Hegemony is an unstable equilibrium that dominant forces must continually resecure

Evidence

For Stuart, Gramsci’s critical contribution is to recognize the dynamic quality of the ongoing struggle for hegemony as necessarily operating as a “continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria,” in which dominant social forces always strive to frame and subordinate other cultures and perspectives within their own horizons of thought but can never be certain of success. Thus, hegemony has to be actively secured in the face of both residual and emerging forms of dissent and disaffection. It is within this framework that the media perform their ideological labor in the selective construction of the cultural lexicon of a given age (or in another terminology, the “mythologies” that Roland Barthes anatomized). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 767

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines Hall’s Gramscian conception of hegemony as a dynamic, never-fully-secured struggle rather than a state to be achieved.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how ideas influence politics—this is the mechanism by which intellectual/ideological labor shapes common sense.

Related

• Hegemony is an unstable equilibrium never certain of success (similarity 0.96)
• Hegemony is an unstable ongoing process, never a settled victory (similarity 0.94)
• Hegemony must be actively won and can be lost, never permanent (similarity 0.93)
• Hegemony is reproduced through unstable, shifting equilibria rather than static dominance (similarity 0.90)
• Hegemony is a precarious, ever-rebuilt dominance won mainly through consent plus coercion. (similarity 0.89)
• Hegemony must be perpetually won and can be lost. (similarity 0.89)
• Hegemony is a fragile, multi-front achievement won through consent, not domination (similarity 0.87)
• Hegemony as a term blocks reductive class-domination readings of political formations (similarity 0.87)
• Hegemony is rule achieved through consent rather than coercion (similarity 0.86)
• Hegemony requires economic leadership, not just compromise concessions (similarity 0.86)
• Hegemony is coercion combined with consent, won and perpetually reconstructed through class struggle. (similarity 0.86)
• Hegemony is not the same thing as ideological domination (similarity 0.86)
• Dominance is maintained through unstable equilibria that concede some subordinate interests (similarity 0.85)
• Hegemony is a shifting power balance, never total victory or domination. (similarity 0.85)
• Hegemony is forged through cultural and ideological struggle, not just force. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Hegemony operates through winning consent backed by the threat of force. #expands (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 905
• Hegemony explains Thatcherism’s persistence beyond mere class domination #expands (0.60)