Cultural Resistance
The “Ignorant School Master” and the “Prison Notebooks” present a common theme advocating for cultural resistance. The two pieces of literature attribute the struggles experienced by the victims in the books as a result of conformity to an existing culture. In the “Ignorant School Master”, the protagonist, Jacob Jacotot, argues against the current system of education that fails in its role to emancipate students. Rather, it clings onto an old system that serves to cage students in a battle of superiority among themselves without necessarily emancipating them. Likewise, “Prison Notebooks” widely explores the theme of cultural hegemony in which Gramsci advocates for cultural change as the only way towards emancipation against the fascist rule and the oppression brought to the society by the Bourgeoisies. *Therefore, cultural resistance as depicted by the two writings serves as a weapon used in emancipation and liberation.*
Gramsci’s thoughts and ideas are documented during the 20th century in Italy when Benin Mussolini’s fascist regime serves to crash any efforts by the working class to liberate themselves from this oppressive system. The society is a capitalist state having the bourgeoisie at the top of the social structure. The working class, the intellectuals and the peasants rank beneath. Following the Marxist thought by Karl Marx, the inequality caused by capitalism will result in self-consciousness among the masses who will seek to rise against the bourgeoisie, replacing capitalism with socialism (Jones, 41). However, Gramsci realizes that this is yet to happen.
Gramsci attributes his findings to culture. The ruling class impose their cultural norms in society making them the dominant and accepted way o...
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...y, and, at too young an age for explicators to begin instructing them, they are almost all—regardless of gender, social condition, and skin color— able to understand and speak the language of their parents” (Ranciere, 5). He therefore establishes a truth that individuals learn best without a master explicator. Jacob also resists the current teaching culture as it serves to promote comparison. Students develop superiority over those who do not know what the students comprehend. Moreover, students live under the shadow of their instructors who ensure the students remain inferior to them. Jacob established resistance on this culture and sees it as a cage that promotes social class. Instead, he advocates for a new culture where emancipation is key. Therefore, both writings are similar in that they are opposed to the existing culture and advocates for a new way of life.
The world is divided up into numerous things: Countries, states, cities, communities, etc. However, when looking at the big scope of things, one can group the vast amount of people into a society. This society is where the majority lie in the scheme of things - in other words, the common people. Individuals do exist in this society, but they are scarce in a world of conformism. Society’s standards demands an individual to conform, and if the individual refuses they are pushed down by society.
Ginsborg P (1990). ‘A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics: 1943-1980’ Published by Penguin; Reprint edition (27 Sep 1990).
John Taylor Gatto in his essay “Against School” explains the lack of motivation that students have to the educational system of the USA. He also explains the damage that the system makes to both, students and teachers, by the non-interesting topics they are taught class. Furthermore, he enlightens the indifference of students towards the teacher, seem as incompetent and unprepared. In addition, he also highlights the dark side of the school system which intends to brainwash and rescind the ideas from students. He addresses a main goal of the educational system; convert juveniles into the next docile and manageable generation. Wherefore, he proposes an educational system that should be structured and not controlled. In addition,
“It’s Harder Now to Change Student’s Lives, but No Less Important” isn’t just an average writing piece, it is a writing piece that truly catches the eye; Stephen R. Herr does this by not only portraying a strong, academic message throughout his words, he also eloquently places his words in such a way which significantly affects the piece as a whole. However, this was all not luck of the draw; Herr knew what he was doing from the beginning by knowing certain writing techniques such as focusing on a specific audience, knowing his own position, using rhetorical moves, and much more.
Gramsci, in his Notebooks, maintained that what was required was that not only should a significant number of ‘traditional’ intellectuals come over to the revolutionary cause (Gramsci himself and his role model Marx were examples of this) but also the working class movement should produce its own organic intellectuals. Gramsci said that all men were intellectuals, yet not all men have the same function of intellectuals in society. He points out in “Prison Notebooks” that: “there is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded” and that everyone, outside their particular professional activity, “carries on some form of intellectual activity …, participates in a particular conception of the world, has a
This text shaped my understanding of sociology because I was able to see how much power society, specifically the majority, can have over an individual because it seems to be the easiest course of action. This concept is known as social conformity. The article Opinions and Social Pressure took the time to convey how the minds of the majority and the minority work, and provides insight on how social conformity shapes our everyday experiences.
Mussolini’s population policy was a clear effort to exercise his authoritarian control over the people of Italy, regulating the most personal and private details of their lives. In his bid for complete control, he used new laws, propaganda, and sometimes brutal tactics in order for his wishes to be recognized. It is during the 1920’s to the 1940’s that totalitarian control over the state escalated into full dictatorships, with the wills of the people being manipulated into a set of beliefs that would promote the fascist state and “doctrines.”
Italian Marxist, Antonia Gramsci preferred ‘good sense’ to ‘common sense’, believing that common sense lacked evidential backing. ‘Good sense’ referred to seeing through the surface to an underlying reality and was fundamental to Marxists. Marxism in general examines how capitalism operates at social, economic, and political levels and thereby affects and is affected by the role of the state, international relations, spatial relations and culture. There are many perspectives of Marxism. An example being that the economic role of class under capitalism produces global structures to which everyone must adapt to ‘on pain of extinction’ (Marx & Engels, 1848). They believe this system will ultimately see its demise. State formations and differences in alignments and formation of classes can produce different types of states.
Since the beginning of its existence as a country, Italy has faced enormous challenges in establishing itself as a unified political and social entity. The geographic, economic, and linguistic differences between its various regions and the artificial manner in which they were amalgamated created a legacy of internal divisions that continues to dominate the country's political climate to this day. Italy's numerous historical fiascoes, such as its disastrous involvement in the two World Wars and the rise of fascism, further escalated the domestic problems that had haunted it since the Risorgimento. At first, the anti-fascist Resistance movement, which dominated the end of World War II, seemed to bring Italy a ray of hope, promising a new era of freedom, reform, and democratic representation. However, this hope was quickly extinguished, as widespread poverty, government corruption, and deep divisions between regions and classes persisted and no true social reform was attained. These harsh conditions were depicted by a group of Italian film directors whose neorealist works have since been celebrated as masterpieces of world cinema. One of the most prominent of these is Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. This 1948 film discusses the prevalent themes dominating Italy's social and political history, within the context of the unsettlingly poor post-War urban proletariat.
Before the dawn of Neorealism, Italy was under great turmoil in the early 1920s suffering from major economic crisis, bank failures and a collapsing government, which would also mean a collapse in the Italian film industry and the ‘Silent Era’ of cinema (Roberts, 2005). When Benito Mussolini took control as the 40th Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 the revival of Italian cinema would be once again be relived, but this time ruled under the control and guidance by Mussolini and his fascist government (Bondanella, 2001).
How do the actions and words of a society affect the way people act? In Never Let Me Go, author Kazuo Ishiguro depicts a society in which individuality is threatened by the pressure to conform through methods such as peer pressure and social expectations. Without a doubt, peer pressure is most commonly found in schools today just as social expectations are suffocating the middle class’ desire to become their own unique person.
Antonio Gramsci, a leading Marxist thinker in the early 20th century, used hegemony to define class structure, (e.g. bourgeois hegemony). Gramsci's philosophy was that the subordinate class was to follow this "common sense" that the dominant class set, however, Gramsci ...
Germanotta (110-112) presented phases that a prisoner student passes through. The first phase is the acceptance of prison education as any other jail program like the maintenance of the institution and the recreation program. Inmates may consider prison education as an addition to their recreation program or just a break from the stressful confines of the prison cell. Anyhow, the reasons don’t coincide with the purpose of education, everything is entirely for their own practical and personal reasons not in connection with the function of education. The next phase is the realization of the purpose of education, of learning. This disengages themselves from thoughts of their alienation and they discover social formations and social reality. The prisoner student, thus, begins to have a transformation of point of views and opinions, of himself. He learns and he inspires himself to learn more. ...
Because Freire had been put in a situation of oppression he argues against institutions and people that oppress. His dislike and knowledge of oppression as a physiological state and an institutional construct is strongly expressed in the book. The book stands to mainly inform people on what oppression is, how oppression affects people psychologically, how to help oppressed peoples, and how to educate in a non-oppressing way. All of Freire 's points draw on the fact that “Oppression not only resides in external social institutions and norms but lodges in the human psyche as well”, only to be changed by education, dialogue, and altering ways of thinking (Bell, 2013, 23). With the density of information packed into 192 pages the read can be quite hard, however his points are clear, concise, and many times restated to emphasize importance. With each chapter the book builds on itself using principles, ideas, and theories from previous chapters to go into further detail to explain itself. Chapter one speaks on oppression as a whole in relation to humans and the human experience, this builds in chapter two to how oppression is apparent in education which translates to the third chapter in Frieres explanation of dialogue as means of action and finally unites all chapters together by correlating how the problem of oppression can be solved through awareness,
Moreover, Fairclough has highlighted the fact that language is highly manipulative in nature as it is used as an agent of hegemony. By hegemony, the sub-ordinate class is made to think that the dominant group has all the rights to rule over them and to deal them as per their choice and interests. Such mindset is shaped by using several ideological means. Gramsci (1996) opines that the ruling