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Power / Ideology (AS) Flashcards

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Sociology 101 flashcards
1
Q

Summarize Althusser’s main characteristics of ideology

A

Ideology
- constitutes concrete individuals as subjects
> interpellation

  • is trans-historical
    > immutable in form throughout history
  • is a material practice
    > what is done
    > ideology is lived
  • is difficult to spot
    > naturalized, universal, timeless
    > doubtless validity
    > curved logic: ready made answers to questions that haven’t been asked
  • is everywhere (omnipresent)
    > culture is part of ideology
    > culture fulfills ideological functions
    > culture sustains ideology
  • ideology has a mission
    > ideological projects
    > presents imaginary solutions to problems that only exist to be solved
  • ideology is present in all that is obvious to us
    > commonplaces and truisms
  • ideology presents partial truths
    > omissions, gaps, smoothed-over contradictions
    > seemingly answers questions, that in reality are evaded
    > masquerades as coherence
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2
Q

Explain the ideological project as discussed by Macherey

A
  • surface problems (explicit, obvious)
  • imaginary solutions

Ideological project:

  • actual problem
  • implicit
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3
Q

Explain how figuration plays a role in ideology

A 
ideology is abstract
> translation into concrete situations, characters etc. through figuration 
> opens up room for questions
> ideology can not be flawless
> ideology lags behind on history

NOTE
ideology has difference inscribed in it

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4
Q

List the three steps of Althusser’s ideology critique

A

task: deconstruct text to reveal problematic through symptomatic reading

  • identifying ideological project
    > focus on surface problems and their ideological solutions
  • symptomatic reading
    > looks at questions that haven’t been asked and/or answers to questions that haven’t been posed
    > similar methodology as deconstruction, psychoanalysis
  • identifying “real” problem(s)
    > using the findings of symptomatic reading
    > establishing limits of ideology in dealing with them

NOTE
ideology critique needs to mistrust surface problems as they are part of the ideological project and only there to be solved

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5
Q

Explain how gaps / absences play a role in recognizing the ideological project (problematic)

A
  • it is through gaps and absences that we are pointed in the direction of the ideological project
  • surface problems are addressed > imaginary solutions
  • actual problem is hinted at in answers to questions that haven’t been asked
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6
Q

Explain the role of the surface problem for ideology

A

surface problem exists so it can be solved by ideology (imaginary solution)

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7
Q

Explain the role of Althusser’s ISA’s in ideology

A

representation and reproduction of myths and beliefs necessary to enable people to work within the existing social formation

ISA’s ensure the status quo is kept in place:
- ideology works through ISAs
- teaching through ideological means
> makes interpellation possible
> ISA’s interpellate us!
- vicious cycle of teaching and interpellation
> we accept interpellation because we have been taught to
- acceptance of status in society / as subject
> construction of people as subjects
> subject as destination of all ideology

NOTE
interpellation and ideology are present on all levels of society

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8
Q

List the main ISA’s in 20th century capitalist formations

A

Education
Family
Religion (has lost in importance acc. to Althusser; has been replaced by education)

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9
Q

Explain Althusser’s concept of the subject

A

subject: both individual & subjected

  • the subject is dominated, subjected by a force larger than itself: Subject
  • illusion of power (subject, not object!)
  • self-identification:
    > Subject is created by subject
    > subjects considers themselves made by Subject
    > subjects identify with Subject
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10
Q

Explain why Althusser’s concept of the subject is double speculary

A

the subject mirrors / recognises him/herself in both the Subject and other subjects

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11
Q

Explain the role of interpellation in Althusser’s concept of the subject

A

individuals are constituted as subjects through interpellation
subject constructed in language and ideology
> subject-constitution as process of recognition of one’s role

subject is always already interpellated
> expectations before birth
> expectations before conception

NOTE
Althusser needs this concept to confirm his theory that we are all constructs

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12
Q

Can one refuse interpellation?

A

Very difficult: by refusing interpellation one often becomes subject to another interpellation
> ideological choice (Belsey, 1980)

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13
Q

List some elements of camp

A

essence of camp:
love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration

  • so bad it’s good
  • exaggeration > too much
  • dissolves boundaries between categories
  • logic of excess
  • many forms: production, consumption etc.

NOTE
predates other concepts doing the same by about 50 years!

NOTE
what is camp? the moment something is discussed within the context of camp it becomes camp

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14
Q

Explain how camp helps us create an ideology critique

A
  • camp defies fix ideology
  • dissolves boundaries, helping us look beyond them
  • positioned outside established norms, helping us see those norms
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15
Q

Summarise Althusser’s two definitions of ideology

A

1) a system (with its own logic and rigour) of representations (images, myths, ideas, concepts) - a practice through which men and women live their relations to the real conditions of existence
2) the way we live our relationship to the real conditions of existence at the level of representations (real conditions vs. our representations of these conditions)

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16
Q

Explain Althusser’s concept of ‘the problematic’

A

‘the problematic’ consists of assumptions, motivations, underlying ideas etc from which a text is made
> structured as much by what is absent as by what is present
> fixes meaning and movement of problems and thereby of solutions
> to fully understand meaning we have to be aware of both text and assumptions that inform it
> encourages posed questions to be answered and produces deformed answers to questions it attempts to exclude
> revealed in answers to questions that haven’t been formally posed

NOTE
posing a question within a problematic means allowing a ready made solution to recognise itself

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17
Q

Explain how symptomatic reading is a double reading

A
  • reading the manifest text
  • producing and reading the latent text through lapses, distortions, silences and absences (symptoms of problem struggling to be posed)
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18
Q

Explain the difference between ideological project and the problematic

A

problematic
> Althusser
> assumptions, motivations, underlying ideas etc from which a text is made

ideological project
> Macherey
> promise to tell the truth about something

19
Q

List the main elements of Macherey’s schematic of a text

A

1) ideological project (truth promised)
2) realisation (truth revealed)
3) unconscious (repressed historical truth)

20
Q

Explain Macherey’s representation and figuration

A

representation
> what is intended
> subject of narrative

figuration
> how it is realised
> its inscription in narrative
(making material in form of a fiction)

21
Q

Explain ideology’s social function as formulated by Althusser

A

ideology secures reproduction of relations of production

> interpellates subjects into role in society

22
Q

Explain the difference between ISAs and RSAs

A

ISA = ideological state apparatus
> educational, religious, communications, cultural apparatus
> work through ideology
> situated in private domain

RSA = repressive state apparatus
> police, army
> work through force and violence
> situated in public domain

23
Q

Explain how the duality of the concept of the subject illustrates the principle function of ideology

A 
subject:
1) subject instead of object 
> individual, autonomous agency
2) being subjected
> illusion of individualism, autonomy
> effect of ideology
24
Q

List some of the major points of criticism against Althusser’s theories on ideology

A
  • refusal to recognise historical aspect
  • essentialist and elitist concept of science
    > science is for the chosen few, ideology is for the masses, trapped in imaginary relations
  • always-already interpellated subjects
    etc
25
Q

Explain why the ideological discourse presents itself as a closed system

A

there seems to be nothing outside ideology > curved logic

NOTE:
because ideology is for Althusser a closed system, it can only address problems it can answer.
> leads him to the concept of ‘the problematic’

26
Q

Explain how culture is part of ideology

A
  • culture fulfils ideological functions
  • cultural texts and practices are part of ideological institutions
  • cultural texts have ideological projects, they sustain certain parts of ideology
27
Q

Explain how ideology offers imaginary solutions to real problems

A

every question in a text stays on the ‘inside’ of ideology

> there to be answered in an ideologically appropriate way

28
Q

Summarise the history of camp

A

1860 - mid 20th C

  • trivial, street-linked, subcultural term
  • homosexual lingo
  • first defined in 1909: actions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis, used chiefly by persons of exceptional want of character

mid 1950s
> Christoper Isherwood
- camp as general aesthetic and psychological category
- High Camp (ballet) vs Low Camp (MarleneDietrich imitation)
- questions / transgresses binaries: non-linear movement into elitist space

late 50s - early 60s
-appearances in popular and literary magazines

1964
> Susan Sontag
- worthy intellectual object, deserving cultural analysis
- contextual specificity of camp
- aristocratic detachment and democratic levelling of social hierarchies

29
Q

Name some of Beneviste’s points with regard to subjectivity

A

> Saussurean linguist!

  • only language makes subjectivity possible
  • subjectivity constructed through difference
  • subjectivity constructed in speech acts
30
Q

Name some of Derrida’s points with regard to subjectivity

A

> Post-Saussurean linguist!
- subjectivity is a function of language
- primacy of language over subjectivity
adopting position of subject within language allows for production of meaning

31
Q

Name some of Lacan’s points with regard to subjectivity

A
  • primacy of language over subjectivity
  • individual consciousness decentered
    > no longer origin of meaning, knowledge, action
  • mirror stage, imaginary, symbolic
  • first subject position ‘I’ and ‘you’
    > further subject-positions developed
    > subjectivity linguistically and discursively constructed
32
Q

Explain how individualism and ideology are connected according to Althusser

A

ideology constitutes individuals as subject and makes their subjectivity appear obvious> obviousness of individualism is the elementary ideological effect

33
Q

List Foucault’s three modes of objectification

A
  • modes of inquiry giving themselves the status of sciences
    > objectivizing in/through sciences
  • dividing practices
    > division inside oneself, or from others
  • self-objectivizing
    > turning oneself into subject
34
Q

List some the commonalities between struggles against oppositions according to Foucault

A
  • transversal
    > not limited to one country/region/government
  • aim: power effects
    > not people, but uncontrolled ‘general’ knowledge
  • immediate
    > closest ‘enemy
    > no expectation of solution, but creating awareness
    » anarchistic!
  • question status of individual
    > new classification of individual
    > against government of individualization
  • questions regime du savoir
    > power of knowledge
  • existential resistance against abstraction & inquisition determining who we are
35
Q

List Foucault’s three types of struggle

A
  • against forms of domination
  • against forms of exploitation
  • against subjection, subjectivity and submission
36
Q

Explain Foucault’s concept of pastoral power

A
  • aims at individual salvation
  • is prepared to sacrifice itself
  • looks after community as well as individual
  • implies knowledge of conscience

> ecclesiastical institutionalization has disappeared since 18th C. (humanism!)
function has spread and multiplied outside ecclesiastical institution (eg. state)
change in objective: salvation vs health etc.

37
Q

Explain Foucault’s claim that power exists only when put into action

A
  • the exercise of power is a way in which certain actions modify others
  • there is no universal power
    > power is not something one does!
38
Q

Explain Foucault’s use of “strategy”

A
  • means employed to attain a certain end
  • manner of acting in a game, based on expectation about / of others
  • means to obtain victory

> power strategy:
totality of the means put to use to implement / maintain power

39
Q

Explain Foucault’s concept of a “subject”

A
  • subject to someone else by control and dependence
  • tied down by a conscience or self-knowledge
    > form of power which subjugates and makes subject to
40
Q

Explain why, according to Foucault, it is difficult to study power

A
  • where power works, it becomes invisible
  • where it doesn’t work, power struggles exist
    > indirect approach:
    deviations (e.g. power struggles) reveal how power works
41
Q

Explain how Foucault link rationalization and power

A
  • power uses rationality
    > excess political power
    > Aufklärung
    Foucault analyses specific rationalities, instead of rationality in general
42
Q

Explain the double function of power of the state, according to Foucault

A
  • individualizing
  • totalizing
    > pastoral power
43
Q

Explain how, according to Foucault, power relations has been governalized

A

elaboration, rationalization and centralization in form of or under auspices of state institutions
> power relations increasingly under state control
> other forms of power relations refer to it

44
Q

Define hegemony

A

leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others

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