Antonio Gramsci – the concept of hegemony / hegemonic struggle
Suggests that power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture. Concept of Hegemony is to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others.
Hegemony is a struggle that emerges from NEGOTIATION and CONSENT – postcolonialism articulates a desire to reclaim, re-write and re-establish cultural identity and thus maintain power of The Empire.
Jurgen Habermas – public sphere
Habermas defines communication as strictly what happens between two or more talking seriously about something that exists or should exist in the world, but no one disputes the validity of the statements or suggestions made by each other. Communication therefore uses a medium in and through which it occurs: the language. The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action.
Noam chomsky – the 5 filters that manufacture consent
The five filters of manufacturing consent are:
- Structures of ownership
- The role of advertising
- Links with ‘The Establishment’
- Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’
- Uniting against a ‘common enemy’
Chomsky proposes that the mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”
Louis Althusser – interpellation & Ideological State Apparatus
Louis Althusser says that ‘all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject’. Althusser suggests that we as people are socially constructed. The way in which society addresses you is interpellation which is the way that your subject identity is formed.