Ideologia e egemonia Sociologia delle comunicazioni 29/3/11

“Is there an underlying and coherent set of values and beliefs that characterise media representations of the world? Do the media prescribe particular ways of thinking about social problems and their solutions?... Is there a consistent pattern to the bias and stereotyping observed in the media’s coverage of events? Do the media construct specific meaning through genres and narratives? Are the media vehicles for carrying and conveying ideas of one group of people rather than others?” (Williams Understanding Media Theory, p. 145)

Teoria critica neo-marxista degli anni 1960 e 1970 (studi culturali inglesi o scuola di Birmingham) Louis Althusser ( ) Per Marx (1965) Antonio Gramsci ( ) I Quaderni del Carcere ( ) pubblicati tra il 1948 e il 1951

James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Woollaccott (eds)(1977) Mass communication and Society. Open University.

‘Early American research focused on the effects of the media on individuals rather than the area of ‘meaning’ or the relationship between the media and more general social and economic organization and this social psychological impulsion tended to obscure the analyses of media messages which was in any case dependent on the impoverished methodology of content analysis’ (James Curran et al 1977 p. 311)

The work of the Frankfurt School represents an earlier development of a critical philosophical variant of Marxism, ‘critical theory’, which rejected both the economic determinism of Soviet Marxism and the empirical positivism of the American tradition of mass communications research… The impetus of Adorno’s work was culturally elitist and pessimistic about mass culture and the implication was that the only real and authentic culture rests on a specific type of art…’ (p. 312)

Stuart Hall, il CCCS (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) di Birmingham e il Marxismo (gli anni 70) ‘Culture, Media and the Ideological Effect’ (1977) Materialismo storico e cultura

‘Culture has its roots in what Marx, in The German Ideology, called man’s ‘double relation’: to nature and to other men… Men collaborate with one another for the more effective reproduction of their material conditions… No matter how infinitely complex and extended are the social forms which men then successively develop, the relations surrounding the material reproduction of their existence forms the determining instance of all these other structures. (Hall 1977, p. 315)

This the basis for a materialist understanding of social development and human history: it must also be the basis of any materialist or non-idealist definition of culture.. Production always assumes specific historical forms, under determinate conditions…’ (Hall 1977, p. 316)

‘For Marx, the relations which govern the social organization of material production are specific… The social and cultural superstructures which ‘corresponds’ to each mode of production will be historically specific. (p. 316) Totalità e reale

For Marx, the major modes of production in human history have been based on one type of the exploitation of the labour of some by others. Modes of production are therefore founded on a root of antagonistic contradiction (p )

Il modello marxista: Base Economia (modo di produzione, base, reale) Sovrastrutture Società (relazioni di potere determinate dall’economia, involontario, stato, famiglia società civili) Cultura (forme, linguaggio, rappresentazione, coscienza, ideologia)

Ideologia ‘The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas: i.e. the class, which is the dominant force in society, is at the same time its dominant intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production… Insofar as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, they do this in its whole range, hence among other things they regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age; thus their ideas are the ruling class of the epoch.” (Marx e Engels The German Ideology citati in Williams, p. 37)

Ideologia a. Il contenuto dei media è ideologico, e l’ideologia sarà quella della classe dominante trasmessa attraverso i messaggi mediatici b. Il problema della determinazione/autonomia della cultura (ideologia) rispetto al modo di produzione (economia e società) c. L’ideologia è la coscienza (falsa coscienza, relazione immaginaria, identificazione, soggetto etc)

Il lavoro dell’ideologia: a.Trasformare una relazione nel suo opposto (camera obscura) b.Far sì che una parte rappresenti il tutto (feticismo) c.Nascondere il tutto

Esempio di ideologia: il mercato come camera obscura ‘For Marx, capitalism is the most dynamic and rapidly expanding mode of production in human history… production comes to depend on socialization or ‘interdependence of labor’… But this interdependence is realized and organized through the market…And in the market, men’s all sided independence… appears as a condition of mutual unconnectedness and indifference.’ (p.323)

Esempio di ideologia: il mercato come feticcio ‘The market represents a system which requires both production and exchange as if it consisted of exchange only’ (p. 323)

Esempio di ideologia: il mercato come occultamento ‘making the real foundations of capitalist society in production disappear from view… hence we can only ‘see’ that labour and production are realized through the market… we can no longer ‘see’ that it is in production that labour is exploited and surplus value extracted.’ (p. 323)

L’ideologia per gli studi culturali Non c’è relazione omologica tra modo di produzione e ideologia, ma una serie di trasformazioni L’ideologia (cioè la sfera della cultura, o del linguaggio e rappresentazione) è produttiva (produce, teorie, immagini e rappresentazione) L’ideologia non si esprime solo nelle rappresentazioni, ma anche nelle pratiche culturali (la pratica sociale della significazione)

La mediazione del linguaggio … all social life, every facet of social practice, is mediated by language (conceived as a system of signs and representations, arranged by codes and articulated through social discourses… (p. 328) As Volosinov puts it, …’the domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. They equate with one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present too. Everything ideological possesses a semiotic value’ (p. 329)

Stuart Hall ‘Encoding/Decoding’

Es. Roland Barthes Mitologie

Edward Said Covering Islam (1981)

Louis Althusser e l’ideologia Le istituzioni sociali e culturali sono relativamente autonome dall’economia Apparati statali repressivi (polizia e esercito) e apparati statali ideologici (chiesa, scuola, università, famiglia, media etc)

Louis Althusser e l’ideologia L’ideologia per Althusser non è semplicemente ‘falsa’ o ideale o mentale’. Althusser definisce l’ideologia come ‘la rappresentazione della relazione immaginaria degli individui alle loro reali condizioni d’esistenza’. La psicanalisi di Jacques Lacan e la teoria dei tre stadi (reale, immaginario, simbolico) Immaginario e identificazione

Louis Althusser e l’ideologia L’ideologia funziona attraverso il meccanismo dell’interpellazione L’interpellazione lavora sull’inconscio e dà forma al soggetto L’individuo è soggetto nella misura in cui è precostituito da strutture sociali

Louis Althusser e l’ideologia “He introduces the concept of ‘interpellation’ to explain the process by which individuals are constituted as subjects. Ideology operates to do this. Individuals are interpellated (have social identities conferred on them) through ideological state apparatuses from which people gain their sense of identity as well as their understanding of reality. Like all structuralists, Althusser sees the human being as determined by pre-given structures such as language, family relations, cultural conventions and other social forces. Althusser did not concede that the individuals could resist the process of interpellation’ (Chandler citato in Williams p. 149)

Antonio Gramsci e l’egemonia culturale “Conquistare la maggioranza politica di un Paese vuol dire che le forze sociali, che di tale maggioranza sono espressione, dirigono la politica di quel determinato paese e dominano le forze sociali che a tale politica si oppongono: significa ottenere l'egemonia.”egemonia (Gramsci Quaderni del Carcere)

Antonio Gramsci e l’egemonia culturale ‘Hegemony is the operation wen the dominant class fraction not only dominate but direct – lead: when they not only possess the power to actively coerce but actively organize so as to command and win the consent of the subordinated classes in a continuing way.’ (Hall 1977 p. 332)

Antonio Gramsci e l’egemonia culturale ‘…hegemony works by ideology… ‘definitions of reality, favourable to the domninant class fractions,… come to constitute the primary ‘lived reality’ for the subordinate classes… the dominant classes strive and to a degree succeed in framing all competing definitions of reality within their range, bringing all alternatives within their horizon of thought’ (Hall p. 333)

Antonio Gramsci e l’egemonia culturale L’egemonia culturale non può mai essere vinta una volta per tutte (quindi è instabile, quindi terreno di battaglia) Ripresa da Ernesto Laclau e Chantal Mouffe: la lotta per l’egemonia è la lotta per estendere la democrazie a più soggettività

Antonio Gramsci e l’egemonia culturale L’egemonia culturale lascia spazio all’idea di una guerra semiotica o di segni e significati a cui possono partecipare sia gli ‘intellettuali organici’ che i pubblici stessi

Stuart Hall et al (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order

“The authors showed how the media created public anxiety over the crime of ‘mugging’, student protests and picketing. Together the media represented the increase in violence and disorder as a threat to law and order in society. There was no evidence to show that any increase had taken place – in the period the book examines the incidence of crimes of violence had actually fallen.”(p. 151)