Happy Birthday, Hebdige

Culture is something that varies from city to city to state to state...it may as well even vary from family to family. It’s very personal and can effect different populations of people completely different. This theme can easily be related to Macherey’s intertextuality. Hebdige is saying that culture is different everywhere because we all have our own personal realities and have all experienced, seen, and heard different things throughout our lifetime.

Throughout Hebdige’s piece, “From Culture to Hegemony”, Hebdige questions what culture actually is and the many meanings that come along with the word culture. It's amazing how once again, language is proved as arbitrary and that a single word can actually have multiple meanings. I found Williams definition of culture to be one that I relate to most. He states, “ culture is referred to as a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in are and learning, but also in institutions and ordinary behavior…the analysis of culture, from such a definition, is the clarification of the meanings and values implicit and explicit in a particular way of life, a particular culture”. (45) Williams is saying that pretty much everything and anything is culture. Hegemony, Hebdige’s other main point, occurs when one realm of culture when a large group of people follow the same belief. This group of people then becomes the dominant class because they will tend to speak for the general public. Hebdige then explains that the remaining public becomes the “sub culture” because they are less dominant. This is the transition that Hebdige explains throughout his writing, the transition from culture to hegemony…which is what most of us see today.