terry eagleton, ideology: an introduction

(xiv): the critique of ideology presumes that nobody is every wholly mystified--it rejects the 'external' standpoint of enlightenment rationality, but shares with the enlightenment this fundamental trust in the moderately rational nature of human beings.

chapter one

(5): ideology makes reference to systems of power, fundamentally

(9): a piece of language might be ideological in one context, but not in another--its a function of its relation to social context.

(16, 22, 26): ideology is bound up with an ulterior motive (the statement itself might be true or false)--but what makes it ideological is the idea that it is a "rhetorical act aimed at producing certain effects" (related, it seems, to his treatment of 'fictionality')

(18): for Althusser, ideology is a matter of the way in which we 'pre-reflectively' relate to social reality--how reality 'strikes us' in the form of spontaneous experiences. (shifting, eagleton says, from a cognitive to an affective theory of ideology)

(27): notion of 'enlightened false-consciousness'

(28-31): the six ways in which ideology can be defined, with a 'progressive sharpening of focus'

1. general production of ideas, beliefs, and values in social life (Stressing the social determination of thought)
2. conditions and life-experiences of a particular class
3. attends to the promotion of the interests of a given social group in the face of opposing interests
4. confining this last definition to the activities of a dominant social power (i.e., helping to 'unify' a social formation in order to secure the complicity of subordinates)
5. ideology signifies ideals and beliefs that distort and dissumulate contradictions in society, legitimating the interests of a ruling group
6. and finally, a conception of ideology that arises not from the activities of the cominant class but from the material structure of society as a whole. ('fetishism of commodities')

chapter two

(34): adamant, here, that ideology alone cannot explain passivity

(35-36): cohesion is achieved much more by economic than by ideological means (though he does recognize that one can bend the stick too far in the other direction)

(36): consciousness as a 'contradictory amalgam' of ideas culled from rulers and from practical experience in society

(42): in sum--thus far he has suggested three different possibilities, then:

1. material techniques much more than ideology enforce cohesion
2. system maintains itself not by imposing meaning, but by destroying it
3. there is a dominant ideology at work, but no one is gullible enough to believe it

(44): again, as earlier--falsity as a functional property (those ideas which legitimate shady interests, etc.)

(46-47): very useful critique of both the frankfurt school, and foucault--they foreclose the possibility of an emancipatory conciousness, even as their own critique depends on the viability of that position (for foucault, for example, if there is nothing beyond power, what is being regimented and disciplined?)

(45-61): six functions of ideology

1. unifying--forcing cohesion on a differentiated entity
2. action-oriented--must be translatable into a practical state, capable of furnishing adherents with motivations, etc.
   
3. rationalizing--rationalizing, expressing social interests in explanations that are logically consistent or ethically acceptable
   
4. legitimating--ruling power seeks to secure consent from its subjects
5. universalizing--values specific to a time and place become eternal values
   
6. naturalizing--ideology creates as tight a fit as possible between itself and reality, foreclosing critique; social reality is redefined by the ideology to become coextensive with itself.

(61): nothing wrong with universalisms, of course. the question is one of principles.