The return of the critique of ideologies

Trying to offer some brief reflections on the legacy of critical theory over the past 100 years is a daunting task. In lieu of doing this, I shall focus on just one issue: the recent revival in critiques of ideology. In my view, this type of critique is an important task of critical theory and remains one of its most significant legacies. Yet, if one focuses on the work of critical theorists over the past decades, this statement is far from obvious. In fact, the second generation of the Frankfurt school, most notably Habermas in his Theory of Communicative Action, explicitly rejects ideology critique as obsolete in the context of contemporary societies.¹ Even though in the 1960s and 1970s, he had embraced the classical Marxist approach to ideology critique, he ultimately rejected it. It was the explicit attempt to rebut objections that had plagued this approach that brought about the so-called “democratic turn” of critical theory characteristic of Habermas's work from the 1980s onward and in which the critique of ideologies no longer plays a role.

In contrast to Habermas, I am sympathetic to the return of a critique of ideology. Even if it is not the only form of critique, let alone the central task of a critical theory of contemporary societies, I think that it is an important tool for critical theorists. I shall briefly indicate why I think that newer approaches to the critique of ideology that are being currently developed (articulated by not only Frankfurt school critical theorists but also critical race theorists, feminists, and mainstream Anglo-American philosophers) are in a better position to overcome objections that understandably plagued classical Marxist conceptions of ideology critique.² Moreover, in my view, they are perfectly compatible with the “democratic turn” of critical theory—so long as this turn is not given an exclusively proceduralist interpretation as Habermas does. I cannot give a full defense of this view here. Instead, I want (1) to briefly indicate important ways in which the new approaches to ideology critique differ from the classical Marxist approach and how they can avoid some key objections. Then, (2) I turn to Habermas's distinctive objections to ideology critique and show that, while they may call the feasibility of the classical Marxist approach into question, they leave room for a properly transformed approach to the critique of ideology in contemporary societies.

According to the classical Marxist approach, the critique of ideology is a central task in the “scientific” enterprise of articulating a critical theory of society. The aim of ideology critique is to respond to a specific theoretical question, namely, why members of a society would work to perpetuate their own subjection, exploitation, or oppression. Ideologies offer an answer to this question. They provide a distorted view of social practices and institutions to those who are “in the grip” of them. Thus, ideologies are not merely morally defective (since they perpetuate injustices and oppression) but are epistemically defective as well. In contrast, the critique of ideologies is supposed to be epistemically superior since it is based on scientific knowledge. The social scientist uses empirical evidence and structural and functional theoretical explanations of social phenomena and practices to show what is wrong with the prevailing ideologies. Both of these—empirical evidence and explanations—are not accessible from the internal perspective of those who participate in such practices. Therefore, only from the external perspective of the social scientist it is possible to see that members of society have a distorted view of the actual workings and significance of the social practices that they themselves engage in.

Many of these assumptions have been challenged. The challenges come not only from scholars who reject the very idea of ideology critique but also from scholars who are generally sympathetic to the critique of ideology but who nevertheless have a much broader and more practically oriented understanding of it. Let me very briefly highlight a few of these challenges. For many scholars working in traditions such as black liberation, feminism, critical race theory, de-colonial theory, and so on, the primary aim of ideology critique is not theoretical but practical. The point is not to articulate a causal explanation but to contribute to emancipation. In line with this assumption, ideology critique is taken to be a practice that is equally accessible to all participants. It does not require a type of scientific knowledge that only the social scientist has access to from the perspective of a detached observer. Moreover, this alternative understanding also shows why it is unwarranted (as well as outrageously paternalistic) to assume that the oppressed are generally unaware of their oppression and must therefore be “enlightened” by social scientists. Instead, the dissonant experiences and emotions of the oppressed are themselves an essential source of knowledge that can be used to articulate alternative frameworks to undermine the power of prevalent ideologies. In fact, these alternative ways of understanding do not have to show up as explanatory social theories. As articulations of dissonant experiences, outlaw emotions, resistive practices, and so on, they may take the form of something akin to first-personal narratives or testimonials. For these reasons, members of these traditions are often rightly dubious of the assumption that the social theorist, of all people, is the one with privileged access to the requisite knowledge that can help us identify and overcome the oppressive power of ideologies. This problematic assumption unduly ignores existing practices and traditions of critique and resistance that the victims of oppression already engage in. It downplays their epistemic abilities and agency and naively overlooks the fact that the social sciences tend to perpetuate rather than contest prevalent ideologies.

Naturally, against the classical approach and in the spirit of Habermas's “democratic turn” of critical theory, it can be replied that when social theorists engage in ideology critique, they are using a “critical” competence that is in principle available to all participants. They are not breaking the symmetry of communication and do not have to assume any superior epistemic authority. After all, their critique may not be able to withstand public scrutiny, challenge, and contestation. Thus, social critics do not have to disqualify (through a self-immunized explanation) the epistemic abilities and transformational capacities of social participants. Nonetheless, they can make a distinctive contribution to already existing practices of critique, among other things, by drawing from another source of knowledge that can be essential for challenging prevailing ideologies: empirical (statistical) knowledge, and functional or structural explanations of social practices and systems. Yet, statistical and theoretical knowledge is acquired by adopting the third-personal perspective of an external observer toward social practices and institutions. This means that this knowledge cannot be reduced to the knowledge acquired from the internal perspective of participants nor is it immediately accessible to them. Being aware of your oppression is one thing, but knowing the relevant facts (e.g., how many others are affected, which structural conditions contribute to the situation, etc.) is quite another.³ Still, once this knowledge becomes publicly available, it can offer decisive support to those engaged in emancipatory struggles. Moreover, if one recognizes that scientific discourses can perpetuate ideologies by providing sophisticated articulations that exercise a tremendous influence over powerful institutions and the public, unmasking their ideological character becomes all the more important to counteract their nefarious effects on society.

This alternative version of ideology critique has important differences from the classical approach, but it can maintain some of its most distinctive features. It can justify using the term “ideology” in the pejorative sense of something morally and epistemically defective. Even more importantly, it can justify the assumption that ideology critique transcends or challenges the self-interpretations of the participants without either disqualifying their epistemic abilities and agency or tacitly ascribing a superior epistemic authority to the social critic. In contrast to purely hermeneutic approaches to ideology, this approach can resist conceding the exclusive (or the final) say to social participants and their traditions regarding the meaning and validity of the practices they engage in. Finally, this type of critique of ideology can be defended as an important task for a critical theory of contemporary societies—one that can genuinely contribute to ongoing emancipatory struggles against injustice and oppression.

However, this vindication of ideology critique only works on the assumption that ideologies have explanatory relevance for an account of contemporary social orders and their pathologies. If, as Habermas maintains, ideologies are obsolete in contemporary societies, that is, if they are explanatorily irrelevant, then the “democratic turn” within critical theory may vindicate the possibility and legitimacy of social criticism in general but not of ideology critique in particular. Thus, let's examine Habermas's contention.

To make a long story very short, Habermas's claim that ideologies have become obsolete in contemporary societies is based on two interrelated claims: On the one hand, ideologies are no longer unified, totalizing, or all-encompassing. As a consequence of the rationalization of the lifeworld, ideologies are fragmented, plural, and no longer shared amongst all members of society. Thus, they cannot serve the role of social integration in the way that traditional metaphysical and religious worldviews once did. Precisely because they are fragmented and plural, no ideology can be reliably immunized or shielded from criticism, and therefore all ideologies can be subject to ongoing challenge and contestation (Habermas 1987, p. 390). Ideologies thereby lose the properties that had allowed them to take on their paradigmatically “ideological” functions (Habermas 1987, p. 352). Modern subjects have acquired “critical” competencies that prevent them from being “in the grip” of a totalizing ideology in the traditional sense. On the other hand, system integration is now achieved through alternative media such as money and power that operate independently of communicative processes among participants. Thus, even if these systems perpetuate injustices and oppression, they do not do so via a background ideology shared amongst participants (Habermas 1987, p. 354). Social pathologies that are due to the colonization of the lifeworld by such systems have nothing to do with the way ideologies operate.

The first claim is the most relevant in our context. The idea is that totalizing ideologies such as traditional religious or metaphysical worldviews can produce ideological effects over those “in their grip” because of the absence of alternative ideologies or ways of framing social reality. This immunizes ideologies from contestation and criticism—they are the only game in town, so to speak. In contrast, once ideologies become fragmented and plural, they are no longer shared by all members of society. This means that they are unavoidably open to challenge and erosion through mutual criticism and contestation. Once modern subjects acquire the critical competence not only of looking at alternative ideologies with “suspicion” but also of critically distancing themselves from them, this irreversibly erodes the power of ideology to exercise its effects behind the backs of uncritical subjects.

I find this description of the difference between premodern and modern societies plausible, as far as it goes. However, I don't think this account undermines the possibility of or need for ideology critique in contemporary societies. First, it is worth noting that the thing that explains the power of ideologies in this account is not the specific type of ideologies on offer. Their peculiar power is not explained by the fact that they provide a totalizing conception of reality, as traditional religious or metaphysical worldviews do. Rather, it is the fact that they operate in the absence of alternative framings or perspectives, from which they could be challenged or contested. In other words, a perspective or interpretation of a certain domain of social phenomena (e.g., practices, institutions, interactions, etc.) holds us in its grip whenever we do not have a more compelling alternative framework at our disposal to better understand the domain in question. To distance ourselves from something, we need somewhere else to stand.

Second, it is also worth noting that the absence of an alternative interpretative frame for understanding some set of phenomena, practices, or institutions does not mean that those who are “in the grip” of that frame won't have dissonant experiences, outlaw emotions, or any other type of counterevidence—let alone, as the standard objection would have it, that they are “irrational” or “dopes”. They may very well be in possession of such counterevidence. But this is not enough for the frame to lose its grip on them. What is needed for that to happen is a successful articulation of an alternative framework that enables a more insightful understanding of the phenomena or practices in the domain in question. Dissonant experiences, outlaw emotions, and other types of counterevidence can clearly indicate an urgent need for a better interpretative frame, but they do not produce it of their own accord. These types of counterevidence may trigger our critical capacity to be “suspicious” of the dominant frame, but this is not enough. One cannot beat something with nothing. Articulating compelling alternative frames and practices takes creative work and is a task at which we may or may not succeed at any given time. An analogy to scientific revolutions is helpful here. Before the development of the Newtonian paradigm, physicists were “in the grip” of Aristotelian physics not so much because they lacked dissonant experiences or were unaware of inexplicable gaps, anomalies, etc. They had plenty of those. Rather, it was because, in the absence of a superior alternative frame, they could only work with what they had. A wholesale rejection of Aristotelian physics or abandoning the attempt to make sense of the physical work was simply not an option. These physicists were not “in the grip” of Aristotelian physics because they were irrational or “dopes”. They were “in the grip” of Aristotelian physics because, and so long as, they lacked a superior frame or paradigm for making better sense of the physical world. It took centuries for a successful alternative paradigm to be articulated, which finally allowed the inadequacies of the Aristotelian paradigm to be insightfully pinned down.

What this suggests is that, despite all their “critical” competence, modern subjects are likely to be “in the grip” of all those interpretative frames and perspectives (regarding some phenomena, practices, or institutions) for which they lack a better, more compelling alternative. This means that in contemporary societies, interpretative frames and perspectives exercise their power as they always did—namely, by being the only available option. This is a straightforward sense in which ideologies are not obsolete in contemporary societies.⁴ Even if they no longer take the form of unified and all-encompassing metaphysical worldviews, even if they are fragmented and only hold themselves out as applying to specific domains of social phenomena or practices, they can still exercise enormous power over us as long as we lack access to better, alternative frames for these domains. We are neither irrational nor dopes when we don't have the requisite hermeneutic imagination to articulate alternative frames that can disclose or shape the phenomena and practices in question in a more compelling way. Often, it can also be the case that, although alternative interpretative frameworks are already available among members of some social groups, the rest of the public lacks ready access to them either because these groups are marginalized and not represented in the majority culture or because powerful defenders of hegemonic interpretative frames are actively fighting against any challengers.

Be that as it may, if some ideologies, however fragmented or weak, help to perpetuate injustices, then an attempt to deconstruct them by articulating alternative understandings of the phenomena and practices in question is certainly worth a shot. Critical social theory can contribute to this important task. Moreover, there is no need to assume that “ideology” is the only explanatorily relevant mechanism at work. It is much more plausible to think that ideologies work in tandem with other mechanisms (habituation, lack of alternatives, collective action problems, need for coordination, ignorance of relevant facts, etc.) and are, by no means, the sole causal explanation for perpetuating injustices. Yet, in contrast to the other mechanisms, what is distinctive about ideologies (and thus about the aim of ideology critique) is that raising critical awareness by providing articulations of alternative frames can undermine their power.⁵ Even if doing this fails to stop the perpetuation of injustices and oppression, it is something that is intrinsically valuable and emancipatory for the participants themselves. This is so even if other forces ultimately prevent the removal of the injustices in question.

Ideology critique has an emancipatory, not merely an explanatory motivation. We must improve our self-understandings simply because they are morally defective and perpetuate injustices and oppression. We must do this, even if doing so proves to be insufficient, all by itself, for emancipatory political struggles to succeed. We certainly need to do more than change people's minds. Yet, the question at stake here is whether we can afford to do less, whether we can afford to not change people's hearts and minds and yet still somehow hope that our societies become less oppressive or unjust. If the answer is “no,” then ideology critique is a legacy worth preserving.