in this video I'd like to introduce you
to just a few basic concepts from the
world of Marxist literary theory and
then in a separate video we'll see if we
can apply some of these ideas to William
Wordsworth's poem I wandered lonely as a
cloud the basic idea with Marxist
literary theory is that we see the text
as somehow in relation to the economic
conditions of the time and Karl Marx in
the 19th century he famously
distinguished between these kind of two
levels of culture and society and and
life basically the one he called the
base or the infra infrastructure ok
infra structure and this is the economic
aspect of life this indicates the tools
that we use the way we organize
ourselves in terms of you know having a
boss and a worker let's say it includes
technological change and innovation how
you work how work is organized all of
these aspects are part of the base and
Marx has very specific terms for these
things right he talks about means of
production forces of production
relations of production and so on but we
just want the basic idea here that we
have this kind of economic reality that
tells us how we work and then above that
is the superstructure so the
superstructure is somehow affected by
this and super means above or on top so
Marx's basic point is that somehow
historically economics influences
everything else in life and the
direction of this then is always upward
right the influence is from economics to
the superstructure so if we were to say
what's in the superstructure we would
say well it's it's everything including
politics politics law theology
literature right entertainment basically
anything that involves what Marx would
say is consciousness
is the phrase that's where the word that
he uses consciousness and there's a very
famous quotation which I'll read to you
he wrote it is not the consciousness of
men that determines their being but on
the contrary their social being that
determines their consciousness and by
social being marks really was referring
to this this kind of base or
infrastructure right their social or we
might say their economic being their
social being and that influences
consciousness so sometimes it's easier
just to give an example of this and
let's say that you're living in some
kind of you know agricultural society in
the past and you have a lot of sheep
right you have sheep and you have flocks
and you share them and this is part of
your livelihood so let's say that you
have sheep and this is part of the base
right this kind of agricultural society
well what kind of effect is this going
to have on the superstructure Marx would
point out that if let's say you're
living in ancient Israel and you're part
of a Jewish society you might have a
particular conception of God and you
might compare him let's say to a
shepherd if you think of Psalm 23 the
Lord is my shepherd I shall not want
well Marx would say it's a direct result
of having this kind of society and if
you change the society a little bit then
the parameters change as well and so I
think if we if we kind of sketch this
out a little bit differently we start to
see that each society has its own
parameters okay so here we have you know
different societies if we have an
agricultural society over here and we
have a nomadic Society over here we can
compare them then we can see that there
are these kind of blinders these kind of
limitations on consciousness on what is
possible in terms of thought and an
agricultural society might have a very
different sense of divinity or the
divine and a nomadic society an
agricultural society might have gods
that are fertility gods let's say okay
so we're going to get some fertile
two guards over here but a nomadic
society might instead have a god that's
involved with trade let's say trade God
or a God that's involved with I don't
know marriage right because to a nomadic
society making marriages with different
cultural groups and fostering those
relationships might be really important
and the point then is that our
consciousness if we think of this as
like the thoughts that we have and these
kind of come bubbling up from the bottom
then you can see that there are these
limitations an agricultural society is
not necessarily going to have this kind
of consciousness simply because of its
economic kind of reality and that's
level of determinism where one thing
determines another is traditionally
called
historical materialism so Marxist
theories usually referred to as
historical materialism although this is
not a term that marks you so much as how
his theory has often been labeled so
that that's the basic idea of how
economics then affects the rest of life
the problem though is what do we do with
literature so we know that literature is
part of the superstructure and we know
that those people who control the
society those who have most power they
tend to want to keep the status quo they
don't really want change right and
change typically comes from the base so
there's technological innovation over
time that changes the relations of
production all of these kinds of
different things and eventually there's
a crisis and then there's this kind of
revolutionary change which leads to a
new epoch or a new era so we know that
change primarily comes from the base
although somehow it's also reflected in
the superstructure and we can talk then
about literature as somehow reflecting
the economic conditions of the time just
like everything else does theology and
law and so on but that can be a bit of a
naive theory of history right and Marx
tended to be a little bit naive
about how literature related to
economics he tended to call literature
simply propaganda so literature then is
a kind of propaganda oops
propaganda and it's appropriate for the
ruling classes they write a literature
that they like and that they want the
masses to kind of you know enjoy if you
think for instance about a feudal
society so a medieval kind of society we
have lots and lots of stories about
Knights doing brave things and usually
rescuing peasants from bad a bad fate it
you can definitely see there that Marx
is right that there is a sense in which
those who control the production of
literature create literature that's in
their own favor right that paints them
in a positive light but there is some
problem with this because literature is
often also very revolutionary and how do
we account for this well Marx had some
trouble with this and as soon as you
start thinking about history and
historical change you can see some of
the problems he runs into so let's think
about this in relation to history then
let's say that we have a number of
historical epochs in a row here and we
can give names to these so Marx famously
said that the most important a pox are
the feudal epoch the capitalist epoch
capitalism and then that would
eventually lead to communism of course
although we haven't quite seen that
successfully within these different
epochs we can also talk about specific
eras right we can talk about late
capitalism if we want so we might split
this up even more but let's let's just
talk very broadly about a larger epoch
well in this particularly Park we could
talk about what's referred to as a kind
of hegemony hegemony sometimes also
hegemony depends on who you talk to a
hegemony is that kind of dominance
culturally and socially of one group
over another that can be through culture
can be through politics it can be
through all sorts of things but hegemony
is this kind of
domination through discourse and through
law and and so on how does that work if
there's only one dominant group well
then it would indeed be propaganda but
what happens over time when you have
this kind of contestation when people
are fighting with each other
if literature is somehow propaganda if
literature is over here then as soon as
this this kind of crisis point right
what happens Marx tended to say that
literature takes a little while to catch
up so if we think of literature as kind
of catching up then he called this a lag
there's a kind of lag historically and
literature shows people's consciousness
of what happens but it should sort of
shows it after the fact so let's say
this moment of crisis happens then the
literature will start reflecting that
crisis kind of after the fact
historically and it sort of takes a
little bit to catch up okay well you can
see that that's probably not very
satisfactory it's kind of a lousy
explanation and later Marx is where it
pains to kind of clarify this and to
create a better explanation so I'm just
going to give one example of a Marxist
who came up with a different explanation
and this Marxist is Raymond Williams so
Raymond Williams a 20th century Marxist
and cultural critic okay and he sort of
tried to update what Marx was saying but
in terms of literature so let's see what
he says
Raymond Williams argues that within any
kind of society so we think about
history again with within any society we
actually have multiple hegemonies and
that sort of solves the problem and he
called these hegemonies the dominant
hegemony so the dominant hegemony is the
kind of social and cultural discourse
and and power and so on of the the
ruling class the class that is dominant
and so we can talk about the dominant
hegemony okay and that's going to take
up most of the field in terms of what's
visible through culture and
entertainment and all of these other
things
but then we also have a kind of residual
hegemony and a residual hegemony is
what's left over from the previous era
so it kind of you know these are the
traditional conservative people let's
say within a society who are clinging on
to something that's that's still from
the past and then we also have some
people who are part of a kind of
emergent emergent hegemony and this is
the more revolutionary kind of thinking
and this eventually may well well become
the new dominant hegemony this is the
future dominant Germany in a new kind of
epoch and so we can see all of these
these things in tension with each other
the dominant hegemony might have more
power and influence they control the the
media let's say but we also have the
emergent hegemony particular working
classes let's say and they might produce
and print their own materials they might
create their own TV shows they may not
have the same access to resources but
they are challenging the dominant
hegemony and now we can see that
literature then fits into these
different patterns some types of
literature are reflective of the
dominant class the dominant viewpoint
some are residual some are emergent now
Raymond Williams is really great at sort
of pointing out that the fascinating
paradoxes and tensions that arise from
this so for instance if we just to give
one example if we think of the concept
of tradition right where does tradition
fit in so tradition could be the canon
literary canon the the decision about
who fits in with the great writers of
the past the tradition could be
something like a monument to a past hero
could be all sorts of things well who
controls that we might think well the
traditional kind of aspect of culture is
controlled by the residual hegemony but
that's not the case according to Raymond
Williams he says it's the dominant
hegemony that controls tradition because
they decide what they would like to keep
from the past and what's important
and so we see how even through these
kind of interesting ways power is
exerted so this is a quite a complicated
view of culture then and there's one
more aspect we need to add and this is
the the aspect of consent because of
course with propaganda propaganda is
from the top down right and propaganda
then is kind of as we said naive view of
looking at literature because if there
is a revolutionary aspect if people are
thinking and clashing and so on then
it's not as if propaganda is always just
from the top down that's where consent
comes into the picture a little bit and
this notion of consent was first really
explored by the italian communist
antonio gramsci and in fact Raymond
Williams gets a lot of his ideas from
Antonio Gramsci and gram she pointed out
that within a hegemony there's often an
element of consent
we don't just coercively force people to
believe in a certain idea we want that
we want to convince them to some extent
and we also hold out a kind of carrot
right we kind of say well this will
entice you this will make it more
palatable um just to give one example
and this is just my own example here but
let's say you take the the film the
films that feature James Bond right so
we have James Bond he is the kind of
great hero he rescues the damsel in
distress it's basically the feudal
romance updated he rescues the world he
saves all of us but who is he why do we
want to look up to him
he is ultimately the rich aristocrat he
is the one who has the fancy cars he
dresses nicely he's suave and elegant
and he knows how to speak well is this
somebody that we can aspire to that we
can attain to maybe not maybe our
economic reality is such that we cannot
actually afford any of this but why do
we go out and watch it then right why do
we give our consent why do we take part
of this kind of what you might call
expression of the dominant hegemony
because that's what James Bond probably
is it's really a kind of expression of
the capitalism you might say all of the
forces of capitalism and that's where
the Marxist critic like Raymond Williams
would point out so we now have a more
complicated picture of what literature
and entertainment does then in relation
to the base the the economic base and we
can see then that there is this kind of
influence from the base to the
superstructure but within the
superstructure there are these really
interesting and fascinating tensions
between different cultural viewpoints
and in a different movie we'll have a
look at how William Wordsworth's poem I
wanted lonely as a cloud expresses some
of those kinds of tensions