A subaltern group’s disorganic growth blocks its access to state power and hegemony

Evidence

It is the conception of a subaltern social group, deprived of historical initiative, in continuous but disorganic expansion, unable to go beyond a certain qualitative level, which still remains below the level of the possession of the State and of the real exercise of hegemony over the whole of society which alone permits a certain organic equilibrium in the development of the intellectual group. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1407

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Core definition of the subaltern social group — a key concept for the Islamophobia toolkit. Also flags ‘disorganic expansion’ as a technical term.
• XREF: Connects directly to subaltern studies and to Edward Said’s Orientalism on how the West constructs the Orient as passive/deprived of initiative.

Related

• Subaltern classes lack unity until they achieve statehood, hence history of subalternity (similarity 0.84)
• A single subaltern group can exercise hegemony over others via a party (similarity 0.82)
• Ascendant groups develop from subaltern to hegemonic status through acquiring autonomy and allies (similarity 0.81)
• A newly hegemonic subaltern group must build a new intellectual and moral order (similarity 0.80)