Cultural Hegemony in Best Works Of Jakarta Art Council Novel Award 2018

Oftentimes, literary works could uncover things that couldn’t be covered by mass media. The cries of the people are expressed by writers through various ways. This research discusses the hegemony that is shown through the focalizer in Jakarta Art Council Novel Award 2018 for best works, which are Orang-Orang Oetimu [7], Anak Gembala yang Tertidur Panjang di Akhir Zaman [5], and Balada Supri [6]. These novels are chosen because they share the same underlying themes about the condition of minorities. The theory used in this paper is Antonio Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony through which is identified through focalization in the three novels so that the perspective and opinions of the focalizer is revealed [9]. The findings show that (1) violence is legalized by the authority as a tool to establish hegemony, (2) religion is used a means to silence the people’s outcry, (3) social construction to maintain hegemony, and (4) counter-hegemony characters are oppressed by the ruling class. Despite this, at times the writer inadvertently falls into the hegemony itself by perpetuating discriminatory ideas about women and using religion as a means of escaping the hegemonic structure even though it is a tool of hegemony itself.