KC Williams

Question 1

“superstructure … acquired a main sense of…

Answer 1

…a unitary ‘area’ within which all cultural and ideological ideas could be placed”

Question 2

“the ‘base’ is the…

Answer 2

…real social existence of man”

Question 3

“we have to revalue ‘determination’ towards…

Answer 3

…the setting of limits and the exertion of pressure, and away from a predicted, prefigured and controlled content”

Question 4

“the most important thing…

Answer 4

…a worker ever produces is himself, himself in the fact of that kind of labour, or the broader historical emphasis of men producing themselves, themselves and their history”

Question 5

“the totality of…

Answer 5

…social practices was opposed to this layered notion of a base and a consequent superstructure”

Question 6

“if we fail…

Answer 6

…to see a superstructure element we fail to recognise reality at all”

Question 7

“[hegemony] saturates the…

Answer 7

…society to such an extent … even constitutes the substance and limit of common sense for most people under its sway”

Question 8

“even more crucially…

Answer 8

…some of these meanings and practices are reinterpreted, diluted, or put into forms which support or at least do not contradict other elements within the effective dominant culture”

Question 9

RESIDUAL CULTURE

Answer 9

a culture “which cannot be verified or cannot be expressed in terms of the dominant culture”

Question 10

EMERGENT CULTURE

Answer 10

“new meanings and values, new practices, new significances and experiences are continually being created” and incorporated into the dominant culture, showing just how dominant this dominant culture is

Question 11

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALTERNATIVE AND OPPOSITIONAL

Answer 11

ALTERNATIVE
“someone who simply finds a different way to live and wishes to be left alone with it”
OPPOSITIONAL
“someone who finds a different way to live and wants to change society in its light”

Question 12

“In capitalist practice, if the thing is not…

Answer 12

…making a profit, or if it is not being widely circulated, then it can for some time be overlooked, at least while it remains alternative. When it become oppositional in an explicit way, it does, of course, get approached or attacked”

Question 13

“we cannot separate literature and art…

Answer 13

…from other kinds of social practice, in such a way as to make them subject to quite special and distinct laws”

Question 14

“yet most writing…

Answer 14

…in any period, including our own, is a form of contribution to the effective dominant culture”

Question 15

“the real social conditions…

Answer 15

…of production were in any case neglected because they were believed to be at best secondary”

Question 16

“if we suppose that what is produced…

Answer 16

…in cultural practice is a series of objects, we shall, as in most current forms of sociological-critical procedure, set about discovering their components”

Question 17

ESTRANGEMENT

Answer 17

Marx’s idea that a worker becomes alienated from himself when realising that he has no control over his future and exists to serve the demands of capital