File spoon-archives/marxism-theory.archive/marxism-theory_1997/marxism-theory.9710, message 14


Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 13:59:28 EST
From: dh05-AT-lehigh.edu (DAVID HAWKES)
Subject: Ideology







Jukka Laari writes:

>I recently stumbled over an argument that what's been called
>"postmodernism" (Rorty, Lyotard, and Foucault were named as
>representatives of it) is just the ideology of consumer capitalism.
>Well, I don't have problems with that. After all, it's just an
>extension of Fredric Jameson's older insight, and I agree with him on
>that. "There is a sense in which ideology's validity as an
>interpretative category is demonstrated in the very act of attacking
>it", says David Hawkes in "Ideology" (recent introductory textbook on
>ideology). However, Hawkes seems to be thinking that the hard core of
>the concept of ideology is 'false consciousness'.

Thanks Jukka, appreciated! To your last comment above, I respond: not always or
necessarily.  Obviously, the term "ideology" has been used to mean just about
anything, and there's no point in arguing over the correct definition of the
word.  What I argue is that it is possible, today, to identify a particular
mode of consciousness as "false", according to the basic tenets of the Western
philosophical tradition.  We could call that consciousness "ideological", but
it might be more specific to refer to it as "fetishized", or "reified", or
"objectified", or "commodified".  These terms refer to the specific form taken
by false consciousness under an exchange-based economy such as our own.

>I've been becoming more and more curious about what it's really aimed
>at with that concept. Why should ideology be considered to be
>something related with consciousness only?

Because it refers to mistaken ideas.  Of course those mistaken ideas have
material consequences, but these consequences cannot be identified with the
ideas themselves.

>Does it really make sense
>to claim that the whole consciousness of individuals is somehow caused
>to be false?

Sure.  Why not?

>So far I haven't found a single, tight demonstration that and how the
>birth of false consciousness would happen...

What about the first chapter of _Capital_?

>On the other hand, I'm
>not sure at all whether classical formulation of ideology as something
>closely related to class and class-struggle only would work today, in
>'postmodern' world where new no-class of white-collar ('information'
>and such) workers is becoming more and more powerful in so-called
>developed world. How false their consciousness could be? Shouldn't it
>be one of the most developed in the history of humankind? What I fail
>to understand?

I think that, as you say, it is no longer possible to divide society into
groups of people labelled "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat".  Despite this,
however, the contradiction between Capital and Labor remains absolute: Capital
is objectified Labor.  In my book, I argue that the contradiction has become
internalized within the mind of each individual.

Cheers,

David Hawkes



   

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