I feel like studying Ideology, especially as a way to understand literature and interpret texts. I plan to read from:
Marx, Gramsci, Luckacs, Althusser, Adorno, Lacan, Jameson and Eagleton.
Is there anyone else that is essential, that I should include?
There are two forms of control: overt control (physical) and covert control (mental). Overt control is easy to identify; however, covert control is not. Covert control is often done through ideology. It's about getting people to act in certain ways that they normally wouldn't due to some type of behaviorally embedded ideal.
The thing about this type of control is that someone can be controlling you without you even being aware of it. Better stated: people can make you act in the matter that they wish while you still think that you are acting of your own accord. That is the definition of ideology: it is making people believe they are acting freely, when, in fact, they are still being manipulated by outside sources.
>>7755241
you're so cool and edgy
>>7755246
"the representation of the subject's Imaginary relationship to his or her Real conditions of existence"
- althusser's lacanian definition of ideology.
i've always considered ideology = false
consciousness, to be the definition.
what you're describing is usually considered something to do with a weberian definition of domination, imo
>>7755241
inorite? wtf does marxist philosophy even mean
>>7755241
that's fair, but what would you suggest for non marxist writers of ideology? plato? the bible is okay for it I think, maybe aristotle?
>>7755335
Exactly Ideology is getting people to believe in certain ideals that aren't true. These ideals then manipulate people to act in certain ways by which they normally wouldn't. it is a false consciousness, as you say. However, we must remember that that consciousness (that desire) does motivate people to take action.
>>7755350
so you mean ideology only ever exists as a process, and as a process done to someone by someone/something?
>>7755350
>manipulate people to act in certain ways by which they normally wouldn't.
im having trouble with that definition. people actually do the stuff, its not that "normally they wouldnt". people, in their everyday normality, do things on an ideological basis, its not something coercitive. its an immersive reality proposed by the media and social conventions.
also
>ideals that arent true
>false consciousness
youre so spooked m8. whats true consciousness? whats "true"?
>>7755236
Religious texts are good places to start. They will give you vital context for most ideologies as well.
>>7755236
Ideology? Read Zizek you must.
>>7755346
Adam Smith probably for starters. Hume, Locke, Kant, and Hobbes. Rodger Scruton is alive and has some quality writings.
>>7755480
Adam Smith is pure ideology
>hurr durr, Indians use barter even though there is no evidence of this occurring
>>7755548
this.
>>7755236
Read Adolf Hitler.
I'm not even joking here-I'm serious.
Go into his text with an open mind.
For the love of god, don't buy the one where some asshole critiques every word he said. Buy the least biased one you can find and read it.
It's a slow, boring book, and I haven't read it all, to tell the truth. However, I do think he brings up valid points in relation to history and democracy.
Drop Lacan completely
Dialectic of Enlightenment is OK but other hotdogs are better (Marcuse+++)
Foucalt (Discipline, Sex, Madness, Order, Archaeology, and something on Foucault's issues with psychoanalysis in particular)
Canguilhem, Bachelard, Feyerabend, Fleck
Kołakowski (Main Currents)
Gellner on Communism
Ideology and Utopia by Karl Mannheim
http://bookzz.org/book/955363/bd8f7a
Seriously this is very good book, it explains ideology in more of the analytical tradition without a bunch of charlatan mumbo jumbo about "dialectics"
>>7755548
Well he didn't say he wanted to convert to an ideology
You shouldn't read anything in this thread without at least a superficial grasp on Hegel.
>>7755449
Ideology subconsciously influences desire. Desire influences motivation. Motivation influences action.
>>7755758oh you
>>7755236
Mein Kampf
>>7755758
just watched this. quite a fun movie despite the trash "feminist" reading of it
also fake butterfly
>>7756026
What feminist reading of it? It's just a surrealist/dadaist movie about a couple of girls. It would be a different (and I think lesser) is it where males in their place, but their sex is incidental to the film.
Not fake btw. Glad you liked it.
>>7755236
I would actually start with Jameson, specifically Marxism and Form. it's a excellent introduction to the tradition. Then maybe his Representing Capital, and THEN start with Marx.
a lot of cool suggestions, thanks guys
>>7755350
ideology is not "getting" people to do anything. it's simply the imagined relationship between the subject and the mode(s) of production structuring his life. now, certain ideologies are beneficial to the capitalist class—but ideology in itself not necessarily a bad thing; though we may say it is bad that it is a necessary thing: the mode of production as a totality can never be represented except Symbollically, and ideology operates as the "cipher" between the representation and the Real it represents.
>>7755701
Foucault is really problematic; giving "power" as such priority obscures exploitative relations of production.
Read moldbug but just for keks
>>7756069
exploitation is only possible because of power ya god damn pleb holy shit
>>7756060
>>7756060
Ideology is a fantasy world conducted in our head by language (things we subconsciously and symbolically interpret to be true). However, saying ideology has nothing to do with the actions individuals undertake is rather limited.
Many talks on ideology are often linked to the concept of desire. Desire is one of the main motivators for man, driving and fueling his actions. As Marx said: "They are do not know it, but they are doing it."
To say that the ideas in our head don't dictate our actions or motivate us to take action in some sort of social way doesn't seem to make much sense.
Ideology is the basis by which meaning is made. And people live out this false meaning in their daily lives.
>>7756046
the typical feminist reading is that it's female subversion of male power/sex. i like that it's the female version of manchildren, you don't get to see that often.
>>7756273
There is definitely consciously interpreted meaning separate from ideology itself. There is no ideological meaning to my strict conviction against touching fire. It is instinctually known but I can rationalize that conviction and interpret it in language. Is that something other than meaning?
>>7755246
brilliant m8, well stated. the most wonderful part is that the mentally enslaved will defend the mechanisms of control to the death.
A free helicopter ride, commie.
>>7756287
They're playing out the whole dadaist raison d'etre (Must be the first time I've needed this Frenchism) They're subverting the whole of society. ...Well, I'm repeating myself. Sage.
>>7756332
In Russia, ideology does not manipulate you. You manipulate ideology.
>>7756312
exactly, just look at all the stupid neets on here locked in their mom's basement by jewish socialism but they will try to tell u that they are some hero for wacking it to cartoons all day lol like if u told a man he would be forced to stay in his parents house for life and only masterbate and never get laid he would say fuck you this is tyranny i'll kill u son of a bitch, but this place is filled with kids who volunteer to "opt out" of white civlization, basically the jews got a lot of whites to become wiggers and embrace degenerate culture, but some white boys were to effeminate to become wiggers so they created the weeabo neet trap for those ones
>>7755236
At least in the interpretation of texts you should study Hermeneutic thought such as Scheleiermacher, Dilthey, Gadamer and Ricoeur, in that order.
>>7756214
Foucault literally couldn't check his privilege. you're way off base. the economic factors are always in place before any "discursive" or "institutional" practices of power consolidate themselves.
>>7756273
don't recall saying any of that. try reading, rather than just parroting shit from YouTubes. and whence this metaphysics of desire? have you been reading 60s French "thinkers?" and also, to say ideology is false is a contradiction of terms. if Marx is on the table we have long since departed from positivist designations "true" and "false." you should really dispense with the notion that ideology as such can ever really be dispensed with; Marxism, while situated rather uniquely among them, is just one ideology among many, and no amount of demystification will ever grant some final apprehension of the Real. this is dangerously idealistic thinking. I don't think anyone in this thread has read more than maybe 10 pages of Marxist anything.
>>7756481
>belittles 60's French "thinkers"
>references Lacan's Real and Symbolic
Really, bro?
An excellent introduction to contemporary political ideologies is Dogmas and Dreams.
However ideology is within us, lives through us, and breathes itself into our reality. It is important when taking the task upon oneself to study ideology to not believe that one is achieving any objective ideological status or removing your ideological foundations.
What do you mean by ideology/what is your definition?
>>7756544
Lacan's different. He's an Hegelian and a structuralist. Those other guys reject the Marxist tradition out of hand mostly because it isn't différant enough.
you guys all seem to know quite a bit about ideology. I guess a follow up question I'
m curious about might be: how do you use these ideas to understand literature or do literary criticism?
>>7755236
John B. Thompson
>Eagleton
