The aff buys into an ontology of hegemony—“counter”hegemony only makes sense when placed next to that which is hegemonic

The ontology of hegemony and counterhegemony produces a particular grid of intelligibility that places hegemonic structures at the forefront, assessing social movements by their capacity to constitute a counterhegemonic alternative and challenge hegemonic structures. Counterhegemony enables judgements about the significance and importance of social movements, based on their (in)capacity to transform hegemonic structures. From this perspective, social movements will only be effective if they can articulate a basis of unity, creating broad-based alliances and translating their struggles into a mass movement, capable of effecting changes in the State and other institutions.

In this context, Richard Day criticizes what he calls “the hegemony of hegemony” which, he argues, produces the commonsensical assumption that meaningful social change can only be achieved through alterations to the nation-state and other institutions.84 Hegemony produces a certain conception of what meaningful social change must be: that which is intelligible as an alteration of (or alternative to) a hegemonic structure.

Day also argues that the ontology of hegemony is also normative: “the claim being made is not only that mass representation is necessary, but that it is desirable, because it is through processes of representation that… hegemonic blocs are formed, and social transformations are achieved.”85 Day politicizes the operations of representation that are required by hegemony as a contingent part of struggle, rather than as a necessary condition of possibility of social change. Similarly, Warren Magnusson has argued that hegemonizing moves of social movements “had a stultifying effect on other critical social movements.”86 Magnusson emphasizes the forms of exclusion that are necessary in order for a movement to be hegemonic (and universal), constituting itself against an outside that is articulated as foreign, alien, and dangerous.87 For both Day and Magnusson, what needs to be overcome is the perceived necessity of counterhegemony, especially when it is conducted through representing one’s interest to the State.

Perhaps the clearest example of the hegemony of hegemony is demonstrated by the ease with which theorists of hegemony are able to subsume and instrumentalize nonhegemonic social movements through the concept of counter-hegemony: Clearly, non-branded tactics such as the impedance of institutions through blockades and the construction of temporary autonomous zones can be valuable in the conduct of a war of maneuver, just as development of activist networks and of communities based on mutual aid contributes to a war of position by building capacity for another world. But I doubt that these tactics, and the broader practice of structural renewal (rendering the system redundant by withdrawing energy from its structures)… add up to a viable alternative to counter-hegemony.88 Practices, concepts and tactics can easily be assimilated to the counterhegemonic project, as parts of Gramsci’s wars of position and maneuver; however, the important point here is how the dismissal of Day’s argument is made possible by repeating the structure of hegemony/counterhegemony. The reason that these tactics are inadequate is because they don’t add up to a viable alternative to counterhegemony. The structure of hegemon/counterhegemon is repeated in the dismissal of any alternative to counterhegemony: any challenge to the assumptions of counterhegemony must be sufficiently coherent and unified to present a (counterhegemonic) alternative. Attempts to articulate alternative logics of social change can be either subsumed or dismissed on the grounds that they lack what counterhegemony promises: a unified, coherent alternative. Counterhegemony produces its own tautological commonsense: defined as the only viable challenge to hegemony, any other form of change or transformation is necessarily inadequate compared to the dream of a unified, coherent, broad-based social movement.