File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism.Jul12-Aug17.94, message 205


Date: Sun, 31 Jul 1994 10:37:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Philip Goldstein <pgold-AT-strauss.udel.edu>
Subject: materialism, ideology


James Herron wrote  
The basic point is that, say, relations of production are not
constituted as such apart from how they are meaningfully
constitituted in the minds (or, intersubjectively, in the cultures)
of people.  This is a classic idealist position (hugely influential
in anthropology, by the way).  My argument was that for
something to be 'meaninfully constituted' it at the very least
had to be cognized.

Althusser defines ideology as people's imaginary understanding of the 
relations of production. This definition is close to the view which you 
state above, but this definition is not idealist. The reason is that 
ideology presupposesa science which defines these relations 
"objectively." EVen this distinction between science/ideology has broken 
down in recent years, though, so that ultimately there is no way to 
escape ideological constructions of relations of production even if you 
grant that they must be cognized. Aren't idealism/materialism  an old 
fashioned opposition which no longer works because discourse, a material 
force, intervenes to undermine the difference? 
Philip Goldstein
Associate Professor of English and Philosophy
University of Delaware (Parallel)



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