Monday, September 24, 2007

In his essay, “The Intellectuals,” Antonio Gramsci speaks of organic intellectuals and their role in capitalism. These individuals use their thoughts and ideas to control non-intellectuals, trapping them in ideology and coercing them into submission. The intellectuals in control Gramsci is speaking of are the bourgeois, who have had the schooling and power necessary to create their own culture and ideology to force upon the workers. According to Gramsci, the practice of hegemony, the dominance of one class over the other through the force of its superstructure, is the key to capitalist success. Capitalism will not come to an end till the workers organize and form their own ideology to follow. In order to break from being dominated, the working class must develop a culture of its own lead by its own intellectuals and reject the views of the bourgeois. In his essay “Marxism and Literature,” Raymond Williams also discusses the superstructure which perpetuates the upper class dominance of the worker. This superstructure is devised of both legal and political institutions, as well as forms of consciousness. Through coercion on both the private and public level, the State has taken control and put into power an ideology that caters to the upper class while the poor toil below it. The Marxist reading of Jamaica Kincaid's 'Girl' explains the power of a dominant ideology over the submissive working class. The mother in the story is lecturing her daughter on how to adjust herself to the values of the society that dominates her so that she may be accepted.

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