Ideology Critique: A Deleuzian Case

What is it for an analytic philosopher to do ideology critique? How should analytic philosophers engage with the great critics of ideology outside the analytic tradition? Just how useful are our proprietary tools as analytic philosophers when it comes to thinking about ideology, and in what sense ‘useful’, and to whom? And to what end might we pursue ideology critique? Here I attempt to say something about these questions by commenting specifically on a recent contribution to analytic ideology critique, Jason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works.

Horse and Class in True Grit

10.7311/pjas.13/1/2019.03 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 27-38

Author(s):

Jerry D. Leonard

Keyword(s):

Main Character ◽

Inner Life ◽

Ideology Critique ◽

Original Theory ◽

Marxist Ideology

This essay returns to Jane Tompkins’ original theory of horses in her 1992 book West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns as a means of analyzing Charles Portis’ 1968 novel True Grit, a work which Tompkins does not address. Arguing for a Marxist ideology critique of True Grit with a focus on the main character (and narrator) Mattie Ross and her horse named Little Blackie, the essay offers a critique of Tompkins’ idea of the “material presence” of horses in American Western narratives.

Toward a New Model of Ideology Critique

The New Critique of Ideology ◽

10.1057/9781137329677.0006 ◽

2013 ◽

Keyword(s):

Ideology Critique ◽

New Model

Psychoanalysis and International Development

Confronting Desire ◽

10.7591/cornell/9781501751721.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 3-31

Author(s):

Ilan Kapoor

Keyword(s):

International Development ◽

Jacques Lacan ◽

Development Discourse ◽

Ideology Critique ◽

The Unconscious ◽

Slavoj Zizek ◽

Slavoj Žižek ◽

Key Points ◽

Blind Spots

This chapter examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to international development, illustrating ways in which thinking and practice in this field are psychoanalytically structured. Drawing mainly on the work of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek, it emphasizes three key points. First, psychoanalysis can help uncover the unconscious of development — its gaps, dislocations, blind spots — thereby elucidating the latter's contradictory and seemingly “irrational” practices. Second, the important psychoanalytic notion of jouissance (enjoyment) can help explain why development discourse endures, that is, why it has such sustained appeal, and why we continue to invest in it despite its many problems. Third, psychoanalysis can serve as an important tool for ideology critique, helping to expose the socioeconomic contradictions and antagonisms that development persistently disavows. The chapter then reflects on the limits of psychoanalysis — the extent to which it is gendered and, given its Western origins, universalizable.