Meta Marx.

As impossible as it would seem to “find an Archimedean point outside the sphere of ideological discourse” (McLellan 1995, p. 1), as a group we have found four names- Murdoch, Mohn, Warner, Berlusconi- highly representative for the present state of affairs regarding the media. Marx’s theory pertaining to ruling material force as being the ruling intellectual force of society deciphers this situation most relevantly. For the governing, international media corporations advance concepts that are saturated with socio-ideological connotations, as Durham and Kellner (2006) show. Tabloids and magazines clearly illustrate how the populace in lower economical brackets is strongly influenced by a media matrix that is a powerful netting of hegemonic, political and ethnical representations which contour individuality.

Additionally, the Marxian theory of “labour division” illustrates class’s partition in active and passive factions (Durham and Kellner 2006) that is most significant regarding the media producers-consumers mode.

Moreover, the Marxian idea of the reduction of human world value growing in direct proportion to the world of things is to be considered with regard to the advertising system. Countless researches in the domain attest that a public with greater buying power is preferred. Therefore, people are seen in terms of what they posses and come to be conquered by capital. Commodities appear as bearers of perplexing attributes (Lee 2000, p. 10):

The radical rupture between production and consumption in capitalist societies…removes from consumers the possibility of knowing the true status of the social relations of the production of commodities.

To conclude, regardless of the fact that many have branded Marx as a “dead horse” (Abensour 2011, p. xlii), society persists in availing itself to his hypotheses as catalysts for its economic and political progression. The fact that history has manufactured a legendary name for Marx is common knowledge. But that we are subjects to an unremitting exposure to his legacy is a truth that we have just discovered.

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References

Abensour, M. 2011. Democracy against the state. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Durham, M. G. and Kellner, D. M. 2006. Media and cultural studies: keyworks. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Lee, M. J. 2000. The consumer society reader. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.

McLellan, D. 1995. Ideology. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Word Count: 313

The I.deological and The H.egemonical

A set of theories can only gain cultural legitimacy by broad proliferation of ideas in certain socio-political epochs. Consequently, as a group we have considered Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci as two of the most relevant Marxist followers.

It has been argued (Durham and Kellner 2006) that Marx’s and Althusser’s critiques equally focused on the often indiscernible manner in which ideas perpetuate the governing hierarchical order to naturalize and propagate the governing concepts in cultural forms. Accordingly, our quality of subjects- linked to a precise operation Althusser named interpellation- appears to be a primary obviousness. Moreover, McLellan (1995, p. 28) argues that Althusser contributes to the Marxist concept of ideology through his view of people as carriers of social functions rather than self-governing entities. Like Gramsci, Althusser is against ideology as false perception, given that he sees it as a “quasi-material existence” (McLellan 1995, p.28) which is incorporated in our culture, in the form of “ideological state apparatuses” (Althusser 1969, p. 233) - church, school, the media.

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 Likewise, the Italian thinker Gramsci presents hegemony as being generated by the socio-political integration of subordinate factions to a “given sociopolitical constellation”, showing “the particular interest as general or the general interest as ruling” (Durham and Kellner 2006, p. XV). Accordingly, Žižek (1995, p. 155) defines Laclau and Mouffe’s concept of hegemonic articulation as: “taking hold of … «floating» signifiers-such as freedom, democracy, the people-and weaving them into a particular ideological context”.




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Moreover, Althusser (1969) supports Marx’s “theoretical anti-humanism”, derived from a definition of man as having a mainly biological character. Thus, he considers human nature as a societal stratum that is appended to the material dimension of the individual for, as Rorty (1989), cited in McLellan (1995, p. 74), said: “people are children of their time and place without any significant metaphysical or biological limits on their plasticity".

References

Althusser, L. 1969. For Marx. London: Allen Lane.

Durham, M. G. and Kellner, D. M. 2006. Media and cultural studies: keyworks. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

McLellan, D. 1995. Ideology. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Žižek, P. 1995. The invisible remainder. London: Verso.

Word Count: 295