Trump refuses to answer a reporter accused of spreading 'fake news',January, 2017.Gary Hershom/Press Association. All rights reserved.In an age of so-called ‘post-truth
politics’ and ‘alternative facts’, the question of ideology has become pressing.
Following Donald J. Trump’s election, many journalists and scholars looked for
explanations. Did the electorate really believe the outrageous falsehoods that
his campaign was based on, or was there something else at work? The same goes
for the proliferation of fake news – how do we understand the fact that such
unreliable sources can wield influence in the public sphere?
If the only issue at stake
here were an absence of truth in politics and journalism, the solution would be
simple: politicians and journalists need to check facts (and stick to them),
and the public needs to maintain a critical stance and boycott unreliable
sources.
However, this solution may rely
on an outdated model of ideology: the theory that ideology is simply people
being told and believing inaccurate information. Many scholars argue that
ideology functions in a far more complex way than this. If we want to
understand and combat post-truth politics, do we need to update our
understanding of ideology first?
I will summarise three
theories of ideology whose application could take us further towards
coping with today’s predicament. In
doing so, I will have to omit the contributions of several other important
thinkers, such as Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
Stuart Hall, Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler. I recommend that readers
wanting a more comprehensive overview of the subject read Theories
of Ideology: The Powers of Alienation and Subjection by Jan Rehmann.
Karl Marx – ideology
as an expression of class relations
One of Marx’s most important
texts in this regard is The German Ideology (1845). We can begin to understand
the essence of this text by examining this key passage:
The ideas of
the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is
the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling
intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its
disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so
that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of
mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the
ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material
relationships grasped as ideas.
Portrait of Karl Marx, 1865. Wikicommons/ John Jabez Edwin Mayall – International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Some rights reserved.There are two key points
here: one concerning who has power in a society, and one concerning the nature
of that power.
First of all, those who
control the means of production (i.e. owners of companies, political leaders
etc.) also control, overall, the dominant ideas in that society. By the same
token, those who don’t control the means of production (i.e. the workers) are
subject to these dominant ideas.
We can sum up this state of
affairs with the term ‘class relations’ or ‘material relations of production’:
some groups, or classes, own the means to produce commodities and circulate
ideas, while others do not. Marx’ and Engels’ thinking seems close to the
notion of ideology as false consciousness: the working class appear to be duped
by a ruling class who have the power to spread whatever falsities help them
maintain control.
With the second point,
however, we see that things are more complicated than a ruling class simply
telling lies and the exploited class believing them. Instead, these dominant
ideas are themselves expressions of ‘the dominant material relationships’. What
this means is that the dominant ideas are themselves determined by the material
relations of production. Ideology is a projection of the material relations
between classes (who owns what).
Although still on the tricky
terrain of ideology as false consciousness, Marx and Engels have introduced an
important nuance. If ideology is an expression of material relations, then
thinking of ideology in terms of ideas or consciousness is not sufficient.
Rather, one has to start by considering the relations of production, and treat
them as the source of ideology. In this model, if we are to undermine the
ruling ideology – such as the ideology that allows the proliferation of ‘alternative
facts’ – we would have to analyse and disrupt the economic structures from
which the ruling class draws its power. [This thinking led Marx to write his
most famous work, Capital (1863-83)]
In terms of combating fake
news, for example, a Marxist theory would argue that it is not enough to
approach the issue only on the terrain of ideas. Rather, it would advocate
looking behind the false headlines to the relations of production that allow
such headlines to circulate in the first place. Instead of pointing out that a
publication is inaccurate, we would ask who owns that publication, and what
relations between different classes (e.g. media moguls and the working class)
are being expressed and exploited. In Marxist theory, fake news is an
expression of the interest of the ruling class. Therefore, undermining it needs
to take place at the level of class struggle, of undermining the very relations
of class that permit fake news in the first place.
Louis Althusser’s
Ideological State Apparatus
Fast forwarding we come to
Louis Althusser, whose ‘Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses’ (1970) interprets and updates Marx and
Engels’s theory of ideology (with the help of several thinkers, including notably
Vladimir Lenin).
Louis Althusser. Flickr/Arturo Espinoaa. Althusser’s text has three
key contributions, most of which re-interpret classical Marxist theory:
- He
highlights the fact that class relations determine ideology only in the last instance. - He
locates ideology in material apparatuses – institutions such as religion,
education, government and media. - He
theorises the way in which ideology ‘interpellates individuals as
subjects.’
The first point is important
to bear in mind since, as we saw earlier, Marx’s writing on ideology is liable
to be misunderstood as a theory of workers being brainwashed by the ruling
class. ‘Determination in the last instance’ means that we need to consider the
whole variety of factors that contribute to the development of society, the
ruling ideology and the effects of ideology on people. According to Althusser
there is no straight line between class relations, the ideology that is
projected by them, and people’s beliefs. Rather, we can say that the projection
of class relations onto ideology is actually refracted by several other
factors. Althusser goes into this theory in more detail in his essay
“Contradiction and Overdetermination” (1962).
The second point helps us to
understand this process of refraction, and to elaborate on the ‘material
existence’ of ideology. Althusser argues that ideology does not just come from
economic structures (class relations) but also exists in, and is influenced by,
really existing institutions. He calls these ‘ideological state apparatuses’
(ISAs) since they are usually related to the State and make up the site of
ideology. The various ideological state apparatuses include: the religious ISA
(churches), the educational ISA (schools), the legal ISA (law, courts), the political
ISA (the political system and its parties), the communications ISA (the media).
To engage with Althusser’s
third contribution, we need to understand the key word for his theory of the
functioning of ideology, ‘interpellation’. Interpellation is usually described
in terms of call and response. The example Althusser gives is that of a
policeman shouting ‘Hey, you there!’ and an individual turning round to answer
the call.
That moment of recognition
(turning round to answer) is the sign of successful interpellation. Through
interpellation we recognise ourselves as subjects of a certain ideological
formation, and we recognise our place in the world, as designated by ideology.
In Althusser’s example, the individual recognises themself as subject to the law and therefore responds to the
policeman’s call. In such instances the individual has a set place in relation
to an ideological state apparatus (that of a subject) and is expected to engage
in certain practises as a result (turning around).
Considering this in relation
to post-truth politics, we can think of the apparatuses in which it is most
manifest, such as the government and the media. As a citizen I am expected to
respect the will of the government, even if its power is based on ‘alternative
facts’ or false promises. As a consumer of news, I am expected to read and
engage with the media, even if it publishes blatant untruths. The only way out
of this, in Althusser’s model, is to dismantle the apparatuses themselves and
thereby totally refuse any position in relation to them.
'Leave' bus in Brexit referendum.(N.B. For a recent update on Althusser’s theory of
ideological state apparatuses, see ‘Postideological Market Apparatuses:
The Interpellations of Advertising and Unpayable Debt’ by Maria Kakogianni (2012,
currently only available in French).
Slavoj Žižek and the
‘secret’ of ideology
Fast forwarding once more, and
we reach the last stop on this tour of theories of ideology: Slavoj Žižek.
We’ve passed thinkers such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Pierre Bourdieu, and
Michel Foucault to name but a few. I can only recommend that interested readers
take the time to explore the works of these other important theorists.
While Žižek has had a bad
press recently, his theory of ideology has much to offer for understanding our
current conditions of existence. In his first English-language publication, The
Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Žižek re-interpreted both Marx and
Althusser in a way that clears a path for the analysis of post-truth politics.
Slavoj Žižek at Occupy Wall St.Žižek
argues that Althusser’s account of ideology as interpellation ‘aim[s] at
grasping the efficiency of an ideology exclusively through the mechanisms of
imaginary and symbolic identification’. In other words, Žižek charges Althusser
with assuming that ideology completely interpellates us, and that we uncritically
accept the position that ideology designates for us.
Žižek
responds by arguing that interpellation actually functions through a lack of
total identification between the individual and ideology. In other words, ideology
actually works when we don’t
fully recognise ourselves in interpellation’s call. According to Žižek, as long
as an ideology is experienced as containing something ‘senseless’ – a ‘secret’
– that we cannot totally comprehend or identify with, it will have authority
over us.
Therefore,
the power that post-truth politics holds lies in our belief that there is
something more to it – that it is part of an elaborate scheme of ideological
control. Once we abandon this belief we can realise the senselessness of the situation:
Trump really is an idiot (albeit one with a lot of power and money), and some
journalists do care more about clickbait than truth, and so on.
If
we put this together with the lessons of Marx and Althusser, we can define
ideology as: the belief that institutions hold authority due to their
possession of some secret knowledge rather than the material fact of their
owners’ and leaders’ privileged position in the hierarchy of class relations.
This
may be the end of this article, but it is only a beginning of the work we need
to do on ideology. We need to continue to build our comprehension of the
ideological formations that have contributed to our democracy stalling and a
politics of post-truth taking its place. It is not enough to say that people are
simply naïve, or that speaking the truth in public will resolve all our
problems. We need to look to economic structures, ideological apparatuses and
the obscene senselessness of power if we are to understand, and ultimately undermine,
post-truth.