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John Dupre - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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comments on terry eagleton s Base and Superstructure revisited
New Literary History, 2000Co-Authors: John DupreAbstract:et me first confess that, remarkably, I am also one of thosepeople who is skeptical about alien abduction but do suspect thatthere is something important about the distinction between Baseand Superstructure. Based on Eagleton’s estimate, I calculate that theprobability of two such people speaking at the same session is compa-rable to the chance of winning the lottery and, paradoxically enough,somewhat less than the chance that there really are alien abductions.However, I do still have some doubts about how this distinction shouldbest be understood, some of which remain despite the many illuminat-ing ideas in Eagleton’s paper.Let me approach the issue in an obvious if possibly plodding way, bysaying a few words about the three obvious questions: What is the Base?What is the Superstructure? and how are they related?A society’s Base, I take it, is the sum of its productive and reproductiveresources, and would include at least the means of production and therelations of production. As Eagleton notes, there can be no doubt thatthis is fundamental to society in the sense that there would be no societywithout production of, at the very least, the necessities of human life.But of course there is more than this banal truth involved in takingseriously a doctrine of Base and Superstructure.The Superstructure is a more slippery concept. Sometimes it isunderstood as meaning simply culture. As Eagleton nicely remarks, theconcept of culture tends to vacillate between the broadly anthropologi-cal and the narrowly aesthetic, neither of which is of much use for thepresent purpose. Eagleton, at any rate, presents a more interestingconcept of Superstructure as that part of culture the function of which isto contribute to the legitimation of the state. One important conse-quence of this definition is that it clearly does not constitute Base andSuperstructure as exhaustive categories. Eagleton notes that a literarywork can be studied infrastructurally, as part of material production, orsuperstructurally, as collusive with dominant power. and there is also thepossibility of reading it neither way: it may be scrutinized for symptomsof subversion of the dominant power; or perhaps even treated as a
Terry Eagleton - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Base and Superstructure revisited
New Literary History, 2000Co-Authors: Terry EagletonAbstract:Imagine a visitor from Alpha Centauri who lacked the concept of combining different sorts of goods. In Alpha Centaurian society, some people go in for scuba diving, some build Gothic follies in their gardens, and others have various bizarre shapes cut, topiary-wise, in their voluminous hair, but nobody thinks of doing all of these things together. Arriving in our own culture, this visitor begins by imagining that he has to choose between training as a trapeze artist, eating himself to death, climbing in the andes, and collecting eighteenth-century silverware. Soon, however, he would come to realize that here on earth these versions of the good life need not be incompatible. For there exists with marvelous convenience a kind of meta-good, a sort of magical distillation of all other goods, which allowed you to shunt between or perm?tate these other goods with the minimum of effort, and its name of course is money. Not long after realizing this, the Centaurian would no doubt quickly grasp two other facts about terrestrial money, which together constitute something of a paradox: first, that it was so utterly vital a good that it engaged almost everybody's energies most of the time, and second, that it was held in hearty contempt. The alien would be instructed by earnest looking bankers that there was a great deal more to life than money, and informed by sentimental stockbrokers that the best things in life were free. Psychoanalysts would tell him that money was a superior form of shit, while maudlin characters propping up the bar at his elbow would remind him that you cannot take it with you and that the moon belongs to everyone. He would soon find himself puzzling over the performative contradiction between what we said about money and what we did with it, or, if you prefer, over a certain discrepancy between material Base and moral Superstructure.
Henry Silke - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Base Superstructure and the irish property crash towards a crisis theory of communications
tripleC: Communication Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2015Co-Authors: Henry SilkeAbstract:Since the onset of the “great recession” there have been key debates around various aspects of crisis theory, most notably around the areas of the rate of profit ( Brenner 2009 ; Kliman 2012 ), under-consumption/overproduction ( Clarke 1990a , 442–467) and fiancialisation ( Dumenil and Levy 2004 ). This paper maintains that communications and the media are key though non-deterministic elements of the contemporary market system, and proposes a move towards a crisis theory of communications. This research reflects the Marxist concept of Base and Superstructure, beyond a perceived notion of economic determinism, but rather as a dialectical relationship between various Superstructures, in this case the state and the media, and the economic Base including the various aspects of class power inherent within. The mass media, advertising, and ICT play an increasingly important role in both market systems and capitalist crises. This role directly impinges on the dissemination of information to market actors as well as the reflexive and dialectical nature of the processes by which actors respond to market information. Further, the media serve as an ideological apparatus, resource or arena, which acts to naturalise the market through what this research describes as a market orientated framing mechanism ( Preston and Silke 2011b ). Peter Thompson ( 2003 ; 2013 , 208–227) contends that communication is an integral and reflexive part of the contemporary market system. As he puts it, there is a complex relationship between the producers and distributors of economic information, and those who use that information to make decisions about investment and trade. Many studies point to the convergence of flows of information such as those on 24-hour news channels, business channels and Internet blogs and sites with market activity itself. For Wayne Hope, ( 2010 , 649–669) information broadcast on such media by bankers, stockbrokers and traders themselves tends to be self-serving and inevitably leads to “a real time feedback loop that proliferates then contributes to the growth and collapse of speculative bubbles” [ibid, 665]). Finally, we must note how the mass media also play a pervasive and important role in the commodification process through advertising and indeed comprises a part of the circulation of capital itself ( Garnham 1979 , 122–146; Fuchs 2009b , 369–402; Fuchs 2009a ). This paper, by way of example, looks at three key moments in the Irish economic crisis and briefly looks at their treatment by sections of the press: The Irish property market on the run up to the 2007 general election on the cusp of the Irish crash, the blanket bank guarantee of 2008, where the state effectively guaranteed the debts of the entire Irish banking system in its totality, and finally the introduction of the National Asset Management Agency, a state sponsored bad bank aimed at cleaning up the (then) private banking industry. The paper uses these examples to consider the role of the media and its relationship to both the markets and political policy.
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Base Superstructure and the role of journalism in the irish property crash towards a crisis theory of communications
2015Co-Authors: Henry SilkeAbstract:Since the onset of the "great recession" there have been key debates around various as- pects of crisis theory, most notably around the areas of the rate of profit (Brenner 2009; Kliman 2012), under-consumption/overproduction (Clarke 1990a, 442-467) and fiancialisation (Dumenil and Levy 2004). This paper maintains that communications and the media are key though non-deterministic elements of the contemporary market system, and proposes a move towards a crisis theory of com- munications. This research reflects the Marxist concept of Base and Superstructure, beyond a per- ceived notion of economic determinism, but rather as a dialectical relationship between various super- structures, in this case the state and the media, and the economic Base including the various aspects of class power inherent within. The mass media, advertising, and ICT play an increasingly important role in both market systems and capitalist crises. This role directly impinges on the dissemination of information to market actors as well as the reflexive and dialectical nature of the processes by which actors respond to market information. Further, the media serve as an ideological apparatus, resource or arena, which acts to naturalise the market through what this research describes as a market orien- tated framing mechanism (Preston and Silke 2011b). Peter Thompson (2003; 2013, 208-227) con- tends that communication is an integral and reflexive part of the contemporary market system. As he puts it, there is a complex relationship between the producers and distributors of economic infor- mation, and those who use that information to make decisions about investment and trade. Many stud- ies point to the convergence of flows of information such as those on 24-hour news channels, busi- ness channels and Internet blogs and sites with market activity itself. For Wayne Hope, (2010, 649- 669) information broadcast on such media by bankers, stockbrokers and traders themselves tends to be self-serving and inevitably leads to "a real time feedback loop that proliferates then contributes to the growth and collapse of speculative bubbles" (ibid, 665)). Finally, we must note how the mass me- dia also play a pervasive and important role in the commodification process through advertising and indeed comprises a part of the circulation of capital itself (Garnham 1979, 122-146; Fuchs 2009b, 369-402; Fuchs 2009a). This paper, by way of example, looks at three key moments in the Irish eco- nomic crisis and briefly looks at their treatment by sections of the press: The Irish property market on the run up to the 2007 general election on the cusp of the Irish crash, the blanket bank guarantee of 2008, where the state effectively guaranteed the debts of the entire Irish banking system in its totality, and finally the introduction of the National Asset Management Agency, a state sponsored bad bank aimed at cleaning up the (then) private banking industry. The paper uses these examples to consider the role of the media and its relationship to both the markets and political policy.
Guo Peifang - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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achievement of harmonious development of marine management in china from the point of view of economic Base and Superstructure of marine management
Transactions of Oceanology and Limnology, 2009Co-Authors: Guo PeifangAbstract:Scaning marine management from economic Base and Superstructure with a particular visual angle,their relationship and process of one another are analyzed briefly,combining them with elements of marine management,and two parts belonging to basic fields and Superstructure of marine management are classified respectively,idiographic examples on marine resources,laws,oceanic technology,integrate management and so on are took,the embodiment of the connotation of economic Base and Superstructure in marine management is dialysed,some existent problems and contradictions of marine management are found out,and countermeasures are put forward,in order to implement unification of managing Base and its Superstructure,accelerate improvement of ocean project.
Tang Ling - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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On Metaphor of Economic Base and Superstructure in Historical Materialism and its Theoretical Effect
Journal of Changshu Institute of Technology, 2008Co-Authors: Tang LingAbstract:Marx developed his historical materialism by declaring that the social relations of production are determinant in the overall structure of a social formation and its historical development,which he generalized as the metaphor of the economic Base and Superstructure.The concept of"the social relations of production"is the pivotal to understand the relationship between"the economic Base and Superstructure"and historical materialism.However,Marxists after Mark misunderstood the dialectic meaning of the metaphor"the economic Base andSuperstructure".The advocates of economic determinism,Althusser and Ellen Wood,abandoned the metaphor as well as the historical materialism.
