IDEOLOGY

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IDEOLOGY
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Ideology Etymology

• Idea from the Greek idein, to see. An
  archetype, a prototype.
• Logy from the Greek logos, reason
  (universal) or speech.
• Ideology (beginning definition) seeing reason,
  or, archetypal reason.

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Ideology Origins

• Coined in 1796 by French philosopher Antoine
  Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836), in response to
  the French Revolution.
• Steeped in Enlightenment ideals that people
  could understand and control their world through
  systematic, scientific analysis and rational
  action (he was highly influenced by John Locke
  and British empiricism).

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Ideology Origins

• For de Tracys, ideology was a process
• Goal study ideas and to help people analyze
  their own ideas.
• Intent sort out ideas that were based on
  experience (sensory) and were therefore valid
  from those that had no basis in experience, and
  were consequently groundless.

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From Ideologiste to Ideologue

• What was originally hailed as a starting point
  for reform soon clashed with the purposes of
  Napoleon Bonaparte.
• He dismissed the ideologistes as impractical
  visionaries and troublemakers (ideologues) who
  hold dangerous or false ideas.
• This negative connotation was continued by Karl
  Marx, and pervaded until fairly recently when it
  has taken a more neutral meaning.

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Marx on Ideology

• Integral the divisions in labor (managers from
  workers, workers from product). This will be
  discussed later in the week.
• There is an alienation that occurs (among people,
  in work) which is a breeding ground for
  ideology.

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Marx on Ideology

• The separation between brain-workers and
  hand-workers stimulates the sense of reality of
  those that own the means of production (the upper
  class).
• Brain-workers, without physical objects to work
  upon, invent independent external realities that
  explain the state of affairs (class, justice,
  etc.).
• For Marx, these realities are a distorted
  conception of state, law, morality, history,
  relation to nature, and the future prospects of
  humanity.

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Marx on Ideology

• For Marx, ideology is a falsehood that serves the
  aims of the upper class (those that own the means
  of production). It rationalizes the arrangements
  from which it derives its privileges.
  Institutions and conceptions that develop from
  these interests are mistakenly considered
  natural.
• Example American Dream

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Voices on Ideology

• Sigmund Freud (Future of an Illusion, 1927)
  refers to cultural ideals
• The narcissistic satisfaction provided by the
  cultural ideal is also among the forces which are
  successful in combating the hostility to culture
  within the cultural unit. The satisfaction can
  be shared in not only by the favoured classses,
  which enjoy the benefits of the culture, but also
  by the suppressed ones, since the right to
  despise the people outside it compensates them
  for the wrongs they suffer within their own unit.
  No doubt one is a wretched plebeian, harassed by
  debts and military service but to make up for
  it, one is a Roman citizen . . .
• the suppressed classes can be emotionally
  attached to their masters in spite of their
  hostility to them they may see in them their
  ideals unless such relations of a fundamentally
  satisfying kind subsisted, it would be impossible
  to understand how a number of civilizations have
  survived so long in spite of the justifiable
  hostility of large human masses.

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Voices on Ideology

• Karl Mannheim (early 20th century sociologist)
  ideology is a collective, prevalent illusion that
  is historically and culturally relative. Result
  there are no truth standards in society.
• Louis Althusser (mid/late 20th century
  philosopher) in Ideology and Ideological State
  Apparatuses
• Ideas have disappeared as such (insofar as they
  are endowed with an ideal or spiritual
  existence), to the precise extent that it has
  emerged that their existence is inscribed in the
  actions of practices governed by rituals defined
  in the last instance by an ideological apparatus.
  It therefore appears that the subject acts
  insofar as he is acted by the following system.
• That is, for Althusser we acquire our identities
  by seeing ourselves and our social roles mirrored
  in ideologies. Our desires and moral values are
  instilled in us through ideological practice.

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Voices on Ideology

• Iris Marion Young (contemporary feminist
  philosopher) in Justice and the Politics of
  Difference (1990)
• Ideas function ideologically, as I understand
  that term, when they represent the institutional
  context in which they arise as natural or
  necessary. They thereby forestall criticism of
  relations of domination and oppression, and
  obscure possible emancipatory social
  arrangements.
• Widespread commitment to the ideal of
  impartiality serves at least three ideological
  functions . . .
• It supports the idea of the neutral state . . .
• It legitimates bureaucratic authority and
  heirarchical decision making processes . . .
• It reinforces oppression by hypostatizing the
  point of view of privileged groups into a
  universal position . . .
• For Young, Ideology inculcates a state of affairs
  where the particular is lost in favor of
  impartiality (the universal), and this leads to
  oppression.

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So, what is ideology?

• A general understanding of ideology (a working
  definition)
• Ideology refers to ideas, attitudes, and values
  that represent the interests of a group or class
  of people. These ideas are expressed in the
  media, through the arts, and in all of the ways a
  group within a society displays its perception of
  the world.

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Now, bring all of this knowledge to bear on the
movie . . .

• From Jesus to Christ, the First Christians