ALS325 Cultures of resistance in the Spanish-speaking world

Week 1: Cultures of Resistance in the Spanish-Speaking World

Key Concepts

  • Poder (Power): Discussing the concept of power, how the Hispanic world is constituted, and whether it can be considered a homogeneous totality. Examines differences within Hispanic societies and dominant cultures.
  • Hegemonía Cultural (Cultural Hegemony): Exploring the notions of power, cultural hegemony, ideology, and counter-power within the context of culture.
  • Ideología (Ideology): Analyzing ideology and its role in shaping perceptions of reality.
  • Contrapoder (Counter-Power): Investigating examples of resistance and counter-hegemonic cultures in the Hispanic world.
  • Cultura (Culture): Defining and understanding culture in its various forms.

Questions for Discussion

  1. What do we talk about when we talk about power?
  2. How is the so-called Hispanic world constituted?
  3. In terms of power historically?
  4. Is it possible to speak of the Hispanic world as a homogeneous totality? How can we conceptualize the heterogeneity of the Hispanic world?
  5. What are some differences between the societies that make up the Hispanic world?
  6. What do we mean when we talk about dominant culture? What are some examples in the Hispanic world?
  7. What are some examples of resistance or counter-hegemonic culture in the Hispanic world?

Poder (Hegemonía Cultural)

  • Antonio Gramsci's Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Developed within the Marxist tradition.
  • Capitalism and the Nation-State: Accumulate power through cultural hegemony achieved via ideology.
  • Hegemony as a Centaur: Describes hegemony as having two parts:
    • The beast: Uses raw power through coercion, brute force, and physical/economic domination.
    • The human: Exercises power through the consent of groups and individuals, convincing the working classes that their interests align with the wealthy. This power is supposedly consensual.

Ideología (Ideology)

  • Definition: "A systematic body of ideas articulated by a particular group of people."
    • Example: Labor Party.
  • Ideology Distorts Reality: Presents distorted images of reality, producing 'false consciousness.' Functions in the interests of the powerful against the powerless.
    • Examples: Capitalist ideology (American Dream), MAGA ideology, Communist ideology.
  • Texts and Ideology: Texts (television, pop songs, novels, films) always present a particular image of the world, offering competing ideological significations.
  • Roland Barthes and 'Myth': Argues that ideology operates at the level of connotations—secondary, often unconscious meanings that texts carry.
    • Ideology attempts to make what is cultural (humanly made) appear natural (just existing), thus universalizing the partial and particular.

Poder (y Conocimiento) - Power and Knowledge

  • Critique of the Narrative of Progress: Questions the teleological view of a happy world of Western democracy, pointing out poverty, marginalization, injustice, inequality, destruction of the planet, and depredation of continents.
  • Aspects of Power:
    • Power as a relation, not a possession.
    • Power as repression but also as creation or production.
    • Power, knowledge, discourse.
    • Power and resistance to power; games of truth; limits of power; local knowledge.

Desigualdad Social - Social Inequality

  • Social inequality is legitimized through culture (Jordan and Weedon 1995).
  • Power and ideology in the Hispanic world contribute to social inequality.

Cultura (Culture)

  • Definition: Dimension and expression of human life through symbols and artifacts; the field of production, circulation, and consumption of signs; a praxis articulated in theory (Szurmuk y McKee Irwin, 2009).
  • Examples: Urban culture, media culture, popular culture, mass culture, literate culture.

cultura?? - Culture Definitions (Williams 1976)

  1. "A general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development."
  2. "The works and practices of artists and intellectuals."
  3. "A particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, or a group – a way of life informed by a 'common spirit.'"
  4. "The signifying system through which a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced, and explored."

Cultural Politics

  • Every point where power is exercised generates a focus of resistance.
  • Culture is associated with hegemonic discourses and those that destabilize that hegemony.
  • Culture as a space of intervention and agony, but also as a zone of resistance in colonial/neo/postcolonial processes.
  • Effort to decolonize and re-articulate identities.

Resistencia Cultural - Cultural Resistance

  • Manifests in the cultural space as resistance to dominant social, political, economic, and cultural systems.
  • Definition: "The practice of using symbols and significant constructions—that is, culture—to combat dominant power and to construct a new vision of the world" (Duncombe 2007).

Poder en Jordan and Weedon - Power in Jordan and Weedon

  • Everything in social and cultural life is fundamentally related to power.
  • Power is central to cultural politics and integral to culture.
  • All signifying practices involve relations of power; they subject us by offering particular subject positions and modes of subjectivity.

Poder en Jordan and Weedon - Power in Jordan and Weedon (Continued)

  • Power allows certain individuals or groups to realize possibilities that are denied to others.
  • Within the cultural horizon, this includes:
    • The power to enunciate and name reality.
    • The power to represent ‘common sense.’
    • The power to create the ‘official history’ or official version.
    • The power to legitimize social reality.

Cultura Dominante Occidental - Dominant Western Culture

  • What does it mean?
  • Does it exist?
  • How is it described?
  • Examples of accepted and unaccepted models within this culture.
  • What significance does it have in your lives?
  • Is it changing? How? Who is driving the change?
  • What reactions is this change provoking?

Poder ¿quién tiene poder y cómo lo ejerce? ¿y poder contrahegemónico? - Power: Who has power, how is it exercised, and what about counter-hegemonic power?

  • Analysis of global warming and environmental problems through:
    • Knowledge.
    • Power and counter-power.
    • Cultural hegemony - ideology.

Ideología - Ideology and Chevron

  • Analyzing Chevron's advertisements.
  • The company's practices and functions remain the same, but what has changed ideologically in their advertisements?
  • What message do the new ads communicate, what ideology, and how?

The Conversation: Lo que las grandes petroleras sabían sobre el cambio climático, en sus propias palabras - What Big Oil Knew About Climate Change, In Their Own Words

  • Executives from Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute were questioned about efforts to downplay the role of fossil fuels in climate change.
  • Internal research revealed future risks as early as the 1970s.
  • The American Petroleum Institute formed a secret committee to monitor climate science.
  • In 1980, a scientist warned of