Hegemony, Metaphor, and Structural Difference: The "Strange Dualism" of "South of the Slot"

CHRISTOPHER GAIR Hegemony, Metaphor, and Structural Difference: The "Strange Dualism" of "South of the Slot" Towards the end of Jack London's life, when his fame was at its peak, he was plagued by a succession of doubles. The price of a reputation as a hard-drinking ladies' man was the regular appearance of the author's name in the yellow press, which was always eager to spread gossip maligning the socialist landowner. Journalists seized upon the succession of dope fiends, poisoners, drunkards, and adulterers who claimed to be "Jack London," gleefully overlooking what even London would recognize as the impossibility ofhis being in different parts of the world simultaneously.' Although these incidents were a source of considerable embarrassment to London, they do seem curiously appropriate: Peter Conn describes the era 1898- 191 7 as "one of acutely divided allegiances and sensibilities," and claims that London "so completely exemplifies" these divisions that "he practically disappears beneath his contradictions."2 Certainly, many of London's protagonists and narratives illustrate the dualities implied in the title ofConn's book, The Divided Mind. Oppositions between rich and poor, physical and cerebral, white and black, male and female, present and past or future abound. "South of the Slot" (1909/1914),3 to which Conn briefly refers, is an ideal model with which to examine some of these oppositions, their reasons, and their limits. The story concerns one Freddie Drummond, a young professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California. Drummond regularly disguises himself in workingman's Arizona Quarterly Volume 49 Number 1, Spring 1993 Copyright © 1993 by Arizona Board of Regents issN 0004-161 74Christopher Gair clothes in order to research his books about working class culture in the community South ofthe Slot. As time goes by, he finds himselfprogressively more attracted to a life which offers an escape from the repressive ethic of his own class. With the introduction of two women on opposite sides of the class divide, Drummond's position becomes increasingly unstable, until he is forced to choose between his two worlds. The "slot" of the title, in addition to being the two iron cracks in the centre of Market Street, is the "metaphor that expressed the class cleavage of society" (817), and the narrative repeatedly highlights not only class difference, but also the "strange dualism" (823) of the protagonist himself .4 In addition, it foregrounds the importance of language in controlling and directing behaviour. Thus the slot is immediately presented as a geographical, a class, and a linguistic frontier, over which battles for meaning and control are fought. By uncovering certain generic discontinuities , I aim to show that London's narrative contains instabilities similar to those of its protagonist. The various levels of the text can be separated and then reconstructed in order to examine the story's relation to the historically specific moment of its production in an age, not only of rationalization and reification, but also of widespread class conflict. ? HEGEMONY AND COUNTERHEGEMONY In order to investigate the metaphors which foreground the "class cleavage of society," I will be applying Antonio Gramsci's notion of "cultural hegemony" as explicated by T. J. Jackson Lears. Lears proffers Gramsci's often quoted characterization of hegemony as "the 'spontaneous ' consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is 'historically' caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production." However, Lears goes on to emphasize his belief that relying on a straightforward definition of hegemony is "misleading" and stresses that the concept has "little meaning unless paired with the notion of domination ."5 Importantly, he points out that Gramsci's "overall picture "South of the Slot"75 ... is not a static, closed system of ruling-class domination. Rather, it is a society in constant progress, where the creation of counterhegemonies remains a live option." Lears argues that the source of any ruling class success "may well be in the realm of culture." Although Gramsci adhered to "Marxist tradition in granting causal priority to the economic sphere under most...