Hegemony or Survival?

Polaukos’ dissection of Isocrates’ Hymn to Logos explains that the final lines of the hymn conclude with “in all actions as well as in all our thoughts speech is our guide.” In this case, the English word “guide” is a translation of the Greek word hegemon. [1] This translation is interesting given the way that the term hegemon and concepts of hegemony have sometimes taken on a different and more sinister meaning in the modern world. As the picture of Hugo Chavez speaking before the United Nations attests to, the concept of the hegemon is not only alive and well today, but being actively contested in important arenas. This excavation will trace not only the development of the word hegemon from ancient Greece to the present, but also its spectrum of meaning, from a benign guide to a coercive power exercised by a sovereign authority. It will conclude with a brief assessment of how rhetoricians are using the term in modern scholarship.

As mentioned above, the term hegemon (ηγεμονία) comes from the Greek language, and has definitions ranging from “the leader” to “guide” [2] The Greeks actually had several words related to the concept. The leadership of the hegemon was termed hegemonia, and it came to have a specific political meaning; the predominance of one city-state over another. [3] Other secondary meanings of the word included “princedom”, “to go before”, and even “domination.”[4]

After the decline of the Greeks the word fell into disuse, next arriving into usage during the 16^th century, when it appeared in the English language. [5]Shortly thereafter, the rise of the nation state created a certain statist expectation upon the word and definitions started include the assumption that a hegemon is not only a nation-state or a city state, but also “great power,” capable of influencing the world stage. [6]

As time progressed, however, the term begins to shift from a term generally found in the study of politics to one that was applied to other parts of the social body. Karl Marx used the term hegemony in his writings, and the concept was more fully developed by Antonio Gramsci during the 1930s as an explanation for how capitalist regimes had so resisted the “inevitable” proletariat revolution. The idea of “cultural hegemony” was born and the term was liberated from its foundations in political science. [7]

Rhetoricians have readily borrowed these concepts. Some scholars are working to connect up the Greeks with Gramsci. For instance, two articles by Benedetto Fontana have traced the similarities between Gramsci and the Sophists, locating in ancient thoughts the same concepts that Marxists took up in the 1930’s. [8][9] Others have turned the lens provided by the concept of hegemony towards the present, analyzing the way that the rhetoric of hegemony has evolved along with American military dominance. [10] There are plenty of other examples of areas that rhetoricians have analyzed hegemony; it is quite simply a broadly applicable concept that will remain around for the foreseeable future.

Word Count: 500

References:

[1] Poulakos, T. (1997). Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates Rhetorical Education. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. P 17

[2] T. F. HOAD. "hegemony." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 28 Sep. 2009 .

[3] Altay, Serdar. (2006) “Hegemony, Private Actors, and International Institutions: Transnational Corporations as the agents of transformation of the trade regime from GATT to the WTO” University of Trento School of International Studies, p. 71, http://www.ssi.unitn.it/en/dottorato/download/Research_Proposal_Serdar_Altay.pdf

[4] http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/He/Hegemony.html

[5] ibid

[6] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hegemon

[7] Rockler-Gladen, Naomi. (2008) Hegemony and Media Studies: Antonio Gramsci's Theory of the HegemonicMedia, Media Literacy, http://medialiteracy.suite101.com/article.cfm/hegemony_and_media_studies

[8] Fontana, Bendetto. (2000) Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on Hegemony Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 305-326.

[9] Fontana, Bendetto. (2005) The Democratic Philosopher: Rhetoric as Hegemony in Gramsci, Italian Culture 23 (2005) 97-123.

[10] Carillo-Rowe, Amiee Marie. (2004) Whose "America"? The Politics of Rhetoric and Space in the Formation of U.S. Nationalism, Radical History Review 89 (2004) 115-1349(2004) 115-134