Juxtaposing the materialistic claims of the neurological turn in the psy-sciences in conjunction with the seemingly opposed virtual turn in society more broadly, this article explores the quadruple ...matrix of psychology/psychoanalysis/neurology/ideology critique. Assuming the challenge of materialism (“il faut absolutement être materialiste”), the various vicissitudes to which the components of the matrix are subjected to as they become trapped within the materialist–virtual vortex, are explored. It is argued that the failure to adopt a true materialist stance causes the various components of the matrix to collapse into one another. The central question of the paper: “can a psychoanalytic materialistic perspective offer a way out?” is answered, largely via a critical dialogue with Adrian Johnston, by arguing that psychoanalysis deals with a decentred materiality, a materiality of the object a.
Starting from a theoretical and methodological foundation of an academic ideology critique, the production, distribution and valorisation of science communication will be analysed in exemplary ...fashion. The focus is on the criticism of publishing houses’ business models in the sphere of open Access publishing. These models are propagated and implemented by science and politics. Thus, academic publications continue to be traded as commodities. The existing relationships of power and domination are thereby reproduced. In contrast, the emancipatory potential of non-commercial science communication based on the digitalisation of production and distribution is shown.
A rapidly emerging hegemonic neuro-culture and a booming neural subjectivity signal the entry point for an inquiry into the status of the signifier
neuro
as a universal
passe-partout
. The wager of ...this paper is that the various (mis)appropriations of the neurosciences in the media and in academia itself point to something essential, if not structural, in connection with both the discipline of the neurosciences and the current socio-cultural and ideological climate. Starting from the case of neuroeducation (the application of neuroscience within education), the genealogy of the neurological turn is linked to the history of psychology and its inextricable bond with processes of psychologisation. If the neurological turn risks not merely neglecting the dimension of critique, but also obviating its possibility, then revivifying a psy-critique (understanding the academified modern subject as grounded in the scientific
point of view from nowhere
) might be necessary in order to understand today’s neural subjectivity and its place within current biopolitics.
Reflections on ideology Susen, Simon
Thesis eleven,
10/2014, Volume:
124, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the enduring relevance of the concept of ideology to contemporary sociological analysis. To this end, the article draws upon central arguments put ...forward by Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski in ‘La production de l’idéologie dominante’ ‘The Production of the Dominant Ideology’. Yet, the important theoretical contributions made in this enquiry have been largely ignored by contemporary sociologists, even by those who specialize in the critical study of ideology. This article intends to fill this gap in the literature by illustrating that useful lessons can be learned from Bourdieu and Boltanski’s critical investigation, as it provides crucial insights into the principal characteristics and functions of ideologies, including the ways in which they develop and operate in advanced capitalist societies. The article is divided into two main parts: the first part examines various universal features of ideology; the second part aims to shed light on several particular features of dominant ideology. The paper concludes by arguing that the ‘end of ideology’ thesis, despite the fact that it raises valuable sociological questions, is ultimately untenable.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to engage some of the central themes of Gayatri Spivak’s seminal essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak? (CSS)” In particular, her criticisms of post-structuralism’s ...treatment of the “subject” as well as its privileging of “discourse” and micrological analyses of power vis-à-vis her discussion of Foucault and Deleuze.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper also draws on a historical materialist approach to examine how Spivak’s own work often reinscribes the discursive and politically pusillanimous tendencies of both post-structuralist and post-colonialist thought.
Findings
This lends itself to the “complexification” of capitalism – a bourgeois form of mystification of capital’s essential workings and the underlying class structure of the globalized economy, inclusive of “postcolonial” societies.
Originality/value
The authors conclude that CSS – while an important question – is ultimately a misdirected one that, in effect, mistakes discursive empowerment for social and economic enablement.
This article aims to demonstrate the enduring relevance of Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski’s ‘La production de l’idéologie dominante’ ‘The production of the dominant ideology’, which was originally ...published in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales in 1976. More than three decades later, in 2008, a re-edited version of this study was printed in book format as La production de l’idéologie dominante, which was accompanied by a detailed commentary, written by Luc Boltanski and entitled Rendre la réalité inacceptable. À propos de « La production de l’idéologie dominante » Making Reality Unacceptable. Comments on ‘The production of the dominant ideology’. In addition to containing revealing personal anecdotes and providing important sociological insights, this commentary offers an insider account of the genesis of one of the most seminal pieces Boltanski co-wrote with his intellectual father, Bourdieu. In the Anglophone literature on contemporary French sociology, however, the theoretical contributions made both in the original study and in Boltanski’s commentary have received little – if any – serious attention. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature, arguing that these two texts can be regarded not only as forceful reminders of the fact that the ‘dominant ideology thesis’ is far from obsolete but also as essential for understanding both the personal and the intellectual underpinnings of the tension-laden relationship between Bourdieu and Boltanski. Furthermore, this article offers a critical overview of the extent to which the unexpected, and partly posthumous, reunion between ‘the master’ (Bourdieu) and his ‘dissident disciple’ (Boltanski) equips us with powerful conceptual tools, which, whilst illustrating the continuing centrality of ‘ideology critique’, permit us to shed new light on key concerns in contemporary sociology and social theory. Finally, the article seeks to push the debate forward by reflecting upon several issues that are not given sufficient attention by Bourdieu and Boltanski in their otherwise original and insightful enquiry into the complexities characterizing the daily production of ideology.
The sociologist of religion Fenggang Yang has recently extended his ‘markets of religion’ framework to the spiritual ‘soul searching’ in contemporary literature. In his epilogue to Angelica Duran and ...Yuhan Huang’s Mo Yan in Context (2014), an anthology of interdisciplinary interpretations of Mo Yan’s ‘hallucinatory realist’ fiction, Yang claims that ‘Chinese souls’ have been ‘caged’ by, among other things, ‘Marxist-Leninist-Maoist atheism’. He refers to the Marxist theory of religion as merely ‘the Marxist adage’ that religion is ‘the opiate of the people’. This essay analyzes Yang’s ‘cage’ concept, to ‘work against it both from without and within’, as Lenin says. In doing so, I argue that Yang’s ‘soul searching’ epilogue is a highly concentrated text of bourgeois ideological mystification and is, therefore, a productive site for Marxist oppositional pedagogy which contests the imagism of ‘cages’ with the materialist dialectics of class struggle.
The turn to religion within critical theory has brought the critique of ideology back into theological view. This essay examines the relation of theology to ideology in the liberation theology of ...Juan Luis Segundo. Segundo's key contribution is his use of the concept of ideology as an efficacious force in theological work in service to poor communities. I argue that the critical and political force of Segundo's theology is dulled by this neutral use of ideology critique. This may be ameliorated by consulting Slavoj Žižek's negative use of Christianity as ideology critique. Without endorsing Žižek over Segundo, I propose that Žižek's critical use of political theology can help liberation theology reengage the role of negativity and critique in the immanent relation of theory and praxis.
This article discusses some possibilities for a critical interpretation of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. On the one hand, this theory could provide a sophisticated new sociological account of ...well-known modern social pathologies, such as alienation and reification; on the other, it could be considered a crypto-normative model for the reciprocal mediation between system and environment in which neither blind tautologies nor colonizations would take place. I argue that as a normative model this theoretical matrix seems to resonate with aspects of Adorno’s negative dialectics between subject and object and that the involuntary promise it contains could be fully realized only under other social conditions. The article also presents a preliminary critique of neoliberalism reconceptualized in systems theoretical terms as a dedifferentiation machinery that aims at establishing the primacy of economic rationality and the formation of ‘industries’ in different social spheres.
The essay is based on the conference session "The Work of Art between Scholarship and Worldview,' chaired by Martin Warnke, at the Twelfth Congress of German Art Historians (1970). The first part ...comprises his opening statement, explaining the session's aim to denounce the ideological content and the false claim to scholarly objectivity in German art history before and after 1945. This is followed by a reflection on the need for a reprocessing of art-historical material. Warnke concludes that the "immature" state of the discipline is partly due to the emigration of Germany's best art historians during the 1930s, and that the "corpse" left behind needs to be examined.
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