Introduction: “Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?” by Scott Lash
“Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?” by Scott Lash first appeared in 2007 in the journal Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 24(3), pp. 55–78. Published by SAGE on behalf of the journal’s editorial board, the article marks a pivotal intervention in cultural theory by challenging the continued centrality of “hegemony” as the dominant framework for analyzing power in cultural studies. Lash contends that while the concept of hegemony—originating from Gramscian Marxism and influentially mobilized in the Birmingham School tradition—was vital in theorizing symbolic domination and ideology during the industrial and national period of modernity, it is increasingly inadequate for interpreting power in today’s global, post-industrial, and informational age. He argues that we now inhabit a post-hegemonic order where power has become ontological rather than epistemological, intensive rather than extensive, and communicational rather than representational. Drawing on a range of philosophical influences, including Foucault, Agamben, Deleuze, and Badiou, Lash charts a theoretical shift from “power-over” (potestas) to a generative “power-from-within” (potentia), emphasizing a move from normativity to facticity and from ideology to immanence. The article is significant in literary and cultural theory for proposing a new framework grounded in affect, media, and algorithmic control, and for repositioning cultural studies in relation to contemporary forms of biopolitical and networked power. Lash’s work reorients critical thought toward the ontological operations of power, making it a landmark text for scholars interested in post-Marxist theory, post-structuralism, and the politics of cultural production in the 21st century.
Summary of “Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?” by Scott Lash
🔹 Key Arguments and Conceptual Shifts
- Hegemony Is Epoch-Specific
Lash argues that hegemony was the defining concept for an earlier epoch of cultural studies but is no longer adequate to describe contemporary power.
“I want to suggest that power now, instead, is largely post-hegemonic.” (Lash, 2007, p. 55)
- From Epistemology to Ontology
Power has shifted from being exercised through knowledge/discourse to being enacted through being and existence.
“Power in the post-hegemonic order is becoming ontological.” (p. 56)
- From Power-Over to Power-From-Within
Classical hegemonic power was ‘power-over’; post-hegemonic power is immanent, generative, and arises from within systems and individuals.
“It is power that does not work through normalization… but through life and forms of life themselves.” (p. 61)
- The Rise of Potentia over Potestas
Lash draws on Spinoza and Negri to distinguish between potestas (dominating power) and potentia (creative/life force power).
“This is what Antonio Negri… calls potentia, which has more to do with power as force, energy, potential.” (p. 59)
- From Normativity to Facticity
Power is less about normative ideals and more about raw facts and immediacy.
“Post-hegemonic politics leaves such normativity and enters into the realm of the factual.” (p. 62)
🔹 Media, Communications, and Control
- From Representation to Communication
Cultural power no longer operates through representational discourse but through instantaneous communication.
“The communication is ‘lighter’ than the symbolic. Hence it can travel faster and further.” (p. 65)
- Legitimation by Performance
Legitimation is no longer discursively reasoned but achieved through technological or procedural performance.
“Legitimation… becomes automatic.” (p. 66)
- Institutional Meltdown and Emergence of Empire
With the decline of traditional institutions, power consolidates in decentralized, communication-based control systems.
“Domination in the global communications order is… through not discipline but control.” (p. 67)
- Communication as Control
Using cybernetics and media theory, Lash shows how power now flows through systems of control, not ideological discipline.
“Cybernetic power works through command, control, communications and intelligence.” (p. 67)
🔹 From Cultural Studies to Cultural Research
- Second-Wave Cultural Studies
Post-hegemonic cultural studies focus on ontology, media, algorithm, and life, in contrast to the semiotic, discourse-based first-wave.
“Second-wave cultural studies also understands things as… empirical that is already transcendental.” (p. 73)
- Collapse of Epistemology into Ontology
Deleuze, Lyotard, and others influence this new empiricism where media, code, and sensation become ontological.
“This logic… is immanent to sensation. In this ‘transcendental empiricism’, the transcendental is collapsed into the empirical.” (p. 73)
- Culture Enters Industry; Industry Enters Culture
Cultural critique and industrial production (e.g., architecture, media, ICT) now converge.
“Cultural studies must engage with the culture industries: with art, the media, architecture…” (p. 74)
- From Organic to Inorganic Intellectuals
The traditional class-based organic intellectual is replaced by coders, designers, and cultural technologists.
“Today’s ‘inorganic’, even crystalline intellectuals… work less as an organ… more as coders.” (p. 75)
🔹 Concluding Reflection
- Ubiquity of Politics
Politics now permeates all aspects of life, not through institutions, but through embedded, coded systems.
“The post-hegemonic order is not just… ubiquitous computing and media. It also bequeaths to us ubiquitous politics.” (p. 75)
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?” by Scott Lash
| 🌐 Term/Concept | 📘 Explanation | 📝 Reference from Article |
| 🔗 Hegemony | Power via consent and ideology; central to classical cultural studies, mediated through discourse and symbols. | “Hegemony means domination through consent as much as coercion.” (p. 55) |
| 🚀 Post-Hegemony | A new form of power not based on consent or ideology, but on affect, force, and ontological immanence. | “Power now… is largely post-hegemonic.” (p. 55) |
| 🔤 Symbolic Order | Linguistic and cultural codes that structure subjectivity and legitimize hegemonic domination. | “Hegemony… work[s] through ‘the symbolic order’…” (p. 56) |
| 🧬 Ontological Power | Power as embedded in being itself, operating immanently rather than through external control. | “Power in the post-hegemonic order is becoming ontological.” (p. 56) |
| 📚 Epistemological Power | Power based on knowledge, classification, and normative discourse — predicative in nature. | “Epistemological power works through logical statements or utterances…” (p. 56) |
| ⚡ Potentia (Puissance) | A Spinozan vitalist power — generative, affirmative, and rooted in life itself. | “Potentia… has more to do with power as force, energy, potential.” (p. 59) |
| 🛑 Potestas (Pouvoir) | Authoritative, institutionalized power — external, coercive, and regulatory. | “Potestas… works through external determination, like mechanism.” (p. 59) |
| 🧱 Facticity | Emphasis on actual conditions over abstract norms; a turn toward empirical, lived reality. | “Post-hegemonic politics leaves such normativity and enters into the realm of the factual.” (p. 62) |
| 📡 Communication | Replaces structured symbolic representation; decentralized, immediate, and performative in function. | “The communication… is the banalization of excess… it is immaterial.” (p. 65) |
| 🔄 Extensive vs. Intensive Politics | Shift from norm-driven (extensive) politics to affective, immanent (intensive) forms of power. | “Extensive power… displaced by a politics of intensity.” (p. 55) |
| 🧠 Collective Brain | Immanent organization and knowledge production within networks (e.g., “the multitude”). | “The multitudes give self-organization in politics… a collective brain.” (p. 60) |
| 🧮 Algorithmic Power | Power exercised through hidden, generative digital rules embedded in software and protocols. | “Power through the algorithm is increasingly important…” (p. 70) |
| 🌀 Transcendental Empiricism | Deleuzian framework where empirical data already embodies logic and ontology; knowledge is sensation-driven. | “The transcendental is collapsed into the empirical.” (p. 73) |
Contribution of “Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?” by Scott Lash to Literary Theory/Theories
🔁 Repositioning of Power from Hegemonic to Post-Hegemonic
- Lash shifts the foundational paradigm from Gramscian hegemony (power as external, ideological, and discursive) to post-hegemonic power (internal, ontological, affective).
- This challenges traditional literary criticism rooted in representational structures and ideological critique.
- 📖 “Power now… is largely post-hegemonic… power… is becoming ontological.” (p. 55–56)
🌀 Integration of Ontological Turn into Literary and Cultural Analysis
- Lash aligns with post-structuralist and post-humanist literary theory by embracing ontology over epistemology.
- Encourages a reading of texts not through symbolic meaning, but as ontological events or forces.
- 📖 “Post-hegemonic power… is less a question of cognitive judgments and more a question of being.” (p. 58)
🔤 Critique of the Symbolic Order and Semiotic Reading
- Undermines traditional semiotics in literary theory (Saussure, Lacan, Barthes) by emphasizing the collapse of representation.
- Reinforces postmodern literary theory’s skepticism toward fixed signs and stable meaning.
- 📖 “The symbolic… becomes an apparatus of domination… power penetrates your very being.” (p. 58)
💬 Shift from Representation to Communication
- Emphasizes performativity and immediacy over structured representation—vital to understanding contemporary narrative, media, and literary forms.
- Affects interpretation of literary texts in the digital age, where discourse is replaced by affective flow.
- 📖 “The symbolic… is collapsed into the order of communications… domination is through communication.” (p. 65–66)
💡 Value-ification of Fact and Post-Normative Ethics
- Contributes to ethical literary criticism by introducing facticity as a space where ethics and aesthetics coexist without universal norms.
- Encourages reading literature as engagement with the “factual” rather than idealized values.
- 📖 “Post-hegemonic politics… is a politics not of normativity but of such facticity.” (p. 64)
🧠 Introduction of Algorithmic and Generative Logic
- Foregrounds the role of algorithmic logic and generative rules in shaping narrative forms—important for digital literature and computational poetics.
- 📖 “Power through the algorithm… is increasingly important… in digital rights management.” (p. 70)
🧬 Empirical–Transcendental Doubling of the Subject
- Adapts Kantian and Durkheimian views of the subject into literary analysis by fusing empirical sensation with metaphysical depth.
- Inspires renewed approaches to character, subjectivity, and consciousness in literature.
- 📖 “Man is an empirical–transcendental double… we are metaphysical–physical doubles.” (p. 72)
🎨 Media, Art, and Cultural Practice as Literary Sites
- Redefines the boundaries of literary theory by integrating new media, design, architecture, and cultural research into the literary field.
- 📖 “Cultural studies must engage with the culture industries: art, media, architecture, ICT, software, protocol design.” (p. 74)
🧭 From Resistance to Dérive: New Strategies of Critique
- Influences literary theory by promoting the dérive (drift) as a poetic, non-confrontational mode of critique—resonant with Situationist and avant-garde literature.
- 📖 “To dérive is to do none of the above. It is to slip out… a strategy through movement.” (p. 67)
🧩 Collapse of the Epistemological into the Ontological
- Echoes Deleuzian transcendental empiricism: literary theory becomes a matter of sensation, intensity, and being—not interpretation or classification.
- 📖 “Epistemological and ontological collapse… the logic is immanent to sensation.” (p. 73)
Examples of Critiques Through “Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?” by Scott Lash
| 📖 Literary Work | 🔍 Critique via Lash’s Theory | 🧠 Explanation |
| 🐇 Don DeLillo’s White Noise | 🌀 Communication over Representation | Reflects Lash’s thesis that power no longer works through symbolic institutions but via omnipresent media flows. The “white noise” of the novel illustrates how the symbolic is displaced by real-time data streams and commodified reality. (Lash, pp. 64–66) |
| 🌀 J.G. Ballard’s Crash | 🔥 Ontological Power & Affective Machinery | Embodies Lash’s shift from epistemological control to ontological domination: bodies, machines, and desire fuse in an immanent power structure. The eroticism of death and technology bypasses norms to activate pure affect. (Lash, pp. 57–59) |
| 🧬 Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go | 🧱 Facticity over Normativity | Power doesn’t operate through norms or ideology but through biological “facts.” The clones’ existence is dictated not by discourse but by their being—what Lash terms ontological facticity. (Lash, pp. 62–64) |
| 🔮 Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable | 🌊 Dérive and Ontological Drift | The narrative disintegrates epistemological form and resists meaning. Lash’s notion of dérive—resistance through non-linear drifting—explains the narrator’s refusal to stabilize identity or knowledge. (Lash, pp. 67, 73–74) |
Criticism Against “Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?” by Scott Lash
🔄 Overgeneralization of the “Post-Hegemonic” Claim
Lash argues that we are entirely in a post-hegemonic age, downplaying the continuing relevance of ideology, discourse, and hegemonic structures in many global contexts.
“Hegemony…has had great truth-value for a particular epoch…that epoch is now beginning to draw to a close.” (p. 55)
📏 Abstract Terminology and Dense Style
His frequent use of terms like ontology, facticity, puissance, and immanence—often without concrete examples—can alienate readers and obscure meaning.
“Potentia…becomes a much more physical notion of energy… transversal of all types of material beings.” (p. 59)
🌐 Neglect of Global and Colonial Power Structures
While claiming a global shift to post-hegemonic systems, Lash underemphasizes how many societies still experience domination through traditional forms of state and ideological coercion—especially in postcolonial contexts.
His framework largely focuses on Western, technological, and urbanized settings like Tokyo, London, and global cities.
⚙️ Idealization of Technology and Media
By emphasizing the “vitalization” of things and digital flows, Lash risks celebrating the same socio-technical systems that reproduce inequality and surveillance capitalism.
“Neo-commodities…come alive and move, not mechanically… but flow in their logic.” (p. 69)
💢 Ambiguity Around Ethics and Political Agency
In rejecting normativity for “facticity,” the framework potentially weakens moral critique and leaves unclear where ethical interventions or justice-oriented struggles can be grounded.
“Post-hegemonic politics is a politics not of normativity but of such facticity.” (p. 64)
📉 Loss of Class Analysis
Lash admits that class is “much less addressed” in post-hegemonic cultural studies—yet economic inequality has intensified, making the downplaying of class arguably problematic.
“Post-hegemonic cultural studies has much less to do with social class… its analyses are much the poorer for this.” (p. 69)
🧪 Too Conceptual for Practical Application
The theoretical abstraction, while rich, is difficult to translate into actionable research methods or empirical studies—limiting its use in applied cultural studies or political organizing.
📚 Over-Reliance on Continental Philosophy
Though drawing richly from thinkers like Deleuze, Heidegger, and Badiou, critics argue that Lash’s synthesis leans too heavily on speculative metaphysics and less on grounded cultural critique.
Representative Quotations from “Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?” by Scott Lash with Explanation
| 🔖 Quotation | 💬 Explanation |
| 📉 “I want to suggest that power now… is largely post-hegemonic.” (p. 55) | Lash introduces his thesis: we are moving beyond a world where power works through consent and ideology (hegemony), into a world shaped by direct, affective, and embedded forms of power. |
| 🔄 “The hegemonic order works through a cultural logic of reproduction; the post-hegemonic power operates through a cultural logic of invention.” (p. 56) | Contrasts old hegemonic systems that reproduce order via discourse with new systems that produce reality through innovation and immediacy. |
| 🌌 “Power in the post-hegemonic order is becoming ontological.” (p. 57) | Emphasizes a shift from epistemological control (through knowledge and representation) to ontological power—affecting the very being of subjects. |
| ⚡ “Post-hegemonic power works… less like mechanism than like ‘life.’” (p. 59) | Describes the new form of power as dynamic, vital, and organic—aligned with Spinoza’s potentia and Deleuzian concepts of force and energy. |
| 🧬 “Power has become more sinister in a post-hegemonic age. In the age of hegemony, power only appropriated your predicates… it penetrates your very being.” (p. 59) | Argues that modern power no longer shapes just our actions or roles—it invades the self, becoming internal and bio-political. |
| 🌐 “Communication is at the heart of the post-hegemonic order.” (p. 65) | In place of deep symbolic representation (like myth or discourse), modern power works via communications—fast, light, decontextualized exchanges. |
| 🌀 “Legitimation is no longer separate from what it is meant to legitimate, it becomes automatic.” (p. 66) | Critiques how performance and function substitute democratic discourse—there’s no outside authority, just self-justifying systems. |
| 🧱 “In the post-hegemonic order, power comes to act from below: it no longer stays outside that which it ‘effects.’” (p. 60) | Marks the immanence of contemporary power—it now operates from within systems, institutions, and subjects, not above them. |
| 🧭 “The post-hegemonic order is not just an era of ubiquitous computing and ubiquitous media. It also bequeaths to us ubiquitous politics.” (p. 74) | Suggests that in a digital and networked world, political dynamics are everywhere—across culture, media, and technology. |
| 🧠 “If power has become ontological, intensive, factical and communicational… cultural studies must engage with such practice.” (p. 74) | Concludes with a call to action: cultural studies must adapt to this new regime of power and integrate with art, design, media, and technology. |
Suggested Readings: “Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?” by Scott Lash
- Lash, Scott. “Power after hegemony: Cultural studies in mutation?.” Theory, culture & society 24.3 (2007): 55-78.
- Davies, Jonathan. “Rethinking Urban Power and the Local State: Hegemony, Domination and Resistance in Neoliberal Cities.” Urban Studies, vol. 51, no. 15, 2014, pp. 3215–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26145959. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.
- During, Simon. “Popular Culture on a Global Scale: A Challenge for Cultural Studies?” Critical Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 4, 1997, pp. 808–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344050. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.
- Ling, L. H. M. “Hegemony and the Internationalizing State: A Post-Colonial Analysis of China’s Integration into Asian Corporatism.” Review of International Political Economy, vol. 3, no. 1, 1996, pp. 1–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177172. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.