This includes a detailed and methodical analysis using Gramsci’s tools to examine the mechanisms through which hegemony has been perpetuated. As people from all walks of life took up space outside the financial centres of power and refused to leave, the slogan ‘we are the 99%,’ did create a shift in Gramscian common sense (Crehan, 2016). However, there are also omissions in the book which have the potential to do their aim of complex analysis a disservice.

These techniques have also created disparate effects within groups and subjects, disempowering them in some ways and empowering them in others. They trace the securing of neoliberal hegemony and strategic position of influence by big tech and financial capital. This is much needed, particularly at a time when the appeal of simplified narratives is highly potent.In the process of clarifying and updating the often misunderstood (and occasionally maligned) concept of hegemony, Gilbert and Williams also provide us with a valuable analysis of the "long 1990s": an account of its constitution, a diagnosis of its crisis and a map for its overcoming.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The second section then theorises this using concepts including hegemony along with the theories of Deleuze and Guattari (which I'm aware of but not in any way familiar with) to build an understanding of how this power is constructed and has continued to be supported by political parties that win elections despite seemingly not being hugely popular in general.

Gilbert and Williams argue, however, that Gramsci’s concepts, especially if updated to accommodate the complexity of the contemporary world, are crucial for analysing power relations in the current conjuncture. While the 15M movement gets a small mention, the book is written as if Occupy, and in the UK, the student movement of 2011, never happened. The first section builds a picture of the current state of things in the early twenty first century, and in particular how large finance and technology concerns built a world that suited their interests.

If we understand hegemony to mean more than pure domination but rather the production and maintenance of a strategic position of influence, the sectors that have ‘won’ this position, through a number of mechanisms, including culture and infrastructure, are those of technology and financial capital. Through upgrading the concept of hegemony—understanding the importance of passive consent; the complexity of political interests; and the structural force of technology—Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams offer us an updated theory of power for the twenty-first century. Gilbert and Williams] have done a brilliant job stripping away much of the complexity that makes post and neo-Marxist language so difficult to engage with for ordinary mortals … this book repays close attention. In the future, I want to see more scholarship from Gilbert, Williams and a wider contemporary Left dealing seriously and properly with these questions and countering hegemony and building counter hegemony, as difficult as that is. Through upgrading the concept of hegemony-understanding the importance of passive consent; the complexity of political interests; and the structural force of technology-Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams offer us an updated theory of power for the twenty-first century.Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. They argue that platform capitalism poses major challenges for progressive politics, but may also offer opportunities for collective organisation. K. But what makes Hegemony Now uniquely impressive is how seamlessly their politics emerges from their sophisticated analysis of the conditions and actualities of the present. Gilbert and Williams’ main contentions are that in the 21st-century, the interests of technology firms and finance capital have converged and become mutually reinforcing.

Grounded in rich theorizing and a strong commitment to historical specificity, they pull post-Marxism back from the brink by taking up the under-theorized concept of material interests. Deleuze’s concept of multiplicity allows the authors to conceptualise interests not as fixed and stable but as virtual, that may or may not actualize and become concrete.But what makes Hegemony Now uniquely impressive is how seamlessly their politics emerges from their sophisticated analysis of the conditions and actualities of the present. In doing so, they are in danger of undermining their own analytic position as well as potentially slipping into a well-worn academic nostalgia for 1968 as the one true authentic protest moment. Symbolised by the shock of Trump’s victory in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK, politics has seemed somewhat incomprehensible. The book partly delivers on this promise, but i had problems to keep the focus due to the many thematic detours.