Theory And History Of Ideological Production

To explain a text, according to Rodriguez, is to locate it precisley at a real historical conjuncture, to situate it ideologically. This insistence on the historicity of literature saved Rodriguez from the fate that, from the late 1970s onward, overtook many Althusserians. The latter, unable to historicise and therefore transcend the key category of the subject, refused to rank 'real art' among the ideologies, as a result of which their concept of literary 'production' remained locked in a Kantian- and therefore eminently bourgeois- problematic. For Rodriguez, in contrast, ideology could not be the discourse of the subject, for the simple reason that the subject was itself an historical category, whose origins were to be found in animism, the ideology of the bourgeoisie during its early, mercantilist phase. As an emergent ideology, animism stood in contradiction to substantialism, its dominant counterpart under feudalism, that manifestly had no place for a 'free subject'. The analysis of these conflictual ideologies, during the protracted transition in Spain from feudalism to capitalism, constitutes the kernel of Theory and History of Ideological Production. University of Granada.

On the Theory and History of Ideological Production promotes the existence of an ‘ideological unconscious’, understood primarily as a product of social relations, not of the Ideological State Apparatus. Attention focuses upon the transition from feudalism to capitalism, as theorised by the Spanish Marxist and former student of Althusser, Juan Carlos Rodríguez. Theorization of the ‘ideological unconscious’ presupposes a change of terrain from the individual/society opposition to a problematic based on the ‘social formation’. The present text assesses Rodríguez’s work alongside that of his contemporaries, Fredric Jameson, Noam Chomsky, Terry Eagleton, Roy Bhaskar, Slavoj Žižek, and others.

The present volume promotes the notion of an 'ideological unconscious' as theorized by the Spanish Marxist, Juan Carlos Rodríguez. Secreted by the social relations dominant at a particular historical conjuncture, this unconscious always entraps and configures its libidinal counterpart.

How to explain the hegemonic stability of neoliberal capitalism even in the midst of its crises? The emergence of ideology theories marked a re-foundation of Marxist research into the functioning of alienation and subjection. Going beyond traditional concepts of ‘manipulation’ and ‘false consciousness’, they turned to the material existence of hegemonic apparatuses and focused on the mostly unconscious effects of ideological practices, rituals and discourses. Jan Rehmann reconstructs the different strands of ideology theories ranging from Marx to Adorno/Horkheimer, from Lenin to Gramsci, from Althusser to Stuart Hall, from Bourdieu to W.F. Haug, from Foucault to Butler. He compares them in a way that a genuine dialogue becomes possible and applies the different methods to the ‘market totalitarianism’ of today’s high-tech-capitalism.

This republication gives a new generation of readers access to an important intervention in Marxism and social theory. Making History is about the question of how human agents draw their powers from the social structures they are involved in.

To study ideology is to ask such questions as: Where do our ideas about society and politics come from? Are these ideas socially determined? If so, what validity can they claim? In this brief yet comprehensive introduction, David McLellan examines the origins of the concept of ideology, analyzes its place in the Marxist and non-Marxist traditions, and assesses the various uses to which it has been put in recent social and political theory, particularly the connection between ideology and the "end of history" debate. Revised and updated, this second edition is for all those who are interested in a clear presentation of the most basic concept in the philosophy of the social sciences.

This collection of readings on the concept of ideology is brought together by the Marxist critic, Terry Eagleton. His introduction traces the historical evolution of ideology and examines in a more theoretical style the various meanings of the word and their significance. The readings begin with the first English translations of some of the writing of the French founder of the concept in the eighteenth century. They then move from the enlightenment to Hegel and Marxism, with particular emphasis on Marx and Engels themselves. They also look at other eighteenth-century traditions of thought such as Nietzche and Freud. All the readings are theoretical rather than examples of `ideology at work' and will be of interest to undergraduate students of cultural, political and historical studies concerned with ideology, as well as students of English literature.