(Page 9 of 23) - Ideology Critique after the Death of Man: Explaining the Persistence of a Discredited Practice authored by Neidleman, Jason.

capacity to yield significant conclusions. On the other hand, if the account of ideology is
more ambitious, it risks recapitulating the problematic premises outlined at the beginning
of this section.

ii. Formulating a New Ideology Critique. The previous section suggests the need for

an account of ideology critique that preserves the term’s critical dimension but does not
presuppose the illusory extra-discursive standpoint implicit in Marxist approaches.
Marxists have no qualms about describing ideology as an illusion or distortion, which
gives them a strong critical dimension. However, as we have seen, traditional IC requires
unacceptable metaphysical assumptions. On the other extreme lies the morphological
approach to ideology which views ideology in purely descriptive, non-normative terms
such that it becomes synonymous with ‘worldview’ or ‘system of ideas.’ This approach
requires no problematic ontological assumptions, but it dispenses with the critical
dimension of ideology.

IC, understood as the study of the noncognitive origins and functions of ideas,

preserves the critical dimension of IC without making the controversial assumptions
characteristic of traditional IC. It does so by circumventing the question of the
metaphysical validity of ideas and instead studies their social and psychological functions
and origins. The question is not whether an idea is true or false but rather why it
becomes dominant or hegemonic. As Claude Lefort has argued, although a fixed ‘reality’
cannot be presupposed, we can nonetheless ‘attempt to understand how, in a given epoch,
the dominant discourse acts to conceal the process of social division.’

This places the

burden of justification on the critic, where it should be, rather than the subject.
Consciousness is not expressed as directly and exclusively derivative of material
relations. Instead, the critic must make his case. Moreover, once he does, he can claim
only to have described the social and psychological effects of ideas and to have produced
evidence suggestive of the noncognitive origins of ideas. Rather than presuppose a
‘reality,’ which ideology distorts, the new ideology critic reverses the direction of
analysis. He does not imagine himself to be in possession of a truth from which any
departure is labeled an ideological distortion, but rather he analyzes ideas themselves and
inquires into their origin and effect. For the new ideology critic, ideas are not divided
into true and false, rational and distorted, or emancipatory and ideological. The new
ideology critic recognizes that all ideas have an ideological dimension, and she makes
identifying that dimension her project. Ideology is acknowledged to be part of any set of
beliefs, which means that ideology no longer refers to a particular set of ideas but to a
particular dimension of all ideas.

In fact, the traditional conception of ‘ideology’ becomes the paradigmatic example of

our revised account of the term. Marxists use the term to organize phenomena that
appear contradictory, irreconcilable, or unrelated. This Marxian invocation of ideology is
a response to an apparent lacuna or inconsistency, namely that the oppressed seem to
frequently embrace the conditions of their own subjugation. Rather than see this as
evidence of the provisionality of their social theory, Marxists perversely see it as further
support for its comprehensiveness. This produces the tautology which enables Marxists
to assimilate all criticism. The new ideology critic relinquishes the orthodox Marxist’s

Claude Lefort, “On the Genesis of Ideology in Modern Societies,” Canadian Journal

of Political and Social Theory, vol. 7, nos. 1-2 (1983) p. 54.