Can one look at what Frantz Fanon calls “national consciousness” — a collective social consciousness that identifies with a national identity, often swayed by rules written by figureheads — which for Fanon are the colonialist — to mend the divisions within — what W.E.B Du Bois calls “double-consciousness” — bisected by ingrained ideologies (both state & civil or as Louis Althusser calls respectively repressive state apparatus & ideological state apparatus) to lead towards self-healing, propagating national healing, and opening “up the struggle of freedom?”

How one thinks, acts, and lives are determined by ideologies implemented by those with authorial power, those figureheads; national consciousness constitutes these same compounds of ideologies to exist. For Althusser, our national consciousness comprises two ideological apparatuses, the repressive state apparatus & ideological state apparatus. And it’s here that consciousness and the self are demarcated — although not initially, for as Gabor Mate theorizes in his book, “When The Body Says No,” one’s two-ness is genetic, starting before one is born and with one’s parents. The RSA is a system employed by the ruling class “in order to achieve their tasks” (Norton, 1366) through violence and repression by utilizing institutions, such as courts, police, armed forces, and more, to conduct their biding; their biding to keep status quo, to keep their ideologies in place. The RSA is an apparatus that uses fear to keep citizens in line, and in the Marxian sense, as objects to be used and re-used for “their tasks.” The ISA is a civil system that uses soft power. This non-violent approach utilizes education, media, churches, sports clubs, and even family to conceal and mask the ruling class’s ideology behind the “liberating qualities” of education, media, etc., so that the hidden agendas of the ruling class are inconspicuous.

Between state and civil ideologies, between fear of violence and the sublimity of soft power, where does a person stand? When always in a battle of two-ness between ideologies, how can a person know oneself honestly, understand one’s world, and feel whole enough to heal oneself and assist in healing the nation? And most importantly, how can one know their thoughts are their thoughts, not those foisted by the figureheads, the ruling class?

One way many people deal with these questions is quite Saussurian; they tend to compare themselves to others to ensure they follow society’s unspoken rules and comment no embarrassing faux pas. However, this only causes resentment for the other, anger, stress, and bemusement within, and most detrimental, indolence and insouciance for anything concerning life.

Another way people may deal with these questions is to look at history. Indeed world history is essential, but here, one’s personal and cultural history gives one more understanding of self and society and can help elevate culture outside the ideologies of the ruling classes. Fanon, in his book, “Black Skin, White Masks,” does just this, and what he discovers is that his heritage is rich in culture: “The white man was wrong. I was not primitive, not even a half man; I belonged to a race that had already been working with gold and silver two thousand years ago (Norton, 1354.)” But in surveying history, another problem surfaces, that of the gatekeepers, who often are the ruling class, that, on the one hand, rebuke those who venture outside of the hegemonic circumference and, on the other, hold close to the chest any ways to expand the circumference.

“I wanted to be white— that was a joke. And, when I tried, on the level of ideas and intellectual activity, to reclaim my negritude, it was snatched away from me. (Norton, 1355.)” Through his survey of history and the rebuke from the man, Fanon faces a duality, a double-consciousness, a two-ness in his search for one-ness in a society that saw him not as a person, but an object to keep the ideological tasks in motion, a cog in the industrial machine. This is the national consciousness — an identity that is separate and steeped in ideological confusion, to have no choice but to follow what lies before them — and with the RSA, fear of walking the paths less traveled (thus, missing opportunities) is predominant in the mind. People stay in place, hiding behind “the veil,” never acknowledging their two-ness, which is a gift that leads to “second sight,” and thus, may “open up the struggle of freedom?”

But how do we acknowledge and accept our double consciousness to be whole and part of society on one’s own terms? Indeed, watching others and surveying history have their benefits, but it’s through expression that one can merge the two sides within and without. In “Black Mask, White Face,” Fanon gives the example of Algeria from 1952 to 1955. Before colonialism, “the storytellers, who were before that time stereotyped and tedious to listen to, completely overturned their traditional methods of storytelling and the contents of their tales (Norton, 1363.)” Although colonialism arrested these storytellers, it’s through music, writing, dancing, singing, and any form of creation, that there’s a place to see oneself and society. This opens up oneself and society to “the struggle for freedom.” And thus, begin the healing process. The healing of the soul, body, mind, society, nation, etc. By doing this, one can alter and reshape the national consciousness to include them, their ideas, and culture, thus, expanding — no, changing — the hegemonic circumference. And maybe then, as a society, we can focus on more egalitarian approaches to unite people.

In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci distinguishes between two types of intellectuals: the “organic” and the “traditional.” The traditional intellectual is someone who is trained in the humanities and social sciences and produces abstract knowledge. They are often associated with the academic establishment and are removed from the everyday struggles of working-class people. They tend to see themselves as objective observers of society, instead of as dynamic members in social and political battles. The organic intellectual, on the other hand, is someone who is rooted in the working-class community and who develops a theoretical understanding of the world through their experiences and struggles. They see themselves as dynamic members within the battle for social equity. They are often associated with social movements and popular education.

For Gramsci, the social function of the traditional intellectual is to maintain the status quo and reproduce dominant cultural and political values. The organic intellectual works on the interests of the working-class community and they develop an understanding of the struggles. An example of traditional intellectuals in our own time might include university professors who produce abstract knowledge for the sake of professional advancement. Organic intellectuals can include community organizers, educators, etc. Education and educational institutions are crucial to modern society, according to Gramsci, because they play a key role in the reproduction of cultural and political hegemony. He argues that working-class people must develop their own educational institutions and methods. Something I agree with Gramsci is when he talks about education not being just a matter of transmitting knowledge and skills, but is also a site of struggle over ideas and values.

In conclusion, Gramsci’s distinction between organic and traditional intellectuals highlights the importance of developing a critical understanding of social and political struggles and using that knowledge to mobilize and organize working-class communities. He focuses on education and institutions relating to the importance of developing alternative forms of providing knowledge.

In “Death of the Author”, Barthes speaks to the separation that should exist between the real world and the world created in an author’s writing. According to Barthes, writing is “neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, [and] the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (1268), basically saying that there should always be a divide between the identity of the author and the identity of the narrator or characters in the story. The death of the author is metaphor for the relationship that should take place between an author and their writing, Barthes saying that the author “enters death” the second they start writing, as the divide between reality and the story begins to widen the moment that the pen hits the paper.  He says that is it the language that does the speaking or “performing”, not the author.

Barthes emphasizes the importance of the author’s work being a secondary fragment of the author’s life rather than a derivative or imitation of it because the image of literature is centered around the author’s life and tastes, while the criticism is directed towards the author’s behaviors or public perception, his given examples being Van Gogh’s madness and Tchaikovsky’s vice; regardless of the behaviors demonstrated by these artists, they still produced remarkable work that is not a reflection of these behaviors. Rather than being a derivative of the author’s life, the work should be more of an explanation, as Barthes says, as is may contain symbols that speak to what the author is going through at the time.  Anyone can write about their life and the troubles within it, but not everyone can use language to convey emotion that moves people.

An immediate idea that this reminds me of it the concept of separating the art from the artist with many artists, specifically Kanye West, as they have demonstrated behaviors that are not popular within society, but their music catalogues have been essential to their genres and influential to those that have produced music after them. Kanye does not write music that states explicitly what is going on in his life; if that was the case, he would write about his struggles with mental illness or political standpoints, two aspects of his life which have been heavily focused on by the media in the past few years. His art reflects the emotions that he feels through the language being used, and while it is still his voice, many listeners can relate to it because it is not wrapped around his own single narrative.

In “The German Ideology”, Marx starts off by highlighting the actions of “definite individuals who are productively active in a productive way” (659), who as a result enter definite political and social relations. Their lived experience brings out the connection between these social and political structures, which are continuously evolving as they live and learn; Marx states that these definite individuals work under their circumstantial limitations by acting intentionally and with confidence, and these actions are what produce the ideas that are used to set standards within these structures. He goes on to say that “conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behavior” (659). In saying this, he introduces the idea that people will always be a product of their environment, and their thinking will be a result of their material conditions as well as productive forces. These ideas are all true, as there are billionaires that have come from nothing, who used their material resources to create their own success story; their journey to success may be different from someone who came from a wealthy family, and therefore the ideas produced by these two individuals will never be the same.

These ideas create a philosophy that differs from that of the Germans, theirs descending from heaven to earth while our philosophy descends from earth to heaven; this is to say that in German philosophy, the dominant idea is that men set out to be what is narrated through other men, while our philosophy tells us that men are set out from the real, active individuals who set the basis of their lives on real and lived experiences, demonstrated by the development of ideological reflexes that echo their life-processes. Our philosophy further drives the idea of people being a product of their environment, as Marx says the “phantoms”, or ideological reflexes, are all “sublimates” (660) of material life-processes. To support these ideas, he reminds us that morality, religion, and other ideological fields have no history beyond men aa they are always changing and developing as men live; therefore, these fields are all reflections of empirical experiences rather than what we are setting out to be. Life is determined by consciousness in German ideology, as consciousness in German ideology is derived from the living individual, while in American philosophy, consciousness solely means one’s own, as it conforms to real life experiences of only the individual.

The economic life from the perspective of a worker entails a lose lose situation. The workers offers a lose lose situation because the worker is basically selling his labor for close to nothing in return. Marx says that “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces the more his production increases in power and range” and follows the statement with explaining that the worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity then the commodities that he creates ( 657). With this in perspective the economic life from the perspective of the worker is bully a lose lose situation. The worker can’t afford to purchase the own things that they put their labor into basically showing that in the economy the laborer works for free and is worth nothing. The worker becomes the commodity they themselves cannot afford. However from the owner’s perspective , it is strictly business. The worker doesn’t are about how the workers are affected as long as they themselves get money and their business is increased. Marx uses this socially constructed perspective to reframe the values created by society to explain to people how the workers themselves are really being alienated from their own product that they are producing. Marx explains the perspective of the worker as well as the perspective of the owner to explain how one truly gains nothing from the trade off and how one gains everything or at least benefits a little from the trade off of labor. 

 When Marx uses the term “alienation” he means that the workers are isolated or separated from the product that they sold their life for. Marx asks the question of “How would the worker come to face the product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in the very act of production he was estranging himself from himself?” (658) and this question ties into how the workers are alienated from the products but they produce. The workers became alienated from the products they produce because in the economic life of a worker they sell their labor or even their life for the commodities they produce to end up not being able to afford the very thing they produced thus resulting in the worker being isolated from the product. The worker becomes poorer the more they work which results in them not even being able to support themselves for the basic necessities that they need let alone the commodities that they produce

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, German  philosophers, talk about the effect that economic and social forces have on human consciousness. Marx explains how industrial capitalist economy “alienates” people from their own work, as they “unable to control their own labor, which they must “give”(sell) to another, they lack control and knowledge of themselves”(653). Marx believes that this capitalism dehumanizes people as it alienated workers of their own work, as mentioned above , as it exchanges their work for a wage. This is what Marx sees as employers making their employees as commodities , as they are the ones who are choosing what their employees and their work are worth. Workers depend on this money-system, as they are in need of this wage that is the way of how they can live in this society. This wage is the connector of employers using their empoyee’s labor to their own benefits. As they focus on this survival, the workers lose themselves, and throw themselves more into this dominion of his product, capital. Marx and Engels also mention how “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range”. As they produce more , their value doesn’t increase, instead only the work does. The worker deprives himself of his life, as the more his labor is useful to the outside world. They no longer become someone who had been part of the process of an object, instead they become a “slave” of his objects. Further in the essay, it mentions the idea that the worker exists firstly as a worker, but secondly as a physical subject. Someone that would only be known as the giver of the final product, replaceable and only a worker. When we think about an object that we want to buy , we only see the process of an exchange, an item for the value that it costs, the money that we pay. However what we don’t really see, hidden in the process of how the item comes into our hands, is the amount of work that goes into it. we don’t look into the work that is used to produce this labor, hence we feed into this idea of capitalism. Not appreciating the work, the people, hands and overall process of how this object was now in our hands, erases the “worker”. We only look at the exchange that we are seeing, the money system.