RAYMOND WILLIAMS FORMAL AND LESS FORMAL IDEOLOGIES

Throughout its long and complex history beginning from the French Post-Revolution period, the term ideology had already acquired a number of meanings, which makes it a highly problematic concept in sociology, philosophy and cultural studies. Because of this polymorphous nature, it is necessary, for all and every student and scholar in cultural studies to make a definitive stand as to what sense and conception of ideology he/she is taking at the outset of a research. For this, we may start from the classification made by the Marxist literary critic, Raymond Williams, who schematized ideology it into two levels.

(a) the formal and conscious beliefs of a class or other social group - as in the common usage of ideological to indicate general principles or theoretical positions or, as so often unfavorable, dogmas; or (b) the characteristic world-view or general perspective of a class or other social group, which will include formal and conscious beliefs but also less conscious, less formulated attitudes, habits and feelings, or even unconscious assumptions, bearings and commitments.¹

The first level, owing to its state of being formal, articulated and structured, does not need anymore to be painstakingly deciphered. On the contrary, the second level has to be deciphered first in order to be studied and understood. Students and scholars in cultural studies need to focus their attention more on Williams' second level of ideology, as "the characteristic world-view or general perspective of a class or other social group, which will include formal and conscious beliefs but also less conscious, less formulated attitudes, habits and feelings, or even unconscious assumptions, bearings and commitments."

JOHN THOMPSON'S NEUTRAL AND CRITICAL IDEOLOGIES

However, this second level of ideology presented by Williams can be further schematized into two more senses. John Thompson, in his work Studies in the Theory of Ideology, states:

On the one hand, 'ideology' is employed by many authors as if it were a purely descriptive term: one speaks of 'systems' of thought', or 'systems of belief' of 'symbolic practices' which pertain to social action or political projects. . . . There is, however, another sense of 'ideology' which is evident in the current literature. In the writings of some authors, ideology is essentially linked to the process of sustaining asymmetrical relations of power-that is the process of maintaining domination.²

He calls the first sense the neutral conception and the second sense the critical conception of ideology. At this point, for the sake of clarity and precision, we may graphical represent the distinctions created by the two theorists in the following manner:

For Thompson, in between the neutral and the critical conceptions there lies a theoretical tension. Whereas the neutral conception is geared towards knowledge and understanding, the critical conception is geared towards the Marxist ideals of critique and emancipation. Theorists who uphold the critical conception sneer at those who uphold the neutral conception, deriding the latter for their alleged lack of the 'critical cutting-edge'. In cultural studies ideology has almost invariably been taken in its critical conception.

THE NEUTRAL CONCEPTION AS AN ALTERNATIVE CATEGORY

This paper desires to stress that the neutral conception of ideology can be an alternative theoretical theory in cultural studies. But stressing so in the present period overarched by postmodernism necessitates solid justification. For this we may take advantage of the insights of the German sociologist of knowledge Karl Mannheim and of the French philosopher and narratologist Paul Ricoeur. Mannheim affirmed that indeed social knowledge can be tainted with ideology (understood in its critical sense) which helps in the perpetuation of the present state of affairs. Yet, he pointed out that aside from these ideological traces, social knowledge can also be colored with utopian images. By utopia, he meant those complex of ideas that favored change. Hence, within social knowledge Mannheim exposed the opposing forces of ideological and utopian themes. But unlike Marx who readily denigrated ideology as false knowledge and heralded his utopian dream of a classless society, Mannheim restrained from being judgmental and pontificating with regards to which among the two opposing forces is true and which one is false. Rather, he insisted that the two themes present in social knowledge be carefully examined in the context of their circumstances. Paul Ricoeur, brought Mannheim's policy of restraint into a more radical articulation. Ricoeur thinks that the mere teasing of the polarity between ideology and utopia contributed to a large degree to the crisis of modernity. A people wrenched away from its ideological home and tradition and thrown into the kaleidoscopic world of utopia, created only the nauseating experience of rootlessness that characterize the modernist feeling of anxiety. For Ricoeur, the intellectual is tasked with an ethical duty of preventing the tension between ideology and utopia from developing into an ugly rift. This can be accomplished in a two-pronged manner.

On one hand, we must bring the utopian expectancies closer to the present by a strategic praxis sensitive to the concrete steps that need to be taken towards realizing what is 'desirable and reasonable'. And on the other hand, we must halt the shrinking of our experiential space by liberating the still untapped potentialities of inherited meaning.³

The hermeneutics of suspicion from the tradition of the great masters Marx, Nietzsche and Freud has to be transcended with Ricoeur's hermeneutics of affirmation. Instead of drumming on the social knowledge's falsifying content, we have to unravel its hidden potentialities "of myth for a positive symbolizing project."⁴ The movement from the hermeneutics of suspicion to hermeneutics of affirmation necessitates a movement from a critical conception of ideology to a neutral one.

Following the neutral conception of less formal and unstructured ideology-something that is pertaining to systems of thought, systems of belief and symbolic practices-we come close to its related ideas of Zeitgeist, the Weltanschauung of Wilhelm Dilthey, the collective unconscious of Carl Gustav Jung, the ideology and utopia of Mannheim, the Episteme of Michel Foucault, and the social imaginary of Cornelius Castoriadis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boor, David. "Sociology of Knowledge." Jonathan Dancy & Ernest Sosa. A Companion to epistemology: Blackwell Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992.

Bourdieu, Pierre, "Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power." Ed. Nicholas Dirks, et al. Culture/Power/History. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. 155-199.

Hodge, Robert & Kress, Gunther. Language as Ideology. London: Routledge, 1993.

Kearney, Richard. "Between Tradition and Utopia: The Hermeneutical Problem of Myth." David Wood, Ed. On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation. London: Routledge, 1991.

Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, Louis Wirth & Edward Shills, Trans. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1991.

Ricoeur, Paul. Ricoeur, Paul.: Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. John Thompson, Ed., Trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Seliger, Martin. Ideology and Politics. New York: Free Press, 1976.

Thompson, John. Critical Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jurgen Habermas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Thompson, John. Ideology and Modern Culture. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Thompson, John. Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984.

Williams, Raymond. The Sociology of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.