IDEOLOGY

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IDEOLOGY

• THE IDEAS OF THE RULING CLASS

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The Ruling Ideas

• The ideal expression of the dominant material
  relationships
• The dominant material relationships grasped as
  ideas
• The relationships which make one class the
  ruling one
• The ideas of the ruling classs dominance

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• Ideas of the ruling class are expressed as
  eternals laws
• As they rule as a class and determine the extent
  and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that
  they do this in its whole range, hence among
  other things rule also as thinkers, as producers
  of ideas, and regulate and produce the ideas of
  their age as eternal laws.

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• The division of labor Who produces the dominant
  ideas?

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• Ideas of the ruling class are represented as the
  only rational, universally valid ones
• Universality corresponds to
• Class vs. Estate
• Competition
• Great numerical strength of the ruling class
• Illusion of common interest
• The delusion of the ideologists and division of
  labor

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• Every new class achieves its hegemony only on a
  broader basis than that of the ruling class
  previously, whereas the opposition of the
  non-ruling class against the new ruling class
  later develops all the more sharply and
  profoundly.
• Discussion Are we moving towards a more
  democratic social order?

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• Critique of Hegel and Idealism
• Idea as the dominant force in history
• Social order to be driven by ideas rather than
  materialistic relationships
• Separation of ideas of ruling class from its base
• A mystical connection among the successive ruling
  ideas
• History as process of self-consciousness

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IDEOLOGY
Revised by Gramsci
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What Is History?

• The historical unity of the ruling class is
  realized in the State, and their history is
  essentially the history of States. But it would
  be wrong to think that this unity is simply
  juridical and political the fundamental
  historical unity, concretely, results from the
  organic relations between State or political
  society and civil society.
• The Subaltern classes, by definition, are
  not unified and cannot unite until they are able
  to become a State their history, therefore, is
  intertwined with that of civil society, and
  thereby with the history of States and groups of
  States.

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Ideology

• Its original meaning Science of ideas/ Analysis
  of ideas
• In Marxist philosophy Contains a negative value
  judgment
• As consciousness and creators of struggle and
  movement (a new meaning emphasized by Gramsci)

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Ideology as the theoretical front

• Everything which influences or is able to
  influence public opinion, directly or indirectly

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So what is ideology at the end?

• Hall argues that ideology is a mental framework
  the languages, the concepts, categories, imagery
  of thought, and the systems of representation
  which different classes and social groups deploy
  in order to make sense of, define, figure out and
  render intelligible the way society works.

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Ideology for Marx

• Practical Meaning
• The thoughts of how the capitalist system works
  through the individuals practical relations to
  it
• The same reality can be represented in several
  ways within systems of discourse

• The Manifestation of Bourgeois Thought
• A critical weapon against Hegelianism, religion
  and idealist philosophy
• Ideology as a reflection of material conditions
• Economy as the last instance
• The fixed correspondence between dominance in the
  socio-economic sphere and the ideological ruling
  ideas are the ideas of the ruling class

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Critiques of Marxs Idea of Ideology

• Reflexive and reductionist
• Ideology as a realm of pure dependency
• Ideology as distorted knowledge or false
  consciousness
• Distortion for Marx Eternalization of relations
  which are in fact historically specific /
  Naturalization which means treating the products
  of a specific historical development as if
  universally valid, and arising not through
  historical processes but, as it were, from Nature
  itself.

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How ideology works and explains

• Individualism as the bourgeois societys ideology
• Our ideas of Freedom, Equality,
  Property and Bentham (i.e. Individualism)
  the ruling ideological principles of the
  bourgeois lexicon may derive from the categories
  we use in our practical, common sense about the
  market economy. This is how there arises, out of
  daily, mundane experience of powerful categories
  of bourgeois legal, political, social and
  philosophical thought.
• About political Economy explanation of market
• One-sided explanations are always a
  distortion. Not in the sense that they are a lie
  about the system, but in the sense that a
  half-truth cannot be the whole truth about
  anything. With those ideas you will always
  represent a part of the whole. You will thereby
  produce an explanation which is only partially
  adequate- and in that sense false. Also, if you
  use only market categories and concepts to
  understand the capitalist circuit as a whole,
  there are literally many aspects of it which you
  cannot see. In that sense, the categories of
  market exchange obscure and mystify our
  understanding of the capitalist process that is
  they do not enable us to see or formulate other
  aspects invisible.

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Base And Superstructure

• Marx Base as the material relations of
  production (economy), superstructure as the
  non-material representation of the same relations
  (including State, religion, culture, etc.)
• In Marxs theories and later in mainstream
  Marxism, superstructure is determined by base.
• Stuart Hall The language of determinism and
  even more of determinism was inherited from
  idealist and especially theological accounts.

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• The simple notion of superstructure the
  reflection, the imitation or the reproduction of
  the reality of the base in the superstructure in
  a more or less direct way

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The Amendments in the notion of Superstructure

• Delay in times famous lags
• Mediation
• Homologous Structure
• Totality
• Superstructure as practice rather than object

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• Gramscis Critique of Marxist Base-
  Superstructure
• Hegemony it suggests the existence of something
  which is truly total, which is not merely
  secondary or superstructural And hegemony has
  the advantage over general notions of totality,
  that at the same time emphasizes the facts of
  domination.

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Hegemony

• Hegemony is a form of control exercised primarily
  through a society's superstructure--central
  system of practices, meanings and values.

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Gramscis Theory

• A study of how the ideological structure of a
  dominant class is actually organized namely the
  material organization aimed at maintaining,
  defending and developing the theoretical or
  ideological front.

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Mean Girls

• http//youtu.be/X34Jo5OAJ6s
• http//youtu.be/oagshW5DQDI?hd1

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Hegemony Expanded

• Williams Theory
• We have to emphasize that hegemony is not
  singular indeed that its own internal structures
  are highly complex, and have continually to be
  renewed, recreated and defended and by the same
  token, that they can be continually challenged
  and in certain respects modified

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Hegemony Expanded

• Hegemony works to Distinguish the large features
  of different epochs of society, as between feudal
  and bourgeois, or what might be, than at
  distinguishing between different phases of
  bourgeois society, and different moments within
  the phases.

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Selective Tradition

• Within the terms of an effective dominant
  culture, is always passed off as the tradition,
  the significant past
• selectivity is the point the way in which from a
  whole possible area of past and present, certain
  meanings and practices are chosen for emphasis,
  certain other meanings and practices are
  neglected and excluded.

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Althusser

• Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA)
• A certain number of realities which present
  themselves to the immediate observer in the form
  of distinct and specialized institutions.

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ISA Institutions

• The religious ISA (the system of the different
  Churches),
• The educational ISA (the system of the different
  public and private Schools)
• The family ISA
• The legal ISA
• The political ISA (the political system,
  including the different Parties),
• The trade-union ISA,
• The communications ISA (press, radio and
  television, etc.),
• The cultural ISA (Literature, the Arts, sports,
  etc.).

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ISA

• Althusser states, The class (or class alliance)
  in power cannot lay down the law in the ISAs as
  easily as it can in the (repressive) State
  apparatus, not only because the former ruling
  classes are able to retain strong positions there
  for a long time, but also because the resistance
  of the exploited classes

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Functions of ISA

• State Apparatus rather I or R function both by
  violence and by ideology
• Ideological State Apparatus functions massively
  and predominantly by Ideology and secondly by
  repressive (The Greatest Distinction)

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Functions of ISA

• ISAs contribute to reproduction of the relations
  of production by disseminating ideas to be
  commonly held (ideology) and work in concert with
  minimal contradiction of class structure ruling
  class power and proletariat oppression.

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• Belief derives from the ideas of the individual
  concerned, with a consciousness which contains
  the ideas of his belief. In this way, by means
  of the absolutely ideological conceptual
  device.
• The individual in question behaves in such and
  such a way, adopts such and such a practical
  attitude, and, what is more, participates in
  certain regular practices which are those of the
  ideological apparatus on which depend the ideas
  which he has in all consciousness freely chosen
  as a subject.

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The Truman Show

• http//youtu.be/NwyVbvVtL6U

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Althussers Theory

• There is no practice except by and in an ideology
• There is no ideology except by the subject and
  for subjects

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Interpellations

• By the category of the subject
• the category of the subject is only constitutive
  of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the
  function (which defines it) of constituting
  concrete individuals as subjects.

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Obviousness

• Like all obviousnesss, including those that make
  a word name a thing or have a meaning the
  obviousness that you and I are subjects and
  that that does not cause any problems is an
  ideological effect, the elementary ideological
  effect

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Functions of Interpellations

• Ideological recognition
• The second ideological function being
  misrecognition
• You and I are always already subjects, and as
  such constantly practice the rituals of
  ideological recognition, which guarantee for us
  that we are indeed concrete, individual,
  distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable
  subjects.
• This ideological recognition is our Consciousness

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The Subject Matter

• All ideology hails or interpellates concrete
  individuals as concrete subjects, by the
  functioning of the category of the subject
• Ideology acts or functions in such a way that
  it recruits subjects among the individuals, or
  transforms the individuals into subjects by
  that very precise operation which I have called
  interpellation or hailing.