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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.. Ideology Origins. Coined in 1796 by French philosopher Antoine Dest
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1. IDEOLOGY
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. Now, bring all of this knowledge to bear on the movie . . . From Jesus to Christ, the First Christians