Horner's Corner

Smash the Capitalist Matrix

by on Jun.09, 2009, under philosophy, politics

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There was an unhealthy period when ‘ideology’ seemed to be the word that could not be uttered. This was, I guess, partly due to the  temporary waning of Marxist influence in the 80s and 90s – and the accompanying vogue for all things deconstructive and postmodern. Foucault, of course was instrumental in bringing the very useful Nietzschean concept of ‘genealogy’ to bear in texts that reconceived power:  constituting  bodies of knowledge, running its capillaries through institutions, relationships and ideas. Then there was Baudrillard and his  epigones. There seemed no room for ‘truth’: so what use could ideology be?

And then came the new millenium, the twin towers….and the new economic crunch. And ideology is back. There’s no one reason why this happened – but its for sure that Slavoj Zizek, from The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989) on – was increasingly influential in the relaunch. Ideology can now be invoked in polite revolutionary circles and cells again (and on couches – for Zizek’s version comes with a tangy Lacanian twist) Ideology is seen again as what it always was: an indispensible concept for the left: So viva Zizek!

Not that intellectual history is made by great men – that would be bourgeois ideology.

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