CLASS HEGEMONY AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL IN WINTER’S THE RAGE OF DRAGONS

Abstract

This paper analyzes Evan Winter's The Rage of Dragons from a Marxist perspective. The study explores the role of class hierarchy and ideological institutions in maintaining and reproducing hegemonic control of the Omehi social structures and aristocratic class. With Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony and Louis Althusser's theory of Ideological State Apparatuses as its foundations, this study contends that Omehi feudal caste system, a tool for class reproduction and social reproduction, socializes the lower caste Omehi into a servant body, a stock of human capital for the maintenance of caste-based ruling aristocracy. Militaristic discipline, honor culture and ritualized violence function as ideological means by which consent to political domination and systemic exploitation is formed and class consciousness is eluded by the governed. The article shows how class hegemony in Omehi society is reproduced through ideological institutions that standardize the social domains of hierarchy and legitimize the authority of the ruling elite. Military discipline and honor cultures secure the consent of the subaltern and frame sacrificial death as a moral obligation. Such ideological control conceals material exploitation and suppresses the possibility of collective class resistance. Consequently, the caste system keeps being reproduced, regardless of its structural violence.