Hegemony is an unstable ongoing process, never a settled victory

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. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 767

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Gramscian hegemony precisely as a continuous struggle over unstable equilibria rather than a achieved domination.
• XREF: The unstable-equilibria framing of hegemony is what later culture-wars political analysis (and Hall’s own Thatcherism essays) build on as an economic-historical claim. — connects to: Struggles for political progress are never definitively won. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 536