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Ideology Critique after the Death of Man: Explaining the Persistence of a Discredited Practice
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because it is the study of the relationship between unconscious and conscious, between interest and reason, areas of study that have become central to a variety of disciplines. Ideology critique persists because it is the way we study the relationship between the material and symbolic reproduction of society. It persists because it is the way we study the relationship between psychic drives and their social representation.
Now, we cannot give as definitive an account of these questions as the traditional
ideology critic would like, and we are, in fact, deeply skeptical about ever identifying a non-ideological thought, but we do believe it possible to describe the ideological dimensions of ideas. I will conclude by drawing an analogy to Kant’s moral philosophy.
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Kant claims that there has likely never been a truly moral act, and, even if
there were one, we could not know it. Given man’s dualistic nature, it is impossible to know whether some small amount of hypothetical reasoning contributed to one’s decision to follow the moral law. It is against this background of non-moral inclinations that all moral reasoning occurs. Nonetheless, it remains philosophically coherent to describe moral reasoning in the manner that Kant does. Likewise, we articulate all of our ideas from within and as a reflection of a socio-historical background. For this reason, we can never be certain about how much that background constrains our articulations, just as Kant says that we can never know how much empirical forces influence the decision to follow the moral law. What is critical is that just as this uncertainty does not invalidate Kant’s moral philosophy, likewise, our sense that socio-historical context always (though never totally or uniformly) determines ideas does not invalidate ideology critique. It means only that one not be imperious about the uses to which it is put; it must not be the handmaiden of some larger agenda, of anything larger than itself. Laclau’s resurrection, it turns out, is not needed because ideology critique did not die; it had only been chastened.
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For this argument, see Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.
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| | Authors: Neidleman, Jason. |
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because it is the study of the relationship between unconscious and conscious, between
interest and reason, areas of study that have become central to a variety of disciplines.
Ideology critique persists because it is the way we study the relationship between the
material and symbolic reproduction of society. It persists because it is the way we study
the relationship between psychic drives and their social representation.
Now, we cannot give as definitive an account of these questions as the traditional
ideology critic would like, and we are, in fact, deeply skeptical about ever identifying a
non-ideological thought, but we do believe it possible to describe the ideological
dimensions of ideas. I will conclude by drawing an analogy to Kant’s moral
philosophy.
44
Kant claims that there has likely never been a truly moral act, and, even if
there were one, we could not know it. Given man’s dualistic nature, it is impossible to
know whether some small amount of hypothetical reasoning contributed to one’s decision
to follow the moral law. It is against this background of non-moral inclinations that all
moral reasoning occurs. Nonetheless, it remains philosophically coherent to describe
moral reasoning in the manner that Kant does. Likewise, we articulate all of our ideas
from within and as a reflection of a socio-historical background. For this reason, we can
never be certain about how much that background constrains our articulations, just as
Kant says that we can never know how much empirical forces influence the decision to
follow the moral law. What is critical is that just as this uncertainty does not invalidate
Kant’s moral philosophy, likewise, our sense that socio-historical context always (though
never totally or uniformly) determines ideas does not invalidate ideology critique. It
means only that one not be imperious about the uses to which it is put; it must not be the
handmaiden of some larger agenda, of anything larger than itself. Laclau’s resurrection,
it turns out, is not needed because ideology critique did not die; it had only been
chastened.
44
For this argument, see Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.
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