Week 7 - Barker 14

Politics and culture seem to go hand in hand quite well. Gramsci's point about a ruling class excercising hegemony over a suboordinate class and "winning consent," so to speak, is an important one. But Barker makes a case that the ruling classes of yester year are gone and now the hegemony that exists is an extension of the government, book publishers and film companies. The subtle power of cultural influence is more fluid and less static than it was even 50 years ago. Therefore, I ended up agreeing more with Focault than Gramsci. Focault believes that the power to control culture is not located now in the highly educated and far removed intellectuals but in the movements of the common people.