Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Ideology (Key Concept)

(Ideology - a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.)

Bell, Duncan. "Liberalism, Empire and Utopianism." Interventions (October 27, 2018) ["How should we think of the relationship between liberalism and empire? Can the turn to history help us “decolonize” liberalism today? And what is the role of utopia in Anglophone visions of empire? These are questions we discussed with Dr Duncan Bell, Reader in Political Thought and International Relations at Cambridge, who is a leading authority on modern British and American ideologies of empire."]

Biagetti, Samuel. The Myths We Make: Using the Past as an Ideological Tool." Historiansplaining (2018) ["All of history is, to one degree or another, mythology -- the weaving of a coherent, usable narrative out of the chaos of people's lives. We consider how societies all over the world, since before the beginning of civilization, have developed myths to explain the world that they experience. We also trace some of the major schools of academic history, which have tried to fashion overarching storylines to give meaning to human struggles -- from Biblical providential history to Marxism to postmodernism. We begin by examining the most central myth of the origins of American society: the "first Thanksgiving.""]

Davis, Darryl. "Racial Injustice: KKKrossing The Divide." How Do We Fix It? (June 5, 2020) ["To gain some insight on what can be done to address discrimination and tensions between races, we speak with R&B and blues musician Daryl Davis, a black man who has spent the past 35 years on a remarkable quest of speaking with, and at times befriending, members of white supremacist groups. He has helped more than 200 KKK members to renounce their racist ideology. "We have to ask ourselves the question: do I want to sit back and see what my country becomes, or do I want to stand up and make my country become what I want to see," Daryl tells us. "I've chosen the latter. And so you have to get into the thick of it." As a race conciliator and lecturer, Davis has received numerous awards and is often sought by CNN, MSNBC, NPR and other media outlets as a consultant on race relations and white supremacy."]

Dijk, Teun A. van. Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Sage, 1998.

Engley, Ryan and Todd McGowan. "Blade Runner 2049." Why Theory (October 23, 2017) ["In this episode, Todd and Ryan discuss Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. The conversation centers around how the film depicts ideology and what we mean when we say "ideology"; how the film conceives of desire ensuring subjectivity; and how the relationship between police and capital in the film exposes a link to how the two function in everyday life."]

Haider, Asad. "Way more is possible: On depoliticization, resurgent radicalism and seeing the revolutionary horizon." This is Hell! #1137 (March 2, 2020) ["Writer Asad Haider examines the problems of depoliticization in modern politics - as the dominant ideological frame blinds us to the limits of our present politics and the possibilities of future alignments, the left must confront the failures of past revolutions and realize that another world is not just possible, it's necessary."]

Hickel, Jason. "The Neoliberal Optimism Industry." Citations Needed #58 (November 28, 2018) ["We're told the world is getting better all the time. In January, The New York Times' Nick Kristof explained "Why 2017 Was the Best Year in Human History." The same month, Harvard professor and Bill Gates' favorite optimist Steven Pinker lamented (in a special edition of Time magazine guest edited by - who else? - Bill Gates) the “bad habits of media... bring out the worst in human cognition”. By focusing so much on negative things, the theory goes, we are tricked into thinking things are getting worse when, in reality, it's actually the opposite. For the TEDtalk set, that the world is awesome and still improving is self-evidently true - just look at the data. But how true is this popular axiom? How accurate is the portrayal that the world is improving we so often seen in sexy, hockey stick graphs of upward growth and rapidly declining poverty? And how, exactly, are the powers that be "measuring" improvements in society? On this episode, we take a look at the ideological project of telling us everything's going swimmingly, how those in power cook the books and spin data to make their case for maintaining the status quo, and how The Neoliberal Optimism Industry is, at its core, an anti-intellectual enterprise designed to lull us into complacency and political impotence."]

Mayer, Jane. "Dark Money and the Rise of Conservative Orthodoxy." On the Media (May 31, 2019) ["William Happer, the man tapped to head Trump’s new climate review panel, is not a climate scientist. And yet, in recent years, William Happer has made a mission of attacking climate science, including at events hosted by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Heritage has long worked to redirect public sentiment and policy-making away from addressing climate change and towards deregulation — which is itself part of an even bigger decades-long goal: the propagation of a conservative ideology that preserves capital for rich people. Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, walks Bob through the history of the modern conservative intellectual framework."]

Mirrlees, Tanner. "How to Read Iron Man: The Economics, Geopolitics and Ideology of an Imperial Film Commodity." Cineaction #92 (2014)

Monbiot, George. "Neoliberalism - The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems." The Guardian (April 15, 2016)

Morris, Errol. "The Truth About Steve Bannon." The Atlantic (August 30, 2020) ["Bannon’s favorite movie scenes offer a hint of the ideology of destruction that drives him."]

Nelson, Josiah H. "Louis Althusser, the Ideological State Apparatus, and Interpellation." Blue Labyrinths (June 25, 2015)

Parenti, Michael. "Racism and the Ideology of Slavery." Unwelcome Guests #8 (April 29, 2000)

Power, Nina. "The Spectre of the “Public”: The Ideology of Law and Order." Backdoor Broadcasting Company (The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities "Ideology Now – Conference": April 28, 2012)

Stanley, Jason. "Introduction: The Problem of Propaganda." How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015: 1 - 26. ["Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us―not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy―particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality―and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]

Starr, Elana. "Ideology and Cinema." (Course materials: N.D.)

Strickland, Ron. "Althusser's Concept of Ideology." (Teaching video posted on Youtube: 2008)

Wolff, Richard D. "Ideological State Apparatuses, Consumerism, and U.S. Capitalism: Lessons for the Left." (University of Massachusetts Working Paper: July 2004)

Zakaria, Rafia. "Sucking Up To the Saudis." The Baffler (November 30, 2017) ["The Arab Spring in Tom Friedman's Head."]

Zha, Carl, et al. "Hong Kong Protests (Where Colonialism meets Neoliberalism)." Best of the Left #1314 (October 25, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the complicated range of forces driving the protests in Hong Kong that span the ideological spectrum."]

Zinn, Howard. Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology. Harper Perennial, 1990.

Zizek, Slavoj. Excerpt from "The Spectre of Ideology." The Žižek Reader. ed. Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999: 53-86.

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