Page 121 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

One problem with the concept of ideology is the scope of its use. Early Marxist
and sociological versions of the concept of ideology restricted its usage to ideas
associated with, and maintaining the power of, the dominant class. Later, more
98 extended versions of the concept added questions of gender, ethnicity, age etc. to
that of class. In other words, ideology refers to the way meaning is used to justify
the power of ascendant groups that encompasses classes but also includes social
groups based on race, gender, age etc. This kind of understanding of ideology refers
only to the ideas of the powerful. However, other uses of the concept grasp ideology
as justifying the actions of all groups of people so that marginal and subordinate
groups also have ideologies in the sense of organizing and justifying ideas about
themselves and the world.
The second fundamental problem with the concept of ideology refers to its
epistemological status, that is, the relation of ideology to truth and knowledge. In
particular, it is the declaration of objective interests and the possibility of false
beliefs that is the fundamental problem. In its turn to language, cultural studies
espoused anti-representationalism and anti-essentialism. However, there remains a
contradiction between the adoption of this argument and the common usage of the
concept of ideology as being false. That is, an anti-representationalist position on
language that asserts that there is no Archimedean point from which to access the
adequacy of representation as universal truth, cannot deploy a concept of ideology
(as falsehood) posited in contrast to an objective universal truth. There are no
grounds for claiming knowledge as universal transcendental truth, rather, there are
only varieties of describing and speaking about the world from within our own
milieu. Truth is culture-bound, contingent and specific to the historical and cultural
conditions of its production. Thus, in this view, the concept of ideology as falsity
has lost its power as an explanatory concept.
Today, the notion of ideology at best implies the ‘binding and justifying ideas’
of all social groups. This binding function of lived ideology does not have to have
any reference to a representational concept of truth. While actors no doubt hold
their beliefs to be true, it is the common sharing of beliefs that binds, not the
representational truth or falsity of ideas. The difference between ascendant and
subordinate groups is one of degrees of power and differing substantive world-views
not of ideological versus non-ideological ideas. We are all, as Foucault argued,
implicated in power relations and in this sense the concept of ideology is virtually
interchangeable with his notion of power/knowledge.
When the concept of ideology is read as power/knowledge then it suggests
structures of signification that constitute social relations in and through power. If
meaning is fluid – a question of difference and deferral – then ideology can be
understood as the attempt to fix meaning for specific purposes. Ideologies are then
grasped as discourses that give meaning to material objects and social practices; they
define and produce the acceptable and intelligible way of understanding the world
while excluding other ways of reasoning as unintelligible and unjustifiable.
Ideologies are thus about binding and justification rather than being concerned
with truth, falsity and objective interests. They are the ‘world-views’ of any social
group that both constitute them as a group and justify their actions.