Unit 2: Marxism and Cultural Theory

Question 1

Historical Materialism

Answer 1

Material (not social) conditions drive historical change. It was caught in a “mutually defining tension” between competing forces.

History or change are the product of conflicts among the forces of economic organization, material conditions, and existing social structures.

Question 2

Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis

Answer 2

• Proposed by Friedrich Engels
• Simply put, the given state of affairs (thesis) comes into conflict with a new idea, new situation, or new technology (antithesis) that is not easily adapted to the established norm. Through this conflict, a synthesis emerges.
• Example: Records move to CDs, CDs move to streaming

Question 3

Teleology

Answer 3

A fixed narrative moving toward a definite end, such as a particular race or culture being intrinsically better and more advanced.

Question 4

The Social Formation

Answer 4

The base is the organization of social life in relation to labour, such as how the working day is divided, how the division of labour is established, what material conditions prevail, property relations or forms of ownership, and so on.

The superstructure, in contrast, includes the larger forms of social organization, such as the political system, the judicial system, culture, religion, the state itself, and other social institutions.

The full social formation (the totality of the society, whether it is a nation, a city, or a town) is formed from two conflicted components: the base (infrastructure) and the superstructure. The overall mode of production (the social formation) is determined by the dialectical tension between the base (of material productive forces) and the legal/political superstructure (social relations of production) that it gives rise to.

Question 5

Dialectics

Answer 5

• for Marx, the dialectical method was simply an acknowledgement of conflict, such as in dialogue; for Lenin the term is used to emphasize material life over social consciousness.
• The most common articulation of Marx’s dialectics is a later imposition onto his ideas by Friedrich Engels, and its deterministic equation is therefore questionable. Engel’s articulation is: thesis + antithesis = syntheis

Question 6

Conditions of Existence

Answer 6

• Conflicts among competing forced, combined with moments of change. Conflict and change are seen as based on an economic engine that drives new forms of social organization.
• The base condition people’s social consciousness

Question 7

Subjectivity

Answer 7

• Proposed by György Lukács
• The social context is the basis for subjectivity, and not the reverse. If subjectivity is determined by social existence, then changes to the material social world will change subjectivity.

Question 8

Ideology

Answer 8

• Proposed by Louis Althusser
• the ideological state apparatuses or ISA (family, law, courts, churches, mass media, cultural producers, educational institutions, and so on) create the conditions in which the subject exists. These conditions form subjectivity, and only in some instances does this subjectivity create the idea of a self-conscious subject capable of making self-determining choices
• All such choices are ideological and are made possible by the ideological state apparatuses. Hence, subjectivity is itself an ideology.