Ideology-Critique with the Conceptual Hinterland of a Theory of the Ideological

Abstract

The ‘ideology-theoretical turn’ of the late 1970s and 1980s claimed a re-foundation of Marxist research into ideology, which was stuck in several respects. Its attempt to overcome the traditional fixation on a criticism of ‘false’ consciousness is still valid. It led, however, in particular in the tradition of the Althusser School, to an over-general notion of ideology that repressed the radical and critical impulses of Marx and Engels’ concept of ideology. Going deliberately against the grain of a predominant tendency in secondary literature, which places Marx/Engels’ and Gramsci’s concepts of ideology on opposite poles of the spectrum, the essay shows that the strength of the respective approaches lies in their particular combination of ideology-critique and ideology-theory. The dichotomy of these strands is misguided and counterproductive and needs to be overcome by the renewal of an ideology-critique which is informed and backed up by a materialist theory of the ideological.