[lbo-talk] Time to Get Religion

[Jerry Monaco]

On 12/5/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 5, 2006, at 4:52 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> > we can only use the word "ideology" in a more or less common sense
>
> Of course, "common sense" is itself a deeply ideological category -
> all the knee-jerk responses we're programmed with from birth.
>
> Doug
>
That's why I said that we also must realize we can only gain "relative
clarity" and obtain "varying amount[s] of certainty", which must be
"modified by skepticism and whatever bullshit detectors that we can
muster individually and collectively."  The point is not to deny the
usefulness of a notion of ideology, just to say that we don't need
obscure speech to talk about it, point to it, and look at how it
functions.  It need not be as obscure as "transubstantiation" and
can't be as precise as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.


>I admire Chomsky enormously, but this points up one of his major
flaws - his lack of interest in the way political categories get
implanted inside our heads. Yes there are "institutional" factors,
but they get introjected, too. And despite this plea to investigate
the "institutional and other factors," NC doesn't really do much of
that, does he?

Doug

Yes, you are correct.  His work with Ed Herman comes closest and I do
think that "Manufacturing Consent" is a good institutional analysis.
Does it take account of larger institutions in society? No, but he
often points to writers who do the kind of work that he thinks should
be done.  He has written some interesting things on the University and
educational institutions in general.

I also think if you are going to start out with a general notion of
ideology, what it is and how it works, it is just as well to write as
clearly as Chomsky or as Marx in the German Ideology.  (Clearer than I
write for instance.) After all Doug everything that you write is in
this mode.  In the end, any analysis of ideology or indoctrination is
probably best done when studying specific institutions.  I can point
to other attempts that are fruitful, that I know Chomsky is aware of
and partially agrees with...  for instance some of the chapters in
Duncan Kennedy's analysis of ideology among U.S. judges in "Critique
of Adjudication" and some of the things in "Legal Education and the
Reproduction of Hierarchy".  I am sure one can do similar studies of
middle managers in certain corporations, etc.

Along this line another example I would point to is Stephen Jay
Gould's reviews of the history of science, which Chomsky has
occasionally pointed to.

Jerry