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Ideology Critique after the Death of Man: Explaining the Persistence of a Discredited Practice
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Ideology Critique after the ‘Death of Man’
Explaining the Persistence of a Discredited Practice
Jason Neidleman
University of La Verne
Prepared for delivery at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association, August 28 - August 31, 2003.
Copyright by the American Political Science Association.
In the wake of psychoanalytic and post-structuralist attacks on the modern categories
of political analysis (subjectivity, agency, universality), ideology critique has come to be regarded as deeply problematic, if not utterly indefensible. And yet attempts persist, among Habermasians and Lacanians in particular, to defend ideology critique, not just as a catalog of prevailing discourses, but as a mode of making critical, normative claims about the origins and effects of ideas. Given the cumbersome baggage associated with ideology critique, it is reasonable to ask why one would want to swim upstream in its defense. Why not let it simply drift away, along with the totalizing discourses with which it has been associated? Why not simply stop using the term?
There is nothing sacrosanct about the term itself, of course, but that which it denotes
lies at the core of contemporary theory. Ideology critique enables theorists to distinguish between the views subjects hold and the reasons they hold them. Without this distinction, theorists relinquish the authority to describe the origins and effects of ideas and limit themselves to a descriptive, ‘morphology’ of their content. The term ‘morphology’ comes from Michael Freeden’s Ideologies and Political Theories, in which he identifies three approaches to the study of ideology:
The first is genetic, in answer to the question: how did a particular set of political views come about? …The second is broadly functional, in answer to the question: what is the purpose or role (if unintended), of a particular set of political views…? The third is semantic [morphological], in answer to the question: what are the
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1
Ideology Critique after the ‘Death of Man’
Explaining the Persistence of a Discredited Practice
Jason Neidleman
University of La Verne
Prepared for delivery at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association, August 28 - August 31, 2003.
Copyright by the American Political Science Association.
In the wake of psychoanalytic and post-structuralist attacks on the modern categories
of political analysis (subjectivity, agency, universality), ideology critique has come to be
regarded as deeply problematic, if not utterly indefensible. And yet attempts persist,
among Habermasians and Lacanians in particular, to defend ideology critique, not just as
a catalog of prevailing discourses, but as a mode of making critical, normative claims
about the origins and effects of ideas. Given the cumbersome baggage associated with
ideology critique, it is reasonable to ask why one would want to swim upstream in its
defense. Why not let it simply drift away, along with the totalizing discourses with
which it has been associated? Why not simply stop using the term?
There is nothing sacrosanct about the term itself, of course, but that which it denotes
lies at the core of contemporary theory. Ideology critique enables theorists to distinguish
between the views subjects hold and the reasons they hold them. Without this distinction,
theorists relinquish the authority to describe the origins and effects of ideas and limit
themselves to a descriptive, ‘morphology’ of their content. The term ‘morphology’
comes from Michael Freeden’s Ideologies and Political Theories, in which he identifies
three approaches to the study of ideology:
The first is genetic, in answer to the question: how did a particular set of political
views come about? …The second is broadly functional, in answer to the question:
what is the purpose or role (if unintended), of a particular set of political views…?
The third is semantic [morphological], in answer to the question: what are the
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