From Hegemony to Counter-Hegemony-A Journey in a Non-Imaginary Unreal Space

This paper is intended as a critique and a parallel construction ofGramsci's concepts of hegemony and counter- hegemony. It restructures some of Gramsci's major theoretical categories in the light of Hegel's and Freud's analyses. The central propositions are: (1) Hegemony epitomises the elite's dream and (2) Counter-hegemony is a quantitative extension of the signs of the displaced hegemonic power GRAMSCI had to work within the orthodox Marxist paradigm. In the process Gramsci hits the limit of the orthodox school, which in turn, also defines the limit of Gramsci, In orthodox Marxism, the universal as distinct from the particular does not emerge as a specific theoretical category.' A particular, in this analysis, assumes the role of the universal as a determinate mode of production comes into dominance: a particular is potentially the universal.2 Gramsci deals with situations where the potential is not actualised. Perhaps Gramsci could say: the potential cannot actualise itself, i e, the particular is not even potentially the universal. The proposition,.one may say, remains to a great extent implicit in Gramsci which I would make explicit in this paper and find out its full implications. Specifically, 1 would argue that no particular class is potentially the universal