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Black Women in Popular Culture Analysis

This document discusses concepts related to exploring issues of race, class, and gender through a feminist lens. It provides definitions and explanations of key terms, including race, ideology, and hegemony. Specifically, it notes that race, class and gender are socially constructed categories that influence common notions of what is normal. It also discusses how ideology can define and limit understanding while obscuring certain aspects, and how hegemony describes how dominant groups maintain power through legitimacy and making their views seem commonsense.

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Cierra Olivia Thomas-Williams
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39 views9 pages

Black Women in Popular Culture Analysis

This document discusses concepts related to exploring issues of race, class, and gender through a feminist lens. It provides definitions and explanations of key terms, including race, ideology, and hegemony. Specifically, it notes that race, class and gender are socially constructed categories that influence common notions of what is normal. It also discusses how ideology can define and limit understanding while obscuring certain aspects, and how hegemony describes how dominant groups maintain power through legitimacy and making their views seem commonsense.

Uploaded by

Cierra Olivia Thomas-Williams
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Exploring Race, Class, and Gender

through a Feminist Lens

G104 - Representing Black Women in Popular


Culture
September 4, 2008
When did slavery begin?
(what you said)
1920
1500s
1800s
Late 1600s
Late 1400s
1700s
1300s
1847
1930
Beginning of time
What is Race? (what you said)
The Human Race
Differences between others
Ethnicity
Color of skin
Cultural background
A system of classification
A social construction that gives some people advantages, while giving others
disadvantages.
African American
A geological location
Your origin, where you came from. Your nationality.
A binding institution or class system used to separate or contain people.
It is said race is not a word, but to others it is a group of people who share the
same ethnicity.
Used to refer to people according to factors such as skin color/cultural practices,
etc.
Race, Class, and Gender
 Each is socially constructed category that relies upon
“common sense” notions of what is normal/natural/right.
 Usually
Ideology
 Common definition: Ideology can refer to a systematic body of ideas
articulated by a particular group of people’ – e.g., the ideology of the
Republican Party or the Catholic Church

 Negative Ideology: Marxist term used to describe manifestations of


bourgeois thought (a distortion of “reality) – embodies a “false
consciousness,” to the extent that the oppressed don’t even realize that
they are exploited and, in fact, actually work against their self-interests
– Marx saw a clear correspondence between the dominance in the
socio-economic sphere and the ideological

 Stuart Hall’s definition of ideology: ‘the mental frameworks—the


languages, the concepts, the categories, imagery of thought, and the
systems of representations—which different classes and social groups
deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out, and render
intelligible the way society works’
How Ideology “Works”
 It defines, but also sets limits
 It figures (renders clear) but it can also obscure
 It includes but also leaves out
 It explains—but for specific reasons
 It expresses and makes links between certain ideas,
practices, etc.
 It makes certain political positions or social relations (ex.
patriarchy, heterosexuality, capitalism) seem “natural” or
“commonsense”

 Example: “It’s Time for a change” campaign ad (2008)


Hegemony
 Concept derived by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

 Describes the way dominant classes (genders, nations, etc.) maintain their
power – not by (just through) brute force but by achieving legitimacy,
winning “consent,” and making their rule appear commonsense or
simply “the way things are”

 Hegemony is maintained (and must be continually maintained: it is an


ongoing process) by dominant groups and classes ‘negotiating’ with, and
making concessions to, subordinate groups and classes’ – hegemony
doesn’t imply oppression (although oppression might be present); it
depends upon negotiation, stability, consensus

 Popular culture comes to be viewed as the terrain upon which hegemony is


secured or contested

 Constant battle between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces

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