Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 12:09:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Jay Raskin (PHI)" <raskin-AT-chuma.cas.usf.edu>
Subject: Re: "All is Ideology" ideology


	I hate to use the postmodernist vernacular, but we seem to have a case of 
ideology transgressing and dominating its binary opposite (which I like 
to call science.) Fredric Jameson, in The Politcal Unconscious says that 
Marx's theory of ideology is not "one of false consciousness, but rather 
one of structural limitation and ideological closure." Actually, I'm not 
sure that false consciousness can't be considered as a part of structural 
limitiation and ideological closure.

	Let's take the movie "Rocky" as an example of ideology.  Besides 
its racist, and sexist messages (white Italians against African-Americans 
in brutal competition for the American dream, mousy woman loves great big 
muscular he-man), it visualizes the fascist-subjectivist 
notion that pure desire and will power can overcome all material forces.  
Now, in reality, around  100,000 kids start boxing for every kid 
who eventually ends up as champion. There is no way to measure the 
desire and will power of the kids, and no way to measure the material 
obstacles they must overcome. It is entirely likely that forces quite 
beyond their control, who and when they fight, their manager, their 
training facilities, their socio-economic obligations play the most 
significant roles in who progresses and makes money and who ends up 
maimed or killed in the boxing profession. However, "Rocky" is not 
interested in finding natural or true causes (as science is), it is 
interested in promoting the endlessly reproduced tired idea that 
the most will power (which ends up being mindless obedience to a cause in 
the face of extreme physical pain) leads to the most success.  This 
proposition is easily converted into its converse, the most successful 
have the most will power. This ends up as a justification for the social 
status quo -- easily translated into "those with the most capital deserve 
it because they have the most desire (or need) for it."  This is 
certainly what the producers of the film (a wealthy multinational 
corporation) wish for the world to believe. Thus "Rocky" is a hidden 
justification for the capitalist status quo. It is "ideology" and the 
fact that it won the Academy Award for best picture (portrayed by 
Hollywood "critics" as the underdog "people's" choice) and made a great 
deal of money, being run for months in 1,000's of theatres, and rerun 
1,000's of times on 100's of T.V. stations throughout the world, 
indicates from the capitalist prospective, it was very successful 
propaganda.
	 Now, a postmodernist critique of the above would say that this 
is just one of an infinite number of interpretations of the text. Rocky 
can also be interpreted as being above masculinity, being about athletic 
excellence, being about political cynicism, being about spaghetti, etc.
But doesn't the Postmodernist Critique that everything is interpretation, 
everything is everything, in fact hide the class differences and the 
actual relationships of production and distribution that Rocky itself 
hides? Isn't the Postmodernist "Critique" that "all is ideology" just 
another stategy to disguise ideology from real critiques which expose the 
real nature of the world and the place of ideology in it? In reality the 
idea that "all is ideology" is another type of ideology. If all is indeed 
ideology, then the use of the word becomes meaningless.  But to make the 
concepts of the class enemy "meaningless" is also part of the class 
struggle. Ideology remains an important and primary concept for the 
workingclass as well as the capitalist class and will remain so till the 
end of capitalism.
	On the other hand, I agree with Jameson that postmodernist 
language and certain of its concepts can be useful in an interesting,
although marginal way, in exposing ideology. D'accord, mis amis? 

Yours,

Jay


On Tue, 28 May 1996, Timothy Inners wrote:

> >	Is not **any interpretation**, that is, each and every act of 
> >interpretation, whether of film, literature, another's utterance, or the 
> >unconscious, always permeated to some extent with ideology?
> >	Is not the point of talking about ideology to make conscious our 
> >assumptions, to make known those invisible ideas by which we "see", 
> >particularly in acts of interpretation?
> 
> Exactly.  That's the point I was trying to make here.
> 
> --Timothy Inners
> 
> Website:  http://www.voicenet.com/~esquire/
> 
> "Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything,
>  and I think that is the best definition of him."
>                                    --Dostoevsky
> 
> 
> 
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