Murdoch and the End of Ideology

Iris Murdoch had a lifelong interest in politics and she reflected upon the nature of ideology throughout her career. What she had to say on the subject developed during her career and relates to general academic discussions on the nature of ideology. At the outset of her career she was a committed socialist. She recognised that political ideology was in retreat after the Second World War but sought to contribute to socialist ideology. Later in her career she became sceptical of radical utopian ideologies, including socialism and developed a theory of politics that prioritised safeguarding individual liberty and security. However, she imagined that political thought would continue to develop and offer new possibilities and so she did not call for the end of ideology but continued to value political ideas

The End of Ideology

The poetry in Cathy Park Hong's Empire Engine (2012) is separated into three timelines: the period of Westward Expansion in the United States, a contemporary story of fine art reproduction in China, and a futurist story of data workers in California. These three sections are united in their interrogation of the role of ideology in creating and sustaining an empire. I argue that the first timeline stages a representation of ideology in the traditional Althusserian sense, that the second timeline shows this representation as inadequate, and most importantly, that the final section suggests a new model for oppression. The key for the new model presented in the third timeline lies in the job the workers have: they work with data. The main argument is that the ruling class no longer maintains its power through the ownership of capital. Instead, as McKenzie Wark maintains in Capital is Dead (2019), this ruling class »owns and controls information« (Wark 5). The owning and controlling of information is no longer capitalism, »but something worse« (29). Following on Wark, I argue that this use and abuse of data changes ideology in a fundamental manner. Rather than having a world from which an individual can feel more or less estranged in an Althusserian sense, the new reign of data suggests that estrangement is the fundamental experience of the world. In other words, there is no world to feel estranged from, thus leading to ideology; rather, the feeling of estrangement is already the fundamental experience of our data-driven reality. While in Hong's book this new model is located in the future, the end of the essay argues that a similar state is brought about not only by our data-driven world, but also pandemics such as that caused by COVID-19, which are part of our time now

Political scandal at the end of ideology? The mediatized politics of the Bo Xilai case

In this article, I use the high-profile Bo Xilai case to illustrate the dialectics of media and politics in contemporary China. I start by explaining some of the similarities and key differences between mediatized politics in the West and in China. This leads to an emphasis on the ideological dimension of media logic that is largely missing from discussions derived from a liberal democratic context. I then analyze the dialectics of the mediatized ideological struggle and politicized media logic running through the Bo Xilai scandal. In the last section, I summarize the theoretical contributions that the Chinese case makes to the study of mediatized politics

Political scandal at the end of ideology? The mediatized politics of the Bo Xilai case

In this article, I use the high-profile Bo Xilai case to illustrate the dialectics of media and politics in contemporary China. I start by explaining some of the similarities and key differences between mediatized politics in the West and in China. This leads to an emphasis on the ideological dimension of media logic that is largely missing from discussions derived from a liberal democratic context. I then analyze the dialectics of the mediatized ideological struggle and politicized media logic running through the Bo Xilai scandal. In the last section, I summarize the theoretical contributions that the Chinese case makes to the study of mediatized politics

The Global Resurgence of Ethnicity: An Inquiry into the Sociology of Ideological Discontent

This essay takes the position that global resurgence of ethnic hostilities can be seen as a manifestation of discontent with the proclaimed national ideologies. The breakdown in the conviction that adherence to an ideology and the application of a related social agenda would ameliorate the critically felt ills of a society, has resulted in the redirection of frustrations towards scapegoat minorities. Whether the ideology has been democratic secularism or socialism, the inability to deliver the cargo of economic and social well being, political stabliltiy[stability] has proven to be a direct indictment against the ideology itself. And, like opportunistic diseases, ethnic suspicion, hatred, and hostility have invaded the body politic of the national communities weakened by a crisis of ideological faith. In India, for example, the trend towards Hinduization indicates disillusionment with a forty-year experiment with secularism. This essay proposes that resurgent ethnicity has filled the vacuum created by the loss of ideology, and it takes a different trajectory to the end of ideology end of history theme of K. Marx, D. Bell, H. Marcuse, and F. Fukuyama. Its objective is to enquire into the conditions needed for ideological realization and the consequences of its loss

Disinformation: The Limits of Capitalism's Imagination and the End of Ideology

"Disinformation: The Limits of Capitalism's Imagination and the End of Ideology" analyzes the post-9/11 U.S., a state of massive income inequality, waging endless war at home (the militarization of the police) and abroad, within the context of two terms: "Disinformation" and "ideology." The theoretical matrix of the essay distinguishes “misinformation” from “Disinformation,” and, centrally, Disinformation from ideology. I define misinformation as merely a mistake in reportage that is typically retracted in the next day’s news or a distortion of the truth, conscious (spin) or unconscious, for particular ends, such as the Bush administration’s fiction of “weapons of mass destruction,” which can be countered by information. On the other hand, I define Disinformation as a deep, historical process of erasing history itself. Disinformation is a radical decoupling of mainstream political rhetoric from reality such as "the war on terror." However, as such, Disinformation is the opposite, or more precisely, the mirror image of ideology. That is, while Disinformation may appear to resemble ideology, it does not correspond to it. If, as Louis Althusser posits, ideology in substituting for reality still alludes to reality, Disinformation in its substitution makes no such allusion. Disinformation, then, approximates what Jean Baudrillard calls the “simulacrum”: “The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing….The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and simulation” that “bears no relation to reality.” While ideology offers a coherent national narrative, however mystifying, that integrates the subject, Disinformation, while simulating such a narrative, is fundamentally incoherent and disintegrates the subject. Analyzing texts that range from President Obama's speeches to Federalist 10, I argue that the U.S. is now operating under a regime of Disinformation, in which the ideology of American exceptionalism, while still being deployed by the two dominant political parties, is disintegrating

The sorcerer's apprentice: liberalism, ideology and religion in world politics

Despite repeated announcements of the end of ideology and the demise of religion during the twentieth century, both play a crucial role in world politics today. This disjuncture between theoretical expectations and historical developments has its roots in conventional conceptions of ideology. While the latter grasp the representative nature of ideology as an expression of historical forces and political interests, they miss its constitutive role for modern politics. Based on an analysis of its historical origins and political implications, this article develops a new conception of ideology which accounts for the resilience and historical dynamics of ideological struggle. Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, I show, liberalism has called ideology into being but lost control of its own creation

End of Ideology and Postindustrial Society

A number of concepts about the end of ideology, especially about the end of socialism, were worked out in the West at the middle of this century. The author, first of all, brings out attitudes of the American sociologist Daniel Bell about the end of ideology from 1967, and about the postindustrial society from 1974. According to bell, the ideologies of liberalism and socialism have become non — adequate and unconvincing, because of the successful development of western capitalism, and because of deformations in the development of socialism in the East. New ideologies of nationalism and industrialization appear in Asia and Africa. D. Bell says that USA postindustrial society on scientific basis appears after the World War II. New society is characterized by »intellectual« technology. Businessmen lose their prestige, the role of managers is lessened, capitalists disappear and a number of intellectual workers increases and they dominate more and more. The author is of the opinion that D. Bell has not succeeded in his efforts to conceive the new non-capitalist and non-socialist society, in spite of this rather interesting observations and the abundant material that has been gathered. His two attitudes still make him remain within he limits of the existing west capitalist world. Essential social relationships remain unchanged. Postindustrial society is the more developed society, but is not basically the new society. It is a capitalist society without capitalists. Since the objective class differences are still present, the end of ideology is proclaimed in vain. Those scientists who defend the end of ideology are, in fact, to a very high degree, ideologically orientated people. That applies to Bell too

IDENTITY AS A POWER APPARATUS: THE END OF IDEOLOGY OR POLITICS OF MULTICULTURALISM?

Članak se bavi analizom multikulturalizma kao ideologije i politike integracije u suvremenim pluralnim društvima liberalne demokracije. Autor izvodi postavku da samoproglašeni kraj multikulturalizma u europskim politikama integracije nije kraj multikulturalizma kao neuspjele politike “kulturnih razlika”, nego upravo onog što čini bit same ideologije liberalnoga multikulturalizma uopće – ideologije političke integracije. Budući da se postojanje paralelnih društava i politike u zapadnim porecima tehnokratske vladavine elita objašnjava kulturalnim razlozima distancije i dijaloga kultura, nastaje potreba za preispitivanjem cjelokupnog nasljeđa teorije i političkih modela multikulturalizma u situaciji kada dolazi do destruiranja samog koncepta društva u neoliberalnom projektu globalizirane ekonomije, politike i kulture. Autor na primjeru kritike dviju paradigmi – političkog liberalizma Rawlsa i Habermasa te politike identiteta kao razlike Young i Kymlicke – ustvrđuje da izlazak iz začaranoga kruga političkoga univerzalizma bez zaštite manjina i kulturnoga partikularizma bez pripadnosti “novoj” političkoj zajednici i društvu ne može biti vjerodostojan bez radikalne dekonstrukcije kulture kao ideologije. Pitanje identiteta više nije pitanje očuvanja kulturnih vrijednosti u doba raspada društvenih struktura globalnoga doba, već pitanje dispozitiva moći kojim se legitimira i uspostavlja novi politički poredak slobode uopće.The article deals with the analysis of multiculturalism as an ideology of political integration in modern pluralistic societies of liberal democracy. The author develops the thesis that the self-proclaimed end of the policy of multiculturalism in European integration should not be considered the end of multiculturalism as a failed policy of “cultural differences”, but quite the opposite: the essence of the ideology of liberal multiculturalism in general – the ideology of political integration. Since the existence of parallel societies and politics in Western societies under rule of technocracy elite has been explained by the reasons of cultural distances and the dialogue of cultures, the need arises to review the entire legacy of political theories and models of multiculturalism in a situation when it comes to the destruction of the very concept of society in a globalized neo- -liberal project of economics, politics and culture. The author has reviewed the case of two paradigms – the political liberalism of Rawls and Habermas, and the politics of identity as difference of Young and Kymlicka – and argues that the way out of the vicious circle of political universalism without the protection of minorities and cultural particularism without belonging to the “new” political community and society can have no credibility without a radical deconstruction of culture as ideology. The question of identity is no longer a question of preserving cultural values at the time of dissolution of social structures of the global era, but a question turned to the power apparatus as identity