I really think this conversation has a very tired either/or binary going on. I agree that people who are really interested in social justice should be able to speak with some clairty on that subject; but I also think that the point Doug is making about the fetish of the clarity of language is a very good one. Assuming the truth could be discerned with absolute clarity, on terms that could be agreeable to most people, it doesn't help you to speak that truth clearly to people if you aren't considering the mechanisms through which they have come to believe what they already believe. Not just the institutions or the practices or the narratives, but the whole kit n' caboodle. And in this case, I think part of what Doug is insinuating (though I wouldn't want to put words in his mouth) is that one reason there is such a violent reaction against this casual criticism of Chomsky not having a theory of ideology (from Jerry, not Joanna) is that there is certain ideology present amongst this contingent that says any conversation that uses language that can't be clearly parsed by anyone who is coming into the conversation ten, twenty or thirty years after its started is useless, onanistic drivel. Some of it very well may be and I've met many people who can deploy this language in fantastic ways to say little at all. But there is also quite a bit that is more like what Carrol has spoken about above and a good chunk of that deals with ideology which I still think Althusser says most succinctly when he calls it the imaginary relation with the real.
It simply isn't enough to say that the ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling class or that the media has some intimate set of relationships which act as filters to produce propaganda. It isn't enough to say that people would simply be better off if the truth was made clearer and louder than falsehood. That might be true and it is certainly a good strategy for political activism. But it isn't really analysis because it doesn't explain the process of interpellation in any real sense. In other words it doesn't explain why people believe the lies--or why the lies *seem* true in such a way that the truth is automatically dismissed as lies and propaganda without any intervention by those strong powers. As Bitch|Lab puts it below, this is a very complicated process to analyze and it inevitably produces some complicated formulations of language in order to do it. I don't really see what dog Jerry has in this fight except for a blanket statement that people shouldn't write in difficult language regardless of what the subject or audience is; Joanna seems to to say that the subject itself, society, should require that the language used to explain it be required by all members. While I can see particular circumstances when these arguments should apply, to state them categorically, and then say that anytime someone is using language that you find unnecessarily unclear they are doing it on purpose to stroke their academic hard-on, well, it's convenient because it means you can dismiss just about everyone.
And to say that Plato wasn't obscure is a bit simplistic, in my opinion. I think a few things have changed since Plato's time, knowledge and discussions have advanced since that time. As for Zizek I actually think he is being clearest when he is discussing Lacan. It's when he starts rattling off thoughts and ideas from Hegel and Kant--in their own language--that my brain stops computing. That is some obscure language, but imagining and then trying to describe to others something as complicated as metaphysics as it relates to the real world, well that's bound to get a bit complicated. And it will take some time to be able to understand fully what is being said. But this doesn't mean that there is some moral deficiency in the author. In some cases, I think it is because they are inaccurately presuming the transparency of their language but in others it is because they are trying to get their heads around something that lacks a clear, transparent definition. And as more and more people do this, in a long conversation, it gets to the point where you can't just waltz into it and understand the whole damn thing. In some cases, this could be simplified somewhat using less technical or theoretical language, but in many cases this loses some of the meaning in the translation. It can be done--and is done in those comic book introduction versions--but the moment you pick up the original author (if, as bitch points out, you ever bother) you see there is a very particular, complicated claim being made with the use of just a few seemingly obscure words. Clearing up this meaning for people unfamiliar with those concepts could take pages and pages of footnotes. In some cases, perhaps that is warrented, but to demand it, as regular practice, is absurd and obviously misunderstands the complicated enterprise being undertaken.
As for the original question about ideology critique, here is a review of Robert Irwin's new book that evidently skewers Said in a new way.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/12/06/orientalism/print.html
You can read it for yourself, but the reviewer was obviously giddy with the possibility of making Said into just the kind of morally abhorrent intellectual you're all discussing precisely because he was engaging in a critique of an underlying ideology. Some of the points seem valid and could add some richness to the discussion, but his desire to say that this book now proves how everything Said or anyone engaging in an ideological critique is wrong overwhelms his ability to even acknowledge that Said was a part of that discussion in an important and sincere way.
Here's a relevant quote: <blockquote> "Dangerous Knowledge" pretty much demolishes Said's attack on academic Orientalists. But does Irwin demolish Said's larger point that Western imperialism has generated a racist and condescending discourse about the Arab world, one that still operates today? The British literary critic Terry Eagleton argues that he does not, that Said was wrong about details but right about what really mattered. Eagleton mocks Irwin's "gentle, ivory-tower" belief that Orientalism "is mostly a story of individual scholars" and derides what he claims is Irwin's inability to comprehend Foucault's ideas: "He gives the impression that he could recognise an ideological formation about as readily as he could identify Green Day's greatest hits." Eagleton writes that "the current debacle in Iraq ... has rekindled a rabid Islamophobia in the west" and that "all Irwin needs to do to recognise the broad truth of Said's thesis is turn on the television set."
To attack Irwin for being unable to recognize "ideological formations" is to beg the question (that is, to assume the very point being debated), since Irwin's entire, meticulously argued point is that Orientalism was not such a formation. Eagleton's point that the current Islamophobia vindicates Said's thesis is more interesting. In a penetrating and largely favorable review of "Dangerous Knowledge" in the Times Literary Supplement, Christopher de Bellaigue argues that "Irwin's reluctance to expose his discipline to Said's charges of collusion in Empire, post-colonial domination and, more specifically, brutalities committed in the name of Zionism, is the main flaw in an otherwise meticulous and impressive book."
De Bellaigue gives some specific historical examples of such collusion and justly criticizes Irwin for ignoring them. He also makes a legitimate point that Irwin erred by ignoring the contemporary influence of the eminent Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis, who, Bellaigue notes, has used his academic authority to push his support for Bush's "war on terror" and to issue "mischievous and misleading" pronouncements about an inevitable war with fundamentalist Islam. A strong supporter of Israel who has published widely in popular journals, Lewis was invited to the White House by Dick Cheney to discuss Mideast strategy. Lewis is, in effect, Said's right-wing counterpart -- but those who hold Said's views are never invited to the White House. (Jimmy Carter, a former president whose new book is critical of Israel, isn't even supported by his own party.) The wide acceptance of Lewis' neoconservative ideas in America, and their implementation by the Bush administration, support the idea that a racist "ideological formation" which sees the Arab/Muslim world as depraved and violent does indeed exist. <blockquote>
I'm sure many of the people on this list will cheer this critique of Said and a generation of scholars who've tried to deal with some very complicated issues--and who's critiques have led to changes in our cultural life that now, in retrospect, make the original critique seem incorrect. I get this all the time from my students, male and female, who say that feminism is wrong. Usually this is in response to essays written in the 60s and 70s. when I ask why, they list off all the things that, basically, the feminist movement helped to bring about and then coyly admit that these writers might have helped to do that, but that NOW they're wrong and outdated, along with feminism itself. That, my friends, is ideology in action.
-s