Power, Culture, and Memory Author(s): Jackson Lears Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 75, No.

1 (Jun., 1988), pp. 137-140 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1889658 . Accessed: 20/09/2011 17:35
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American History.

http://www.jstor.org

and Memory Culture, Power,

JacksonLears ofcultural to findsomeonewitha good wordto sayfortheconcept It is refreshing he in certain ways, myargument EventhoughLeon Finkmisconstrues hegemony. - more,I think, thanhe realizes.Certainly and I sharea lot of commonground he is more sympathetic to Gramscianideas than some Americanintellectual can be wielded historians havebeen. Theyhavetendedto doubtthattheconcept forexformulation, funny In L. wickedly Haskell's Thomas withanyprecision. a "feather is to Christianity: as Unitarianism is to Marxism ample,Gramscianism theconfromthispointofview, thetruefaith. from pillow"to catchthosefalling is too softbut also too volatile."Likedryice,"Haskell hegemony ceptof cultural asmerely a diffuse becoming sublimation, tendstoward always writes, "hegemony societies of particular feature thana distinct rather pect of the humancondition of specific and actions."' events thatone could everpointto in explanation it acknowledged, As I havealready but misconceived. is accurate That criticism by a is probablytrue that no organizedsocietycan existwithoutgovernance like in words orphrases inhering Thereis no explanatory power group.2 hegemonic "falseconthan in "modernization," bloc" anymore or "historical "hegemony" a theoretical terms provide or "socialsystem." Gramscian "consensus," sciousness," thevalueofthatvocabuthatacquires contexts; meaning onlyin specific vocabulary without and power reducing culture therelation between laryis thatit highlights ordemography. ofeconomics lifeto a mereepiphenomenon and emotional mental in thisor operating processes Thereis little pointin asking:Do we see hegemonic to as a "yes-type" once referred questhatsociety? (That is whatAileen Kraditor (or The moresalientquestions are: Whichgroupscomposeda hegemonic tion.3) were allimoments? How historical at historical bloc particular counterhegemonic) - through moralimpulses, of economic interests, whatcombination ancesforged How werethosealliancesdisfantasies? collective ethnic prejudices, ties,common remain? Whydid some groupspeel awayand others solvedor reshaped? ofLaborposesthosequestions oftheriseand falloftheKnights Fink's account were on the"processes He correctly focuses meanings in provocative bywhich ways.
Learsis professor of history at Rutgers University. Jackson
I ThomasL. Haskell, A Replyto Davis in theDebate overAntislavery: Interest "Convention and Hegemonic 92 (Oct. 1987), 829-78, esp. 834, 835. Historical Review, and Ashworth," American American Historical 2 T. J.Jackson Lears,"The Conceptof CulturalHegemony: Problems and Possibilities," Review, 90 (June 1985), 567-93, esp. 579n25. (no. 56, 1972),136-53, PastandPresent on TheirHeritage," "American RadicalHistorians 3Aileen S. Kraditor, esp. 137.

137

138

TheJournal ofAmerican History

and empowered in American thesources life," oftheKnights' organized discovering in their tomobilize"traditional values" as thecement for a broadstrength capacity based challenge to concentrated He traces thedeclineof themovement to power. oflaborprograms "a declining base oforganized and canconstituents, cooptation ownambivalence and thelaborculture's toward didatesbythemajorparties, state actionand partyformation," that "craft suggesting unions,ethnicpolitics, and classissuesas thekeysource orreligious association" ofworkers' fraternal displaced I am not surethatI can acceptthe argument in all of itsdetails. socialidentity.4 in theThompsonian Likeotherlaborhistorians stillseems mold,Finksometimes thefirmest toassume that classconsciousness basisfor radical provided politics, even ofsolidarity that localsources were moreimporwhenhisownevidence maysuggest I am impressed notionofclass.Nevertheless, withhis argutantthantheabstract ment'scapacity to illuminate the makingand unmaking of a counterhegemonic culture. Finkand I share thebelief thatcultural valuesarecritically important in shaping a labormovement. Butwhatmakes and energizing an oppositional culture endure? I haveargued.MaybeI do overIntellectual coherence? Thatis whatFinkbelieves value clarity and underrate confusion: thatis an occupational hazardof philosowhomaybe seducedbywhat and intellectual called phers historians, WilliamJames "thesentiment of rationality" evenwhentheydeclarethemselves of a opponents Butin thiscaseFink's I cited rationalist world view.5 is a little complaint misplaced. in theproducer theconfusions culture toshow thelimited and ambiguous primarily ofworking-class I also observed nature consent to dominant groups' hegemony. (as Finkdoes) thatthenotionofdividedconsciousness suggested onlya slightly more version offalseconsciousness, thatit stillimpliedtheexistence ofan sophisticated ideologically correct "unified consciousness" to be promoted bya revolutionary vanin an opposithe importance of intellectual coherence guard.To overemphasize is to resurrect tionalculture theghostofLenin,who continued to stalkthepages of Gramsci's prisonnotebooks. But ifintellectual coherence is nottheglue thatholdsa culture together, what there is? Obviously, can be no singleanswer to sucha sweeping question.But the mostcomprehensive effort wouldhaveto beginbyacknowledging thatnearly all themostresilient in in cultures oppositional havebeen rooted collective memory, of past historical to use Barrington Moore'slanguage. "precipitates experience," Suchan admission is difficult for ofanypolitical modernizers hue,whodismiss any attachment to thepastas "nostalgia" from con(a wordthatneedsa longvacation In themodernizers' lessthanfulladtemporary publicdiscourse). view, anything to "thepainful ordealofchange"constitutes The passive justment escapism. submission to theallegedly inevitable forces ofhistory thesort ofdeterministic involves
4 LeonFink, "The New LaborHistory and thePowers ofHistorical Pessimism: Consensus, Hegemony, and the of Labor," Case of the Knights JournalofAmerican History, 75 (June1988), 115-36. 5 WilliamJames, "The Sentiment ofRationality," Collected [1879]in WilliamJames, and Reviews Essays (New York,1969),85.

Power, Culture, andMemory

139

thatused to be considered thinking theexclusive property oforthodox Marxists; in the entire fact,it pervades Western liberaltradition.6 In recent years, though, socialand cultural historians havebegunto reshuffle faThe discovery miliar liberal categories. thatradical protest has often had conservais one ofthemajorhistoriographical tivesources advances ofthelasttwodecades. we need to the of Now into the even more carry implications that discovery problematic arenaofthetwentieth century-aperiodwhenlocally basedpopular culture hasbeengradually marginalized bynational and later multinational corporations, whencollective memory hasbeendevalued byadvertising and themassmedia, whenthepain of separation from thepast has been airbrushed from the iconography of "economic development." The closerone getsto thepresent, the harder itis to find genuinely popularsources ofbroad-based radical dissent; thevernacular voicesofprotest are eloquent(in the laborstruggles of the 1930s,the civilrights movement, theeffort to end theVietnam War),butthey areoften difficult to hear abovethebuzz ofbackground noise -the official version ofevents provided bythe corporate media.So it is perhaps out ofdesperation thatmany left academics have in thevery ofcorporate ofpopular evidence citadels beguntolookfor protest power: in television, Their radio, and other mass-marketed forms ofculture. questhasbeen inspired bythetheoretical work ofMikhail Bakhtin and Frederic Jameson, among others. haveargued thatevenmassculture is notmonologFollowing Bakhtin, they icalbutdialogical, utterance is addressed toan audiencethat thatevery mayreinterEvenapparently stateorsubvert thespeaker's intended pret meaning. monological ments,fromthisview,can implytheiropposites.Following Jameson, theyhave insisted thata dominant culture takesroot,not byimposing ideology, but byadand thoselongings dressing utopianlongings; mayhave subversive implications. ofcollective Armed with these insights, left cultural historians havediscovered traces in Hollywood television and other memory films, early network programs, supposed I of am these often and citadels socialamnesia.7 intrigued by ingenious arguments their to express of forms impressed bythe variety ordinary people havepreserved attachments to the past. I think thesignificance sucharguments ofthedisNevertheless mayexaggerate inmasscultural a tendency toelevate what sentembodied forms. Thereistoostrong conversais often a univocal, closedsystem of imagery intoan elegant Bakhtinian cria counterfascist where neofascist utterance tion, every byClintEastwood implies that historians too often cultural tique of "late capitalism." Contemporary forget There themassmediaare,amongother ofconcentrated things, expressions power. fora dose of vulgar cultural are times,in the current whenI yearn atmosphere, of mineonce told me after Marxism. As an attorney friend handling yetanother
128-31,124. Pessimism," and the Powers of Historical Fink,"New LaborHistory ed. trans. MichaelHolquistand CarylEmerson, FourEssays, Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Narrative as a SociallySymbolic Jameson, The PoliticalUnconscious: MichaelHolquist(Austin,1981);Frederic in many amnesia is implicit promotes a kindofcollective Act(Ithaca,1981),esp. ch. 6. The idea thatmassculture DialecticofEnlightenment, and T. W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer of theFrankfurt Schoolnotably of thewritings (New York,1982). trans. JohnCumming
6 7

140

TheJournal ofAmerican History

eviction casefor New HavenLegalAid,from hisperspective vulgar Marxism looked likea pretty powerful interpretive tool. Amid brilliantly manipulated imagesand chants ofliberation itis easytoforget through consumption, howsystematically our is entwined withimperial structures of power. "abundance" Theremaybe counterhegemonic tendencies evenin the corporate media, but ifin our zeal to uncover it wouldbe a mistake themwe overlooked thesources of in theinterstices ofoursociety, in groups dissent thathavebeenexploited orsimply ignored bymodernizing elites.I think we shouldtry to distinguish between genuculture inely popular and thecorporate-sponsored massculture thatis so often misforit. Butwe shouldalso acknowledge taken thecapacity ofmassculture to shape attitudes. Thisis notto exhume thenotion popular ofmonolithic socialcontrol (the dead horselashed by contemporary cultural or to denythat favorite historians), theirdignity and autonomy twentieth-century people havepreserved againstthe claimsofthemodern and thebureaucratic nation-state. It is simply corporation to therelevance intotherelations reassert ofGramscian culture inquiries between and as either power. Without "accommodation" pigeonholing every expressive gesture we need to continue the connections or "resistance," the glitbetween pondering of massculture and the mechanisms surfaces of coercion conceal. tering they