Theoretical terminology and conceptions are subject to a constant change. They deviate from their original meaning and context.
Nina Baker looks at modifications and appropriations of "Base" and "Superstructure" in various, including contemporary, cultural theories.
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Tracing Superstructure or the Development of Marxist Cultural Theory
By Nina Baker
It is precisely
its 'spontaneous' quality, its transparency, its “naturalness”, its refusal to
be made to examine the premises on which it is founded, its resistance to change
or to correction, its effect of instant recognition, and the closed circle in
which it moves which makes common sense, at one and the same time,
“spontaneous”, ideological and unconscious. You cannot learn, through common
sense how things are: you can only discover where they fit into the existing
scheme of things. In this way, its very taken-for- grantedness is what
establishes it as a medium in which its own premises and presuppositions are
being rendered invisible by its apparent transparency.” (Hall, qtd. in Hebdige:
11)
Ideology and hegemony, two terms which frequently appear in the texts of
cultural theories in specific and in news publications at large; two terms with
whose “definition” we seem to be familiar, however when looking back to the
“origins”, the terms in their prevalent usage of today seem to have lost depth,
are more in line with terms like “paradigm” or “dominant discourse”. In this
paper I will trace the Marxist conception of superstructure and its evolving
cultural theory; the reinterpretations and adaptations the definitions have
undergone through several influential Marxist theorists, namely Antonio Gramsci,
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Raymond Williams and Louis Althusser, to also
show the initial “meaning and depth” of the terms and the theory behind it and
the actual relevance they still have today.
First it is sensible to capture the
“base” of the terms themselves (to stay within Marxist terminology); to start
with Marx' proposition of base and superstructure more detailed to then focus on
the role superstructure played in his definition in order to relate to
the transformations. In the preface of A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy Marx elaborates his understanding of the means of production
and the contiguity of social being and states that:
in the social production of
their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are
independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given
stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of
these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the
real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to
which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production
of material life conditions the general process of social, political and
intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness[...]In
studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the
material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be
determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men
become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge
an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period
of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness
must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict
existing between the social forces of production and the relations of
production.(Political Economy)
Thus, according to Marx (and Engels),
consciousness is a social product; it is a part of the culture which in
turn is shaped by the production relations in society. The social sphere is
based on the “production relations”, the form of economic relations shapes the
“superstructure”; the economic structure is the base of society.
The way in
which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature
of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce.
This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of
the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of
activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a
definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they
are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what
they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends
on the material conditions determining their production. (Marx, German Ideology)
Marx further defines this in terms of class and cites “the ideas of the ruling
class” as the ruling ideas which also constitute the ruling intellectual force
and thus also control the means of mental production (Marx 9). In this context
the ruling class produces the naturalization of its own values and ways; since
they control the means of production, they also produce the dominant culture and
the “ideological framework” for their rule. Therefore, in order alter social
consciousness the relevant field of struggle for Marx and Engels was the control
of means of production: the base. "No social order is ever destroyed before all
the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new
superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material
conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old
society“(Marx, Political Economy). Inscribed in this proposition is a strict
economic determinism, an inflexible static nature which according to
Williams
“constitutes, at least in certain hands, a very specialized and at
times unacceptable version of the proposition” (Williams 3). In The Concept of
Ideology Gramsci modifies this notion of ideology and shifts the focus from base
to superstructure. He posits a mutual relation between the economic "base"
structure and the cultural “superstructure” - the superstructure actually feeds
and effectively reproduces economic structure, or effectively sustains the
status quo by its ideological apparatuses. “Everything which influences or is
able to influence public opinion, directly or indirectly belongs to it:
libraries, schools, associations and clubs of various kinds” (Gramsci16).
Gramsci asserts the term “hegemony” to describe this form of capitalist rule. As
Williams points out this suggests a totality, “which saturates the society to
such an extent, and which, as Gramsci put it, even constitutes the limit of
common sense for most people under its sway, that it corresponds to the reality
of social experience very much more clearly than any notions derived from the
formula of base and superstructure” (Williams 8). For Gramsci, this “saturation”
is enforced through “the supremacy of a social group” which “manifests itself in
two ways, as “domination” and as “intellectual leadership” (Gramsci 14). Gramsci
characterizes “the relationship between the intellectuals and the world of
production” as “not as direct as it is with the fundamental social groups” but
instead “in varying degrees, “mediated” by the whole fabric of society and by
the complex of superstructures, of which the intellectuals are, precisely, the
“functionaries” (Prison Notebooks 144). In Gramsci's reinterpretation of
superstructure intellectuals therefore play a pivotal, active role in
maintaining the consensus of the general public. In contrast to Marx however,
for whom ideology was entirely negative connoted as the “ruling ideas of
the ruling class”, Gramsci criticizes the cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie
but does not categorically negate the concept itself. Instead he argues that
“unless political revolution was accompanied by cultural change it would never
breach capitalism's less visible defences, the entrenched bourgeois values and
social relations of civil society” (Eley 211). Thus, for Gramsci the role of
intellectuals was to “raise workers to a sense of their full capacity to govern
production and thence society” (Eley 211).
Adorno and Horkheimer incorporate
Gramsci's pivotal role of culture and the intellectual leaders shaping
consciousness in their approach to cultural theory, also termed “Critical
Theory”. In addition, they pose methodological and ontological questions
regarding Marxism; Marxism established itself by claiming scientific principles,
a “scientific truth of class struggle”. Adorno and Horkheimer (and with them the
Frankfurt School) introduced skepticism against this notion of “scientific
truth” itself. Thus, instead of a “practical philosophy”, they developed a
critical theoretical framework to research culture. In their essay The Culture
Industry they strongly criticize what they consider “mass deception” through
popular culture ( Horkheimer and Adorno 41). Not as Gramsci envisioned a raised
awareness of the workers is conceptualized; the new “technology of the culture
industry confines itself to standardization and mass production and sacrifices
what once distinguished the logic of the work from that of society” (HA 42). For
Adorno and Horkheimer “the whole world is passed through the filter of the
culture industry”, by “being nothing other than style, it divulges style's
secret: obedience to the social hierarchy” (HA 45-48). This pessimist conception
of cultural developments is also prevalent in Adorno's Minima Moralia where he
states that “The change of the relations of production itself depends
more than ever on what befalls the “sphere of consumption,” the mere
reflection-form of production and the caricature of true life: in the
consciousness and unconsciousness of individuals “.
Williams on the other hand
not only transforms Gramsci's notion of hegemony, but he also offers a
challenging, more positive reformulation of the Marxist conception of base and
determination. He traces the notion of determination back to “theological
accounts of the world and men” (Williams 4). Marx, according to Williams, denied
this sort of “external” determination and instead “puts the origin of
determination in men’s own activities”; thus, instead of external causes acting
as determinant agents of being, it is within “the experience of social practice”
that limits and pressures are exerted (Williams 4). Likewise the “base” which
for Williams
is a mode of production at a particular stage of its development.
We make and repeat propositions of this kind, but the usage is then very
different from Marx’s emphasis on productive activities, in particular
structural relations, constituting the foundation of all other activities. For
while a particular stage of the development of production can be discovered and
made precise by analysis, it is never in practice either uniform or static. It
is indeed one of the central propositions of Marx’s sense of history that there
are deep contradictions in the relationships of production and in the consequent
social relationships. There is therefore the continual possibility of the
dynamic variation of these forces. (Williams 5)
In this reappropriation the
“base” is thus not a “state”, a static construct, but a process without fixed
properties (Williams 5) .This dynamic conception also leads to a
revaluation of “superstructure”, “away from a reflected, reproduced or
specifically dependent content” towards what Williams calls “cultural practices”
(Williams 6). He also asserts a much more active conception of “hegemony”, which
for Williams is not “singular”, but instead a complex account of structures that
have “continually to be renewed, recreated and defended; and by the same token,
that they can be continually challenged and in certain respects
modified”(Williams 8). And it is exactly this understanding of “challenge and
modification” which he merges with “cultural practices” and identifies
counter-hegemonic potential. More specifically, it is within what he considers
to be “emergent” as opposed to residual and dominant cultural practices that he
locates this potential.
An emergent culture, he [Raymond Williams] argues,
unlike either the dominant or the residual, requires not only distinct kinds of
immediate cultural practice, but also and crucially "new forms or adaptations of
forms". Such innovation at the level of form, he continues, is in effect a
pre-emergence, active and pressing but not yet fully articulated, rather than
the evident emergence which could be more confidently named. (Milner 93-94)
This
is realized in the form of “structures of feeling” which “can be defined as
social experiences in solution” (Milner 94). Again, the flux of the process is
emphasized by Williams, an openness comes to the fore, greatly contrasting
Marx's initial rigid concept. However, as Williams is well aware, in a culture
in which “anything that can be seen as emergent” quickly becomes incorporated,
there is the real problematic of distinguishing between “emergent-incorporated”
and “emergent not incorporated” practices (Williams 11).
Unlike
Williams, with Althusser, Marxist cultural theory takes a decidedly
structuralist turn away from dynamic practices. He substantiates the ideological
apparatuses that Gramsci introduced and amplifies their breadth. “In Althusser,
culture is neither a superstructural effect nor the expression of the truth of a
social totality, but rather an autonomous structure of "ideology", with its own
specific effectivity, located within and in relation to a wider structure of
structure” (Althusser 84). In his seminal essay Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses Althusser subdivides the apparatuses into two distinct groups and
terms them RSA(Repressive State Apparatus) and ISAs (Ideological State
Apparatuses). Significant for him, the RSA despite its subgroups (army, police
etc.) forms a singular entity while the ISAs (e.g. religion, education) are
characterized by “plurality” whose unitary relationship “is not immediately
visible” (Althusser 80). The decisive difference for Althusser between the two
main sets of apparatuses lies within their function. The Repressive State
Apparatus “functions 'by violence', whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses
function 'by ideology''" which also constitutes “what unifies their
diversity”(Althusser 80-81). Althusser understands the function of ideology as
“constituting concrete individuals as subjects” (Althusser 84).
For “...ideology
has very little to do with “consciousness”...It is profoundly
unconscious....Ideology is indeed a system of representation, but in the
majority of cases these representations have nothing to do with”consciousness”:
they are usually images and occasionally concepts, but it is above all as
structures that they impose ont the vast majority of men, not via their
“consciousness”. They are preceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects and they
act functionally on men via a process that escapes them. (qtd. in
Hebdige: 12)
Althusser terms this phenomenon as an “interpellation” and asserts
that “all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete
subjects” (Althusser 85). In this context it becomes clear that ideology is
something “total”, every apparatus, every “function” of life is ideologically
permeated, the subject can not escape ideology as the subject is always within
ideology. Thus, “ideology is eternal” as “individuals are always- already
subjects” (Althusser 87). Numerous other influential Marxist theorists or their
contributions are not mentioned in this paper, which of course given the length,
would prove an impossible task. “Naturally”, after Althusser, further
modifications and adaptations of superstructure and Marxist cultural theory have
taken place, especially since the shift to postmodernism and the development of
even more interwoven, “rhizomatic formations” between base and superstructure,
between the material forces of production and social production of existence.
Some, like Jameson took on a more critical stand towards postmodernism, some
like Laclau and Mouffe greatly altered and “postmodernized” Marxist cultural
theory. By tracing the some of the “original influences” I hope “underline” the
significant contributions these thinkers have made in analyzing human existence,
how much their thinking has permeated what we experience as cultural studies and
finally, the great role Marxist cultural theory plays still to this day.
Works Cited
Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks. Eds.
Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner.
Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
41-72.
Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia. 1951. 2 August 2007
.
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards
an Investigation)." Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks. Eds. Meenakshi Gigi
Durham and Douglas Kellner. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 79-83.
Gramsci,
Antonio. “The Concept of Ideology.” Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks. Eds.
Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
13-17.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio
Gramsci. London: ElecBook, 2001.
Eley, Geoff. Forging Democracy : The History of
the Left in Europe, 1850-2000. Cary: Oxford University Press Incorporated, 2002.
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1977.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. "The Ruling Class
and the Ruling Ideas." Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks. Eds. Meenakshi Gigi
Durham and Douglas Kellner. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 9-12.
Marx,
Karl. The German Ideology. 1845. 31 July 2007
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Milner, Anrew J. Re-imaging Cultural Studies : The Promise of Cultural
Materialism. London: Sage Publications, Incorporated, 2002.
Williams, Raymond.
“Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” New Left Review I/82
November-December 1973: 3-16.
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