Ideology changes by reweighting old elements, not by imposition

Evidence

Ideologies are therefore transformed “through the class struggle, which is carried out through the production of subjects and the articulation/disarticulation of discourses.” This follows Gramsci, who argued that ideologies cannot be reduced to the transparent, coherent “class interests” of their class-subjects, and that ideologies are transformed, not by one class imposing a unitary “world vision” upon all other classes, but by “a process of distinction and of change in the relative weight possessed by the elements of the old ideology … what was secondary or subordinate or even incidental becomes of primary importance, it becomes the nucleus of a new doctrinal and ideological ensemble” (Mouffe 1978; see also Mouffe for an important elaboration of this argument in relation to Gramsci). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 629

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains Gramsci’s mechanism of ideological transformation and the concept of articulation.
• XREF: Connects to how political reweighting works in hegemony theory and to contemporary discourse on reshaping ideology from within. — connects to: Forms, capacities and habits remain unchanged while their substrate changes. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 497; Historical change arrives as a qualitative leap, not gradual growth; The binding sacred-land slogan gets revised and redeployed as contexts and wars change — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1510 (+4 more)