The ontogenesis of ideology: an interpretation of mother-child talk

Abstract

In their introduction to Karl Marx, Bottom ore and Rubel comment that Marx used the term ideology in 'different senses'; and in one of these senses, ideology for Marx, is a 'deliberately misleading system of ideas'. (1963; 21). The sense in which I wish to use this word will differ from the former, by expunging the modifiers 'deliberately misleading'. This is not to deny that the construction of ideology is non-accidental to the extent that it arises from sustained social practices; nor is it to deny that ideologies can be nurtured deliberately in the sense of receiving a coherent seeming philosophico-logical rationale in the un-commonsense reflections of a community. Elshtain (1981) shows how the ideology of womanhood has been so nurtured in the western traditions; and Wearing's empirical study (1984) confirms the power of that ideology, which controls women's perceptions of their role(s) in society to this day. However, ideologies live through the common everyday actionsboth, verbal and non-verbal of a host of social actors who are far from thinking consciously about it. In fact, if ideology is a misleading system of ideas, then conscious deliberation, once it becomes accessible, is likely to lead to exposure, and could conceivably become instrumental in introducing change. Looked at from this perspective, the most important attribute for the maintenance of ideology appears to be its socially constructed inevitability. Again, a system of ideas can definitely be misleading even while it is being supported by an over-arching, most dear-sighted-seeming analysis of social phenomena; but the very description of some analysis as 'over-arching' or 'most clear-sighted' implies a point of view. One misleading system of ideas can be replaced by another ideology, which may in its turn be revealed as a misleading system of ideas. There is no intention to make a play on words here, but in one sense, at least, ideology cannot be misleading since it leads us to the essential principles governing the social structure in which the ideology is embedded and for which it provides support. Thus it becomes diagnostic of the values that (some section of) a community lives by. For these reasons, I prefer to think of ideology as a socially constructed system of ideas which appears as if inevitable.

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