Product Description

'His thought is redneck, yours is doctrinal and mine is deliciously supple.' Ideology has never been so much in evidence as a fact and so little understood as a concept as it is today. From the left it can often be seen as the exclusive property of ruling classes, and from the right as an arid and totalizing exception to their own common sense. For some, the concept now seems too ubiquitous to be meaningful; for others, too cohesive for a world of infinite difference. Here, in a book written for both newcomers to the topic and those already familiar with the debate, Terry Eagleton unravels the many different definitions of ideology, and explores the concept's tortuous history from the Enlightenment to postmodernism. Ideology provides lucid interpretations of the thought of key Marxist thinkers and of others such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud and the various poststructuralists. As well as clarifying a notoriously confused topic, this new work by one of our most important contemporary critics is a controversial political intervention into current theoretical debates. It will be essential reading for students and teachers of literature and politics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #331442 in Books
• Published on: 1991-04-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 242 pages

Review
"A splendid polemicist." - New Statesman

About the Author
Terry Eagleton is Lecturer in Critical Theory at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Linacre College. His previous books include Criticism and Ideology, Walter Benjamin, The Function of Criticism, Literary Theory: An Introduction, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, and a novel, Saints and Scholars.

Customer Reviews

Gold into Gloom
Terry Eagleton has an excellent reputation in the academic world, but this is the first of his books that I've read, and I found it disappointing. Of course, ideology is an extremely hard field to write about because it is not a 'subject' like anthropology or sociology, but a method of 'knowing how we know.' Every statement is ideological including thisd statement and Eagleton's book itself. Like most writers in the field, therefore, Eagleton has taken the easy way out by talking almost exclusively about political ideology. This, as Herman Hesse might have said, is like trying to fit the universe into your back garden. As Eagleton himself admits, political ideology is only one subdivision of ideology, and by no means the most important. Ideology is the social determination of thought, and as such, synonymous with language itself, as well as with logos and value. It is the system of socially determined values by which we interpret reality. By talking mostly about political ideology Eagleton plays into the hands of conservatives who, as soon as one uses the word 'ideology' assume one is talking about Communism, Marxism or some other ism, rather than the whole of human thought.
There have been some important innovations in this field that Eagleton doesn't even mention, such as the work of Humberto Maturana and Francesco Varela of the Santiago School, whose concept of autopoeisis postulates that mind is not part of brain, but a quality of the reflexive linguistic interactions of a speech community - ideology.
There are some interesting passages in Eagleton's book, but overall his caution turns what is actually a thrilling subject into a rather gloomy read.
There are some good passages in Eagleton's book

Ideology Critique For (Advanced) Beginners
A fairly comprehensive and often challenging introduction, 'Ideology' attempts not to advance the debate (although it does in a way), nor to settle the question of what ideology is once and for all (although some important parameters are set), but to explore the different traditions of thinking about that term since the French Enlightenment. Written in the early 1990s, its main political concern is to counter the growth in talk about discourse and antagonism and revitalise ways of thinking about symbols and social order that have more to do with an explicitly Marxist heritage.

To say this is not to suggest that Eagleton adopts an economistic or simplistic base-superstructure reading. Indeed, he goes to some length to articulate two ways of thinking about ideas and social life within Marxism, one which focuses on the functions of ideology (as a discourse of naturalisation, universalisation, obfuscation and the like) as a way of buttressing a dominant power structure, and another around ideology in a looser sense as the conjunction between discourse and political interests. As Eagleton rightly says, both have their uses and need to be taken account of.

The first two chapters are particularly strong, and of the historical sections, the passages on Marx, Lukács, Gramsci, Althusser and Zizek are most impressive, avoiding both over-simplification and over-involvement in abstract issues. Inevitably, given the scope of ideology as a concept, some sections are weaker. Bourdieu gets only a page or two, despite being spoken of as an important explicator of ideology as practical consciousness. Although the first edition of the book predates Butler's 'Gender Trouble', there is little general discussion about how ideology might intersect with feminist analysis. And the tone of the attacks on Laclau and Mouffe threaten occassionaly to over-state the division between their idea of hegemony and Eagleton's own hedged version of ideology.

But what makes this a really worthwhile book is the quality of the writing. Eagleton is invariably crisp and the concepts are explicated impressively by his way with a phrase, a barbed comment and a well-chosen example. His own position is plausible and well-negotiated and his insistence on grounding the discussion in terms of exploitation and social power both necessary and refreshing. This is certainly broad enough to appeal to the general reader but also deep enough to stimulate thought in the more involved student of social power and its attendant symbols.