Showing papers by "Jonathan Culler published in 1973"

Structure of Ideology and Ideology of Structure

Abstract: SHE AUTOTELIC or autoerotic character of much recent structuralism and semiology derives from its response to the problems of ideology. Aware, on the one hand, that their most important empirical function might be one of demystification (of "deconstructing" ideologies), structuralists have been drawn to a Marxist conception of ideology as false consciousness. An ideology is a theory which justifies particular economic, political, and intellectual practices by concealing their historical origins and making them the natural components of an interpreted world. In this sense the notion of ideology is dependent on a conception of truth: one cannot recognize an ideology unless one understands the true nature of a particular situation, and one's task is to expose the reality which lies beneath the ideological superstructure. But, on the other hand, aware of the readiness with which their opponents would criticize structuralism itself as an ideology, structuralists have attempted to disarm criticism by examining their own presuppositions and in so doing have implicitly accepted a second notion of ideology, which escapes dependence on the concept of truth, but which must pay the usual price: as soon as one treats one's own method as an ideology there is little hope of avoiding infinite regress because the axioms of any method or point of view will themselves form an ideology. The structuralist approach to this problem has been particularly interesting in that it has involved an attempt to make the conditions of the problem a solution to that problem. Instead of deploring the fact that analysis of one's own assumptions does not lead to indubitable