Gramscian war of position against Borstal Hegemony in Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

Febrianto, Rendy (2026) Gramscian war of position against Borstal Hegemony in Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Sarjana thesis, UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung.

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Abstract

This research analyzes how Alan Sillitoe's novella The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1959) represents post-World War II class inequality, the Borstal system as an instrument of bourgeois hegemony, and protagonist Smith's "War of Position" as a counter-hegemonic strategy. The analysis draws on Gramsci's concepts of Cultural Hegemony, the Organic Intellectual, and the Common Sense/Good Sense dialectic. Using a qualitative descriptive, library-based approach, data consisting of words, phrases, sentences, and dialogues depicting class discrimination, institutional hegemony, and Smith's ideological development were collected through close textual reading informed by Gramscian heuristics and analyzed using dialectical content analysis. The results show that postwar Welfare State rhetoric conceals a dual system of material provision and social control that divides Smith's world into "In-laws" and "Outlaws." The Borstal system functions as an instrument of bourgeois hegemony disguised as rehabilitation, through discipline, surveillance, and scientific classification. Meanwhile, Smith's long-distance running constitutes a War of Position that cultivates Good Sense and culminates in a Crisis of Authority through the sabotage of his own victory at the finish line. It is concluded that Smith's resistance is not a single triumph but a continuous, molecular struggle, whose symbolic victory remains real yet inevitably partial. Keywords: sociology of literature, cultural hegemony, War of Position, Gramsci, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

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