Lecture 2: Understanding Ideology

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Lecture 2 Understanding Ideology

• Professor Daniel Bernardi

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In the last lecture

• What is identity?
• What is mediated identity?
• Why study identity on the web?

Trinity from The Matrix
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In this lecture

• Ideology Identity
• Fiskes Ideology
• What does ideology have to do with identity
  online?

John Fiske
Lecture Hint Pause the lecture and click on one
of the hyperlinks (text that is underlined).
Return to the lecture after you have visited the
site.
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Ideology and Identity

• Lecture 2 Part 1

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Significance of Ideology

• Identities are Constructed in History Politics,
  Culture and Representation
• Identities are a Process Past Future
• The Process of Identity Formation and
  Articulation are Ideological
• Culture is the Terrain of Ideology, Especially
  Mass Media and the Web

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Ideological Manifestations

• Constructed through the interaction between
  texts (the material of cultural expression) and
  audiences (you and me).
• Texts Include paper, films, websites, bodies any
  material form of expression.
• Audiences are broad, broken into nations and
  subcultures, groups and individuals.

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Audiences and Texts

• Dominant Readings Reading w/ the Text Not
  Questioning the Text
• Negotiated Readings Questioning Parts of the
  Texts Message
• Oppositional Readings Rejecting the Message of
  the Text as Ideological
• Example
• Is Star Wars racist?

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Ideological Analysis(from Lesson 2s required
website)

• What are the assumptions about what is natural,
  just and right?
• What (and who) do these assumptions distort or
  obscure?
• What are the power relations? How are they made
  to appear as if they are normal or good? What
  negative aspects are excluded?
• Look for binaries oppositions (good/evil,
  natural/unnatural, tame/wild, young/old).

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Ideological Analysis(contd)

• What cultural assumptions and what myths shape
  experience and evaluation? What is mystified?
• How does the style of presentation contribute to
  the meaning of the text?
• What are the power relations? How are they made
  to appear as if they are normal or good? What
  negative aspects are excluded?

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Finally

• What utopic kernel, that is, vision of human
  possibility, appears to lie at the heart of the
  understanding of the ideology? The assumption is
  that there will be some vision of the world that
  drives that ideological perspectives imagination
  of the world.
• From
• Ideology A Brief Guide

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The Big Point

• In this class, we will read all texts
  oppositionally to determine and challenge their
  ideological charge. In doing so, we will not let
  the text determine our identity or the identity
  of others. Rather, we will determine how we
  incorporate or deal with the ideology of the text
  and thus participate in the
• process of identity construction through
  negotiation and resistance.

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Fiskes Ideology
This is a September 1999 photo copy of a poster
of Osama bin Laden being sold in Rawalpindi,
Pakistan. Bin Words on the poster read 'Osama
bin Laden' at left, and 'Warrior of Islam',
right.

• Lecture 2 Part 2

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Raymond Williams

• To define ideology, Fiske, a television scholar,
  relies on Raymond Williams, a culture studies
  scholar like Stuart Hall.
• Williams Found 3 Main Uses of Ideology
• Beliefs Characteristic of a Class or Group
• Rhetorical Beliefs / False Consciousness
• Process of Meaning Production
• All Uses Involve Ideas as Systems of Power and
  Authority

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Example Ideology of Science

• science is the ultimate problem solver, that
  science is the human ability to understand and
  dominate nature, that it increases our material
  prosperity and security, and that it represents
  one of the pinnacles of human achievement. Its
  connotations are, therefore, of positive moral
  and functional values it is good and useful.
• - John Fiske (1990)

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Why the fuss?

• For an agricultural community, these ideas may
  well activate a myth of science as 'their magic
  powerful but not ours, and they may not fit at
  all into an ideology that rates most highly tried
  and tested ways, the authority of the elders and
  ancestors, the continuation of a community and a
  way of life rather than change and improvement,
  and that sees history as cyclical, not as a
  progressive development.
• - John Fiske (1990)

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The Big Point

• Science is a source of contestation.
• For some, it presents the truth, the path to
  progress, the tool to dominate nature (and
  primitive societies). For others, it represents
  a challenge to their truths the truth of God,
  for example. And for others, it is a tool of
  oppression, of warfare, an evil that destroys
  nature for the purposes of the powerful.

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What does ideology have to do with identity
online?

• Lecture 2 Part 3

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Background Marxs Definition of Ideology

• For Marx, ideology was a relatively
  straightforward concept. It was the means by
  which the ideas of the ruling classes became
  accepted throughout society as natural and
  normal. All knowledge is class-based it has
  inscribed within it its class origins and it
  works to prefer the interests of that class.
• - John Fiske (1990)

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BackgroundAlthussers Definition of Ideology

• redefined it as an ongoing and all-pervasive
  set of practices in which all classes
  participate, rather than a set of ideas imposed
  by one class upon the other. . ideology is much
  more effective than Marx gave it credit for
  because it works from within rather than without
  - it is deeply inscribed in the ways of thinking
  and ways of living of all classes.
• - John Fiske (1990)

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Althussers Notion of Interpellation (or
hailing)

• This aspect of Althussers notion of ideology is
  key because it helps explain how texts work to
  position us in various kinds of ideologies. As
  Fiske (1990) says interpellation can position
  us in an ideological category that may differ
  from our actual social one. So women can be
  positioned 'as men' to make masculine sense of
  themselves and their social relations, blacks can
  be positioned as whites, the working class as
  middle class, and so on.

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BackgroundGramscis Definition of Ideology

• Saw ideology as a key aspect of hegemony, which,
  as Fiske (1990) goes on to note, we might like
  to think of as ideology as struggle. Briefly,
  hegemony involves the constant winning and
  rewinning of the consent of the majority to the
  system that subordinates them. The two elements
  that Gramsci emphasizes more than Marx or
  Althusser are resistance and instability.

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Gramscis Notion of Hegemony

• the dominant ideology constantly meets
  resistances that it has to overcome in order to
  win people's consent to the social order that it
  is promoting. These resistances may be overcome,
  but they are never eliminated. So any hegemonic
  victory, any consent that it wins, is necessarily
  unstable it can never be taken for granted, so
  it has to be constantly re-won and struggled
  over.
• - John Fiske (1990)

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The Big Point

• Culture Representation Inform Identity
• Representation Manifests in Texts
• Texts Interpolate Us in Ideologies
• Ideologies involve Struggles Over Power
• Dominant Negotiated Resistant
• Identity, Informed by Ideology, is Unstable,
  Contested Struggle Over Power
• The Battle is on the Terrain of Culture,
  Representation, Ideology and Identity

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What does ideology have to do with identity
online?

• It is the means by which we are interpolated into
  the struggle over identity at a time when too
  many of us read the Web without questioning,
  negotiating or resisting its forms, functions and
  messages.

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End of Lecture 2
Player Name Karsten (Germany)

• Next Lecture
• Identity, Ideology and the Web