PROFESSOR BOB NOWLAN
Ideology=a Socially Shared, Systematic Complex of Ideas that Offers Satisfying Answers to Fundamental Questions, Such as:
▸ What Exists?
▸ What is Good?
▸ What is Possible?
Texts Constitute Sites at Which Ideologies are Located, at Which They Intersect
with and Contest Each Other. Discourses Do The Same: Discourses Refer
to Particular Modes of Expressing and Communicating that We Repeatedly Encounter
in Many Different Texts.
Discourses and Texts Operate as Instruments of Ideology by Inviting, and
Encouraging, Us to Identify with the Ideologies They Support, and Against
those They Oppose. Ideological Analysis of Texts and Discourses Focuses
on Examining What Ideologies these Texts and Discourses Represent, How, In
What Kinds of Relations with Each Other, and in Order to Invite, and Encourage,
What Kinds of Identifications. As Instruments of Ideology Texts
and Discourses Invite and Encourage Us to Identify with:
▸ Principles, Values, and Ideals
▸ Aspirations, Commitments, and Objectives
▸ Ways of Thinking, Feeling, Understanding, and Believing
▸ Ways of Expressing, Communicating, Acting, Interacting, and Behaving
Ideologies always Exist in Competition, and Contestation, with Other Ideologies.
Ideologies Always Represent, and Advance, the Material Interests of Historically
Concrete, Particular Social Groups, Even When People Identify with Ideologies
– and Act as Agents of these – that Represent, and Advance the Interests
of Groups with Material Interests Different From, and Opposed to, Their Own.
For Example, Workers Often Identify with Ideologies that Rationalize and
Legitimate the Exploitation of Workers’ Labor to Serve the Interests of Capitalist
Profit. For Example, Members of Historically Oppressed Groups,
such as Women, Gays, and African-Americans May Identify with Ideologies that
Deny the Existence of their Oppression, Rationalize it as Ultimately for
the Good, or Explain it as Sadly Inevitable and Inescapable.
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Professor Bob Nowlan
Last Update:
April 1, 2003
