Space and hegemonic history in Puebla de los Ángeles

Abstract

In Marxism and Literature, Raymond Williams uses Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to explore the role of language, writing and discourse in social reproduction. Highlighting Gramsci’s distinction between “rule” and “hegemony”, Williams explains that rule is expressed in directly political forms and, in times of crisis, through direct or effective coercion, whereas hegemony facilitates the everyday functioning of rule by being not only a “conscious system of ideas and beliefs” but “the whole lived social process as practically organized by specific and dominant meanings and values”. The article applies this perspective to space and hegemonic history in the city of Puebla.