Ideology in Politics- Joshua Salyers

As is often the case with each week’s readings, I find myself following authors’ attempts to clarify terminology or conceptual positions. This week, Terry Eagleton’s discussion of the volatile nature of expressing a standard understanding of ideology especially struck me. Understanding that multiple ideologies exist at once, he effectively removes the discussion of defining ideology from the realm of academic speculation and presents a common understanding of the term in what he called the “person-in-the-street” definition. Eagleton’s person-in-the-street definition of ideology illustrates the implied pejorative accusation of someone claiming that another person “judges a particular issue through some ridged framework of preconceived ideas.” Aside from providing a definition clearly illustrating the common understanding of ideology outside of academic qualifiers, Eagleton does an excellent job of explaining the cause for such an understanding. With ideology, an oversimplification of the world is implied. As we learn later, however, ideology is considered less as a tool to simplify and more as a tool distort and mystify as it derives meaning from the intersections between discourse and power. This reminds me of several of James Scott’s works, specifically Domination and the Arts of Resistance and Seeing like a State. Clearly, ideology can serve a distorting purpose and assist in secure systems of domination. As I read his article with Scott’s works in mind, I wondered if he would offer a prescription for how to approach different definitions of ideology. Essentially, understanding that multiple ideologies can exist at once is a necessity of 

Without disclosing my personal political proclivities (even though this transparency might be considered ideal for a historian), these issues of the use of ideology are played out in political discourse all the time. How often has a more liberally oriented person complained that some poor southerners ‘ideologically’ (hence the implication of irrationally) support Republicans while they would materially benefit more from the social welfare programs of Democrats? To explain this seemingly incoherent phenomenon, the concept of ideology is evoked as an explanation within a certain power relationship. This illustrates Eagleton’s point that a form of consciousness should not be considered ideological because it is “in factual error.”