Theories Of Ideology: The Powers Of Alienation And Subjection

"This book's treatment is the best introduction we have to the complicated notion of ideology. It provides the most sophisticated yet subtle analyses of how hegemony operates in our time. Jan Rehmann has given us a marvelous gift." Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary "My own intellectual and political conviction is that we need the concept of ideology all the more urgently today, when its use has been stigmatized by contemporary philosophy. Rehmann's book provides a detailed and indispensable account of its history, the various modern versions of the concept and the debates which have swirled around it: just what we need to make a new beginning!" Fredric Jameson, Duke University "Part of a larger movement of boldly reconceptualizing Marxism in and for the 21st century, Rehmann offers a philosophically self-conscious rethinking of ideology. Based on critical surveys of other important theories (especially those emerging from Gramsci and Althusser) he explores how and why ideology shapes society, how society shapes the conscious and unconscious parts of ideologies, and how this applies to current phenomena such as neoliberalism, the capitalist crisis since 2007, and the tea party movement." Richard D. Wolff, University of Massachusetts Perhaps next to the work of Gramsci, Althusser, Eagleton and Therborn on ideology, Rehmanns comprehensive historical account of ideology provides the most insightful and exquisite illumination of the term ideology today. Thomas Klikauer, Capital and Class "Theories of Ideology is an excellent book for anyone who wants to get immersed in contemporary political theory. But it is also a very important book for reflection upon the intellectual health of political theory and the political health of social life which always accompany one another." Lucas Miranda, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books "This book's treatment is the best introduction we have to the complicated notion of ideology. It provides the most sophisticated yet subtle analyses of how hegemony operates in our time. Jan Rehmann has given us a marvelous gift." —Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary "My own intellectual and political conviction is that we need the concept of ideology all the more urgently today, when its use has been stigmatized by contemporary philosophy. Rehmann's book provides a detailed and indispensable account of its history, the various modern versions of the concept and the debates which have swirled around it: just what we need to make a new beginning!" —Fredric Jameson, Duke University "Part of a larger movement of boldly reconceptualizing Marxism in and for the 21st century, Rehmann offers a philosophically self-conscious rethinking of ideology. Based on critical surveys of other important theories (especially those emerging from Gramsci and Althusser) he explores how and why ideology shapes society, how society shapes the conscious and unconscious parts of ideologies, and how this applies to current phenomena such as neoliberalism, the capitalist crisis since 2007, and the tea party movement." —Richard D. Wolff, University of Massachusetts “Perhaps next to the work of Gramsci, Althusser, Eagleton and Therborn on ideology, Rehmanns comprehensive historical account of ideology provides the most insightful and exquisite illumination of the term ideology today. —Thomas Klikauer, Capital and Class "Theories of Ideology is an excellent book for anyone who wants to get immersed in contemporary political theory. But it is also a very important book for reflection upon the intellectual health of political theory and the political health of social life which always accompany one another." —Lucas Miranda, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

Jan Rehmann, Dr. phil. habil, teaches philosophy and social theories at Union Theological Seminary in New York and the Free University in Berlin. He is co-editor of the Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism (HKWM) and author of books on ideology, Neo-Nietzscheanism, Max Weber, the churches in Nazi Germany, and poverty.

Introduction 1. Twisted preliminaries: the Idologistes and Napoleon 1.1. Ideology as a natural science of ideas 1.2. A post-Jacobin state-ideology 1.3. Napoleons pejorative concept of ideology 2. Ideology-Critique and Ideology-Theory according to Marx and Engels 2.1. From inverted consciousness to idealistic superstructures 2.2. The critique of fetishism in the Critique of Political Economy 2.3. Did Marx develop a neutral concept of ideology? 2.4. Engelss concept of ideological powers 3. The Concept of Ideology from the Second International to Marxism-Leninism 3.1. The repression of a critical concept of ideology 3.2. Lenin: bourgeois or socialist ideology? 3.3. Lenins operative approach: self-determination and hegemony 3.4. Ideology in Marxist-Leninist state-philosophy 3.5. Ideological relationships in the philosophy of East Germany 4. The Concept of Ideology from Lukcs to the Frankfurt School 4.1. Gyrgy Lukcs: Ideology as reification 4.2. Horkheimers and Adornos critique of the culture-industry 4.3. Abandoning the concept of ideology? 4.4 The gears of an irresistible praxis 4.5. Ideology as instrumental reason and identitarian thought 4.6. From Marcuse to Habermas and back to Max Weber? 4.7. Taking the sting out of critical theory 4.8. Commodity-aesthetics as ideological promise of happiness 5. The Concept of Ideology in Gramscis Theory of Hegemony 5.1. A significant shift in translation 5.2. Gramscis critical concept of ideology 5.3. The critique of common sense as ideology-critique 5.4. Gramscis concept of organic ideology 5.5. Ideology as a category of transition toward a theory of hegemony 5.6. The critique of corporatism and Fordism 5.7. A new type of ideology-critique on the basis of a theory of hegemony 6. Louis Althusser: Ideological State-Apparatuses and Subjection 6.1. The relationship to Gramsci 6.2. The theory of ideological state-apparatuses (ISA) 6.3. A debate on functionalism 6.4. Ideology in general and subject-constitution 6.5. The derivation of the imaginary from Spinoza and Lacan 6.6. Lacan's universalisation of subjection and alienation 6.7. Can subjects talk back at interpellations? 7. From the Collapse of the Althusser School to Poststructuralism and Postmodernism 7.1. Michel Pcheux's discourse-theoretical development of Althusser's ideology-theory 7.2. The post-Marxist turn of Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe 7.3. Stuart Hall: Bridging the theory of hegemony and discourse-analysis 7.4. Michel Foucault's neo-Nietzschean trajectory from ideology to discourse to power 7.5. Poststructuralism and postmodernism 8. Pierre Bourdieu: Field, Habitus and Symbolic Violence 8.1. The development of the concept of field from the German Ideology 8.2. Field against apparatus? 8.3. Ideology, symbolic violence, Habitus disentangling a confused arrangement 8.4. Bourdieu's contribution to the development of Althusser's model of interpellation 8.5. A new determinism? 9. Ideology-Critique with the Hinterland of a Theory of the Ideological: the Projekt Ideologietheorie (PIT) 9.1. The resumption of Marx and Engels's critical concept of ideology 9.2. The ideological at the crossroads of class-domination, state and patriarchy 9.3. Vergesellschaftung vertical, horizontal, and proto-ideological 9.4. The dialectics of the ideological: compromise-formation, complementarity and antagonistic reclamation of the common 9.5. Fascistic modifications of the ideological 9.6. Policies of extermination and church-struggle in Nazi Germany 9.7. Further ideology-theoretical studies 10. Friedrich Hayek and the Ideological Dispositif of Neoliberalism 10.1. The formation of neoliberal hegemony 10.2. Hayeks frontal attack on social justice 10.3. Overcoming economy by the game of catallax