Paul Hurley: Shelby on Ideology: One focus for class discussion...

 

For Shelby:

What is the subject matter of ideology critique?

Belief systems; ideologies are essentially “forms of social thought.” (158)

Is “ideology” normatively neutral or normatively loaded?

Normative loaded: To claim that a belief system is ideological is “to impute to the system…some negative characteristic(s) that provides a reason to reject it.” (157)

Are all belief systems ideological?

Some belief systems, forms of consciousness, are not ideological, others are. (158-60)

Is the critique of a belief system as ideological an epistemic critique, a functional critique, or a genetic critique?

All three (164)

First the epistemic: ideology involves “distorted, biased, or misleading representations of reality (166), Ideological Illusions, illusions that it is the task of critique to unmask.

Second the functional: ideology “helps to establish and/or stabilize…relations of subordination.” (173), although the epistemic and functional are related (174)

Third the genetic, e.g. “the claim that “ideologies are accepted because of class-based false consciousness.” (183) False consciousness here refers to the motives for holding it, i.e. that “the real motives” are not the real reasons for which one holds some belief (170), and not, like ideological illusion, to the distortion of what IS believed.

For Class:

Cheryl Harris can be understood as offering an ideological critique of whiteness, and more generally of race

Karl Marx can be understood as providing an ideological critique of law, religion, and political legitimacy.

In class let’s explore how useful Shelby’s account of ideology is for understanding the critiques developed by Harris and Marx, with a particular eye towards these epistemic, functional, and genetic dimensions.  Are they all present in each of their critiques?

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