1

From discourse to ideology

Eyal Clyne
The Impact of Discourse in Critical Research: Unit Global Conference, Manchester 2017

I was asked to answer in three minutes what is discourse for me. My answer is that analysing
discourse is studying the unobvious obviousness of context. Context, whether political or
situational, is at the heart of any understanding of discourse across disciplines and
traditions. Studying it is an attempt to understand human action, meaning-making, collective
ways of knowing, blah blah blah But we all know this by now. So, given that this answer is
fairly simple and broad, it leaves me with another two minutes and forty-five seconds or so,
which I would like to use for drawing your attention to discourses sibling, or perhaps parent,
ideology, and invite fellow discourse analysis to consider being/becoming ideology analysts.

(By ideology I mean the sociological tradition of the term, of course, not its political
sciences meaning).

Like discourse, ideology is a term that has a history, and which saw numerous profoundly-
different perspectives of looking at it, and sometimes conflating it with discourse. Like
Foucauldian discourse, in Althusserian ideology, knowledge is confined within various
unspoken and (almost) unthought-of presuppositions and abstract limitations, which define
the borders of what can be seen, thought, understood and said, and with what priority. So, the
two concepts share epistemology and curiosity, look at the totality of power-knowledge,
challenge assumptions of rationalism and cognition, and instruct nearly undiscernible
structures, that powerfully direct - and create - subjects.
However, a significant difference is that ideology comes from a sociological tradition (and
its less significant for us that its Marxism). Its emphasis is on society and interests, which
discourse often ignores or avoids, preferring the use of structure, which in Foucauldian
thought is somewhat cognitive or self-sufficient, or sometimes plainly unexplained.1
Two other advantages I see in replacing discourse with ideology are:

(1-) that it is interested, and often, but not always, classed, so its associated with the
collective objective reality conditions (Althusser, Jameson); and

(2-) that it attends to another aspect and concept that is left neglected in discourse, as well as
in this conference, which is institutions.

1
Notwithstanding that many, me included, use ideology in a structural or poststructural
way, as well as use structure to denote social structure, power structure, language structure,
etc.
 2

At the same time, there are two important diversions I recommend making from the way
ideology was introduced by Marx; adopting one from Althusser and another from Manheim.

My position starts with Althusser (who was also a Marxist), and assert that there is no
knowing that is ideology-free, or is outside discourse. For Marx (and Engels) ideology is a
lie. It is the superstructure which is both false, and a consciousness. The corollary to this is
that there are non-ideological conciousnesses. Namely, that production relations and post-
capitalism are outside social thought limitations. Althusser developed ideology closer to
discourse as we use it today, describing an inability, or near inability, of not have an
ideology. Therefore, unlike Marx, for Althusser ideology is eternal, and subjects are
ideologys (interpellated) bearers.

However, Althusser emphasised how ideology serves dominant groups through different
ideological apparatuses that operate mainly top-down. Here I get to my second reservation
from Marxist ideology: I prefer using ideology not only to describe disseminating
epistemologies top-down (by conspired manipulation), nor to see ideology as necessariliy
unconscious or self-deceptive. Mannheim, the father of the sociology of knowledge, saw
knowledge already in the 1930s as a collective, even cooperative, unconscious, epochal
weltanschauung. A temporal worldview shaped by, and co-constructed through, a social
locus (thus, close to Donna Harraways situated knowledge many years later). Mannheimist
thought influenced other powerful epistemological concepts like Kuhns paradigm,
Bourdieus doxa and episteme, Foucaults discourse and Althussers version of
ideology.

In conclusion, to refocus on interests and society, combine some Althusser with Mannheim,
and cook on medium heat to receive a delicious epochal social context that facilitates
individual perceptions of reality, subordinating practices into a comprehensive worldview,
according to which one naturally acts and gives meaning, and which is also an expression of
interests, but is neither conspired nor distributed top-down necessarily, rather is the product
of popular praxis, co-constructed by all the agents, as suggested, for example, by Luc
Boltanski (&Chiappello) following Webbers spirit of , or Zeitgiest. T&C apply.
Ideology helps us notice institutions, interests and most importantly society, from which
discourse shies away, to shelter in language (from which it takes its name), as if language is
independent of these three things.