Hegemony: Not new thoughts on a not new concept

Through the narration of the "150 hours "episode and the synergetic combination of the ideas of Gramsci and Freire, this paper argues about the importance to understand hegemony in its strategic and holistic quality. The discussion of hegemony is utilized to critically engage with important trends in critical/cultural studies. In fact, the historic example of the 150 hours labor struggle in 1970s Italy suggests that "discursive resistance," which seems to constitute the current mantra of so much of critical cultural studies in the field of communication, can be effective only when combined with suitable material conditions that bridge a given rhetoric to concrete necessities of the lived experience.