ABSTRACT
Hegemony and violent hierarchy are only one way in which meanings are constructed; more basic still is the notion of “articulations”. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci, Said uses the notion of “hegemony” to describe the process by which particular views become dominant, articulating organising principles based upon an ensemble of social relations and practices. Hegemonic meanings are dominant versions of “standard lives”, versions that repress and occlude alternatives, with social unconsciousness similar to “a discourse that hierarchically orders other discourses”. The chapter explores social unconsciousness as discursive production and imaginary space. The sheer variation and indeterminate creativity of social imaginaries is balanced by their stability over time and the force of tradition. A complementary approach, starting from an opposite pole to abjection, is to consider social unconsciousness and the imaginary in terms of what a given society or group represents as being its ideal state.
