 |
|
|||
|
|
|||
108 (Yurchak 1997, 167-168)
(Yurchak 1997, 167-168)
The hegemony of representation produced the feeling that one's experience was shared by all, and most people behaved accordingly. It is useful to recollect Anderson's concept of "imagined communities" (1983). They emerge when a cer\tain time-space transformation takes place, such as the rise of newspapers in Europe, when a newspaper reader could imagine that thousands of others read the same article at practically the same time. Similarly, all Soviet citizens could assume that millions of others, whom they did not know personally, were seeing the same slogans, taking part in the identical social events and hearing the same speeches on a similarly regular basis. Hence, the reproduction of the hegemony of representation was based on everyone's involvement in the official order of sig nification. Whether or not one consciously believed in the officially proclaimed goals was less important than the act of participating in routine official practices, perceived as inevitable.
Vaclav Havel describes how official ideological slogans and messages become omnipresent and predictable; they not only cease being taken at face value, but cease being noticed at all, turning into "small component[s] in that huge backdrop to daily life" (1989:49-51). This becomes possible not only because the slogans are ubiquitous and incontestable, but also because most people perceive involve ment in their reproduction as unavoidable. In Havel's example a manager of a fruit and vegetable shop places a sign with the slogan, "Workers of the world unite!" in the window, along with the produce, as is required by his local supervising party committee (p. 41). Looking at the window, pedestrians and shoppers see carrots and potatoes, but are oblivious to the slogan, suppress their recognition of it. Similar slogans are also found in the streets, in offices, and in public places everywhere. Conversely, contesting slogans are not found anywhere. This type of "panorama of everyday life" (p. 41) is the visual part of the hegemony of representation .
Let us consider an example of how the hegemony of representation was tightly woven out of independent signifiers from different discourses into an interdiscursive fabric. A simple slogan, "The Party and the People Are United" appeared on thousands of buildings, signs, and posters all over the Soviet Union. Most people did not read this slogan, let alone understand it literally. Often they were not aware of its presence on a certain building at all, even if they lived nearby. But everyone knew from daily experience that there was no way to introduce a contesting slogan in the official sphere. Attempts at such counterintroduction, if ever made (for example, the now-famous small 1968 demonstration on Red Square against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia), were easily isolated and kept unknown to the overwhelming majority of people, through the unique ability of hegemonic state power to control the official sphere.
