Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part C (2024)

Hegemony, according to Gramsci, is a form of dominance that the dominant class exercises over the society at large by transforming its own ideology into a consensus world view. It operates by convincing most of the society that the dominant ideology presents the most natural way of conceptualizing the world around own individual position within it. It is achieved through the naturalisation and universalisation of a dominant ideology and dominant culture.

The paper investigates how Williams complicates this understanding of the dominant ideology and how it works in any society and at any given point in time. The dominant ideology, as it is situated in a state of dialectics with at least two other forms of ideology and culture, the first he calls residual ideology or residual culture, and the second he calls emergent ideology, the emergent culture. Williams points out that each dominant ideological formation becomes dominant by replacing an existing set of dominant ideological formation. This replacement of one particular culture with another creates a tension filled environment in the field of cultural study.