Abstract
With help of the new stage of capitalism after 1970s, there was lots of developments in the eras of science, technology and media devices. Eventually it changed humankind so new openings and markets were built by the new requirements and new properties of society. This change created anew forms of sense and abilities. The rules, norms and normative systems which produced by the authority and dominant class have made everything into subjective experiences. Therefore dominant class needs anew act and approach to changing society.
These are not two different circumstances but very linked with each other and interacting. It affects any other social group then the dominant class. We can name this affection most appropriately by “ideology.”
It would be deficient to interpret the society’s living, opinion and behavior without addressing the conceptual meaning of ideology. Because of its apparatuses which make it more and more prevalent everyday.
The main idea of the essay is to try to evaluate and indicate the ideology as a timeless fact and also how it was put in different places in history, how it affects the society, society’s position and their ways of seeing and living.
1. What is Ideology?
1.1 History of the Ideology As a Concept
Every social structure has an ideology. Relations of productions, religion, economic structure and the authority affects the social structure and form the social structure. A once formed social structure may fail, change or be reformed again in time. So it will be helpful to have a look at the history and occurrence of the ideology as a concept.
“The word ‘ideology’ was created by a french philosopher Antoine Destutt de Tracy in 1796. The word was assembled idea and logy from Greek. Tracy’s goal was to word the opinions and thoughts.”
According to Gurcinar, “culturalist Raymond Williams describes ideology as opinions arising from a structure of feelings or in a concept of domination. According to James Lull, Raymond Williams describes it as opinions arising from pecuniary advantages or a certain class.
Marx sees ideology from a different point of view which includes the economic relations. According to Marx, ideology is a line of thought that impressed and imposed by a class upon another class and also “ideology has no history.” It is actually the same point of view with Althusser’s but also Althusser criticise Marx for being a pozitivist. Althusser sees ideology from a point of view related Freud’s subliminal concept. According to him, mental processes don’t change and ideology is a product of mental processes. Therefore Althusser sees the same thing but from a different point of view, “ideology has no history”.
According to Marx, ideology acts as a tool of dominant class to impress their aim upon the working class. Thus working class became practitioners of an aim which they never own but imposed. In another word, the society was easily manipulated by the hand of ideology and lose the sense of actuality.
Mannheim, notwithstanding his using Marxist terminology, he asserts Marx twisting the facts of ideologies. Mannheim has a different point of view on his book “Ideology and Utopia (1929)”. He thinks that ideologies serve a function in society as helpers to defence their social order and guard the benefits of dominant class. And in contrast of this he attaches importance to utopias.
Althusser identifies ideology as representation of the imaginary relationship of the individuals to their real conditions of existence. He notices the importance and serves a purpose of a general theory and publish his book “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”.
Before the ideological state apparatuses and how they affect social consciousness I need to mention about Althusser’s relationship of the ideology to the subjects. Because these two are interacting constituents and can not be thought apart.
Ideology, as a concept, is not only individual but social at the same time. Because of constituents of it, ideology exists in a social level but impresses individuals. This forms the individual dimension of ideology. “There is no ideology except for concrete subjects, and this destination for ideology is only made possible by the subject”. According to Althusser, ideology acts in such a way that it transforms the individuals into subjects. Subjects who serves a function in ideology by producing the science, art and politics. These relations of production makes the individuals into ones who imposed by ideology in time. And it affects their opinion, their point of view and their way of see.
So, how a dominant class create an ideology and sustain it?
It derives from state apparatuses and their practical operation according to Althusser. State apparatus produces and carries the ideology via its own organisations. Therefore the individual has been transformed into a subject even before been born.
In Marxist theory, the State Apparatus (SA) contains: the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc. which can be named as repressive state apparatus. Ideological State Apparatuses are different in nonviolent aspects. Ideological apparatus are, The family ISA, the educational ISA, the legal ISA, the political ISA, the religious ISA, the trade-union ISA, the communications ISA, the cultural ISA.
While the state’s repressive apparatus can impress the public domain, the ideological state apparatuses can impress private domain. Ideology becomes the instrument of ideological state apparatuses for infiltration. That’s why you’ll have difficulty during an art representation of a nude painting for a conservative audience. And that’s why in Ramadan (holy time of the year according to islamic belief) they will have a bad attitude against you being in a hospital because of alcohol intoxication.
2. Concept of Conscious and Its Being Defined by the Ideology
Subject, as a part of the ideology itself and as the one who impressed by it at the same time. We will have a look at how ideology makes an impression on subject’s life and ways of seeing. But first, we need to mention about the concept of ‘conscious’.
Consciousness has a social dimension and an individual dimension at the same time, in a word it defines our existence. According to Marx, ideology is not an illusion of the fact but is actual reflection of it in the consciousness, and it reflects the tangible conditions. Ideology is a way of thinking which its primary aim is social utility. So we can describe the consciousness as the reflect of ideology. An individual, as a part of the society, transforms into a subject under the influence of the ideology. Society, creates its own existence but also it exists by the ideological state apparatuses. Because society can engage the existing ideology by its own apparatuses.
Consciousness is directly under the influence of the ideology which affects subject’s way of thinking at the same time. It affects communities’ norms, points of view, ways of thinking, their cultures and their cultural productions, so their whole ways of seeing.
In capitalist societies subjects are being brainwashed by disinformation. So it creates one dimensional behaviours and one dimensional way of thinking. Information can be used as a tool to create hegemony. Dominant class who has the knowledge also has the power of misinform. So in time the misinformations created by dominant class transforms into reality that accepted by the society.
2.1 Individual Consciousness, Social Consciousness
We are aware of the incidents around us and the world because of our consciousness and our acts are based on it. This way a person is aware of their existence.
According to some thinkers and sciences, consciousness has both sociological dimension and psychological dimension.
Karl Mannheim assigns a social meaning to consciousness in his book “Ideology and Utopia”. A person defines themselves by their awareness of their social existence and their consciousness do not defines their existence, he claims. Also Hamilton underlines the social dimension of consciousness. According to him consciousness is a product of the social life and intersection of the collective memory.
Individual consciousness of new born baby is never different than another. Individual consciousness is human-specific. But the social consciousness -including the ideology and its apparatuses- is a kind of a product of the subject. This production process can get impressed by religion, language, culture, ethic, technology etc. So we can say that process of the creation of consciousness has an impact on the form of it. Social consciousness exists before the individual, so it has a structure beyond life of an individual and it shows the same characteristics of the society. So we can say that ideology and social consciousness are similar a bit. They both get formed by individual conditioning. And they both get formed by the affection of subject being imposed by the systematics. Therefore they both act and react the same way in some cases.
According to Marx:
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour.
So it’s not the consciousness designate life, on the contrary, it is the life which has an impact on the consciousness.
It is possible to describe Marx’s concept of class in a similar way. Social groups who have similar cultures or similar profits, would have similar social consciousness. We can see it as a cause why social classes show consistency.
But there is also a complexity in here we can mention. There is also a distinction between the class which has been imposed by ideological apparatuses and the other class. We can say that it is not a compromising position. Dominant class uses all the apparatuses to destroy the class consciousness or to prevent the occurrence of it.
We should mention cultural and art activities as a different apparatus. Because all the cultural activities can be used as a manipulation tool by the dominant class and manipulate the ways of seeing.
3. Ways of Seeing
Art has been always an ideological apparatus since Ancient Greece. According to Berger “The art of any period tends to serve the ideological interests of the ruling class.”
Capitalism changed a lot but its key feature stayed the same. It commoditises all the entities, either tangible or intangible and makes profit from them. Capitalism has a new stage nowadays. Advancing technology, social changes, diversified needs, cultural constituents moved the relations of production to a new stage.
Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.
Art, also has impressed by capitalism in its own way and changed. The producer of art and the receiver of art, are both turned into consumers of art. With the invention of the camera work of art became reproducible. This process made the work of art lose its uniqueness and soul, made it into a mass production of the capitalism.
Berger quotes from Levi Strauss:
It is this avid and ambitious desire to take possession of the object for the benefit of the owner or even of the spectator which seems to me too constitute one of the outstandingly original features of the art of Western civilization.
The evaluation of art is also changed. According to Berger work of art has “a new kind of impressiveness. Not because of what it shows – not because of the meaning of its image, it has become impressive, mysterious, because of its market value.”
We can say a painting as a work of art, turned into a quote produced for corroboration. On the other hand, a caption a word underlined with a work of art changes the way the audience see it.
Berger mentions it:
The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose. This touches upon questions of copyright for reproduction, the ownership of art presses and publishers, the total policy of public art galleries and museums. As usually presented, these are narrow professional matter.
We wouldn’t be mistaken by saying that the production of art served capitalism. But again there is a questionable era in here. Because the cultural industry claims that the production keeps pace with demand. Still, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, the similarities between two different work of art can not be a coincidence. And also because they both change at the same time, we can say art is under impact of hegemony of capitalism. Society doesn’t have the awareness of this changeover. It is a soft one but because they see art as another form of consumption.
Advertisement is another component which serves to this changeover. Advertisements aim overstating society’s so-called needs and stimulating their greed. The actual function of advertising should have been to inform, but this function is nothing but a cover now. It only offers us owning another meta, and it does it endlessly. According to Berger that is because “publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour”
In everyday life promising advertisements constantly offers us being enviable and special. Fashion, tourism, communication instruments, cultural objects, vehicles etc. Advertisings underlines the promise of us being special if we own new stuffs. And they get help from essential arts for doing it. According to Berger “Any work of art ‘quoted’ by publicity serves two purposes. Art is a sign of affluence; it belongs to the good life; it is part of the furnishing which the world gives to the rich and the beautiful.” It shows us that the cultural industry well absorbed the relationship between the art and its audience. Advertisement tries to built the same relationship to stimulate the greed. According to Berger, “Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.” But again there is a difference in here. Old paintings been already owned by the rich ones who also owns the things in those paintings. Advertising functions to make uncomforted and incommode. It intends creating so-called needs that you never actually had. Because not having the ‘thing’ means not being like the ones who has the ‘thing’.
These things were being shown as the essentials of the quality of life, so the were being manipulative by this individualism. And advertising manages it just by calling on future.
Result
We can say that ideology has an unchanging structure by looking its conceptual history in time. Ideology is a concept which has neither beginning nor end. It can make every constituent of society into individual subjects and serve to dominant class.
State uses its own apparatuses to extend the ideology as another apparatus and use it to impress the education, sociality, politics, art and every forms of production.
To ask this question would come in useful: Is it possible for capitalism and ideology to continue their existence without the domination? Is it possible for ideology to exist without manipulating the humankind?
According to Marx “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”
According to this, as the class society exits, so does the relationship between the authority and domination, so does the ideology as an apparatus of the domination will continue their existence.
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