal with the hegemonic pressures due to the
imposing influence of the ideological as well as political difference between
the “two worlds”. The rule of “ideology” was of course superficial as far as
culture and at least a part of social sciences were concerned. The character-
istics of the above-mentioned Gramscian meaning of the term of hegemo-
ny were perceptible in the views on culture and art exactly in that period.
From this perspective, I can fully agree with the following account:
As the higher culture of the West was largely a product of a pretech-
nological age, it is scarcely any wonder that those who wish to sus-
tain the one should find themselves in the position of advocating the
other. Hence, from Mathew Arnold to F. R. Leavis, from Raymond
Williams to Richard Hoggart, from Theodor Roszak to Charles Re-
ich we are confronted with men whose commitment to cultural val-
ues seems ineluctably welded to a nostalgic regard for an organ-
ic community, whose work and culture are two aspects of a unified
life. And since both left and right wing critics have been so deceived
in their belief that a shorter working week would be the key to a new
and fuller existence, the right has turned to the past, ignoring all
too often the social cost of pretechnological culture, and the left to
some distant future in which temporary restrictions would give way
to a fully realized classless culture, unguided by rationalistic stric-
tures (Bigsby. 1976: p. 16).
Such insights accumulated in the 1970s, especially after the demise of
tumultuous political activities that left no artistic field in the Western world
untouched. It became visible that cultural and political hegemony in their
interdependency disrupt any clear meanings of such ideological notions as
progressive and conservative, beautiful and ugly, political left and right, etc.
Although we may find certain differentiating signifiers within the cultural
and artistic fields that undoubtedly set apart different politics, which again
reflect some hegemonic “values,” we usually cannot be certain to which po-
litical tendency some social effects of any breakthrough artistic praxis will
appeal to. The post-modern plurality, no matter how we grasp it in theoret-
41
