g Ideology 2

7/31/2019 g Ideology 2

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Two Views of Ideology

Stuart Hall and Slavoj Zizek


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Outline Starting Questions Hall

Ideology

rediscovered a process of

signification

Site of struggle classification Historicized

Zizek The book

Outline of the article Fantasy


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Starting Questions How are Halls views of ideology different from,

and similar to, those of Althussers, Jameson, or Eagletons? And how is he similar to Hebdigesapproach? What have them learned fromGramsci?

Can you give some examples of media events toexplain how ideology is a site of struggle?

How does Zizek move beyond Althusser in his useof Lacan to explain ideology? Is his view of form and abstraction different from Hallssignification?

Can you find examples of the dream work of ideology?


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Hall:

The rediscovery of Ideologythe post-war history of social scientific thought:

1. the pluralist paradigm developing out of the

clash of ideologies during World War II.2. the pluralist paradigm collapsing in the face of the social upheavals of the '60s.

power => the power to define reality

3. a period of extraordinary science-- Media as the "signifying agents; -- brought "the ideological" to the fore in media

studies (65)


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Hall:

The rediscovery of Ideologyfull title: "The rediscovery of Ideology:

Return of the repressed in media

studies ." In Culture, Society and theMedia, 56-90. New York: Routledge,1982.

-- an attack of the traditional Americanapproach to the study of masscommunication, also known as the effectstradition (1051)


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Ideology as a process of

signification Combination (narrativization) and selection

(exclusion) = process of encoding (alsodecoding the common sense of theaudience) 1051

constructing privileged meanings


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"struggle over meaning."

the mass media do tend to reproduceinterpretations which serve the interests of the ruling class,

but they are also 'a field of ideologicalstruggle'.

E.g. industrial debate; p. 1052


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classification and framework

Classification: different systems producedifferent terms and meanings;

Framework positionality p. 1053 Unconscious


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Ideological signification

historicized Gramscis view of common sense

folklore 1055

P. 1056 historical grammars deep structure of presuppositions their logic of arrangement


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Class struggle of language; multiplemeanings in signification

Multiple referentiality; Althusser too uni-accentual p. 1060

closure: equivalence of discourse and reality

The class struggle in language= strugglebetween two different terms 1061 Changing the terms


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The Sublime Object of Ideology

Critique the fundamental antagonism inMarxist views;

Joins Marxism and Lacan; (p. 4) Post-Marxist -- [affirms] the irreducible

plurality of particular struggles , demonstratinghow they articulation into a series of equivalences depends always on the radicalcontingency of the social- historical process

Lacanian psychoanalysis enable us to grasp

this plurality itself as a multitude of responsesto the same impossible-real kernel


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(2) Sees antagonism of death drive vs.

pleasure principle in many fields (e.g.

democracy, ecology, etc.) Thesis: Hegelian dialectics as the most

consistent model of such an

acknowledgement of antagonism.


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(3) Three purposes: (7) -- re-introduces Lacan as non-poststructuralist,

the most radical contemporary version of theEnlightenment.

return to Hegel by giving it a new reading onthe basis of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Re-define ideology through a new reading of classic motifs such as commodity fetishism.


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How Did Marx Invent the

Symptom?: Outline 1. Form of Dream//Commodity-form the

unconscious: the real abstraction

money as the sublime object2. Social symptom 3. Commodity fetishism : necessary condition

in capitalist society 4. Ideology defined :5. modern society is post ideological

cynical reasoning; fantasy in the doing


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How Did Marx Invent the

Symptom? 1. Fundamental homology between the

interpretive procedure of Marx and Freud-

-. . . between their analysis of commodityfetishism and of dreams (11/t: 312)


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Form

Dream : manifest content latent thought the unconscious desire

1. Dream needs analysis; 2. Attention should becentered on form (dream work). Commodity : chancy determination of

commoditys value determination by labor-

time (a secret) even after we have explained [their] hiddenmeaningwhat is not yet explained is simply[their] form , the process by which the hidden

meaning disguised itself in such a form .15/t:313


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real abstraction

Exchange of commodity implies adouble abstraction :

1. The abstraction from the changeable characterof the commodity;

2. Abstraction from its sensual properties

(17/t: 314)


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real abstraction (2) Real abstraction: the act of abstraction at

work in the very effective process of theexchange of commodities (17/t: 315)

e.g. positive content a priori categories; Physical content commodity value

Latent thought manifest content. money (changeable, perishable) universalvalue, indestructible; This immaterialcorporality of the body within the body gives

us a precise definition of the sublimeob ect . 18


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real abstraction (3)

(critique of Althussers rejecting thiscategory)

The real abstraction introduces the thirdelement- -the symbolic order to the

binary of real object and form of

thought The unconscious: the form of thought

external to the thought itself


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The Social Symptom

Symptom: a particular element whichsubverts its own universal foundation.

(21/t: 316) e.g. the idea of freedom;negation of equivalent exchange.


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Commodity Fetishism

1. a definite social relation between men, thatassumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a

relation between things (Marx 1974, 77) 2. A misrecognition [of] what is really a structural

effect of the network of relations betweenelements (price) [as] an immediate property of one of the elements (commodity), as if thisproperty belongs to it outside its relations withother elements. (23-24)


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Commodity Fetishism

Necessary when the relations between menare not fetishized (as they were in feudal

society).


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Ideology

a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence(21/t: 316)

Contemporary form: cynicism (knows thefalsehood, but does not denounce it). (29/t: 319)

Cynical reason . . .leaves untouched the

fundamental level of ideological fantasy , the levelon which ideology structures the social realityitself. (30/t: 320) not knowing in the doing; afetishist in practice but not in theory (31/t:320)


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Ideology

"ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that webuild to escape insupportable reality; in its

basic dimension it is a fantasy-constructionwhich serves as a support for our "reality"itself" (45/t: 323)

e.g. a fathers dream of seeing his dead sonburned.


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Ideology (2)-- Critique of

Althusser1. a gap between ISA and ideological

interpellation, or how does ISA internalizesitself?

this external machine of ideology exercises itsforce only in so far as it is experienced, in theunconscious economy of the subject, as atraumatic, senseless injunction .

The is always a residue, a leftover, a stain of traumatic irrationality and senselessness ensures the authority of law.


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Fantasy as a Support of Reality (against ideology as illusion to be unmasked; or

reality as illusion or fiction) Lacan a hard kernel of the Real The only way to break the power of our

ideological dream is to confront the Real of ourdesire which announces itself in this dream.

E.g. to critique anti-Semitism: not by saying Jews are really not like that but by pointing out that the ideological figure of a Jew

a way to stitch up the inconsistency of our own

ideological system.


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Beyond Interpellation

the theory of ideology descending from theAlthusserian theory of interpellation focus toomuch on the efficiency of an ideologyexclusively through the mechanisms of imaginary and symbolic identification .

The dimension 'beyond interpellation' which wasthus left out has nothing to do with some kind of irreducible dispersion and plurality of thesignifying process ... 'Beyond interpellation' isthe square of desire, fantasy, lack in the Other anddrive pulsating around some unbearable surplusenjoyment. (124)


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Beyond Interpellation

-- two readings of ideology Discursive, symptomal reading

Extracting the kernel of enjoyment, atarticulating the way in which beyond thefield of meaning but at the same timeinternal to it an ideolgoy implies,manipulate, produced a pre-ideologicalenjoyment structured in fantasy.


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Slavoj Zizek a professor at the Institute for

Sociology, Ljubljana, Slovenia

politically active in Slovenia during the80s, a candidate for the presidency ofthe Republic of Slovenia in 1990,and most of his works are moral andpolitical rather than purely theoretical.

(source )
http://www.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp/~leuers/zizek.htmhttp://www.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp/~leuers/zizek.htm

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