Hegemony in Aesthetic Theory

Abstract

The notion of »hegemony« appears in the work of Antonio Gramsci as a means to avoid the reductivism to which »economistic« versions of Marxist political thought had tended. More recent versions of Marxism - most notably as exemplified in Louis Althusser's theory of »interpellation« - modify the Gramscian notion of hegemony so as to theorize the means by which subjects are produced by the state's »ideological apparatuses« (ISA's). But any attempt to shift from the theory of the state and of subject-formation to the aesthetic field nonetheless incurs the risk that the notion of »hegemony« may produce the very sort of reductivism that Gramsci hoped to avoid. Indeed, it may restrict the ability to explain the counter-hegemonic elements of the aesthetic field. How can we avoid this limitation? Kant's appeal to the power of sensuous particulars to resist subsumption under universals presents a starting point for thinking about the counter-hegemonic potential of art, though Kant's notion is viable only if elaborated in such way as (1) to account for the pleasure and pain asso