Angelus: You and Noam Chomsky can spend the next 10,000 years shouting facts at people until you're blue in the face. Until you develop an inkling of the pull that reified social relationships exercise upon human consciousness, your contribution to effecting any social change will tend towards null."
JM: In other words, for some reason Chomsky does not have access to the theoretical holy writ.
Angelus: " I am referring to the lack of ideology-critique common to all anarchists. Chuck and Noam Chomsky's anarchisms may be far apart, but the "just the facts" attitude is common to both." Angelus: "Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, to take one example. Lot's of detailed institutional analysis (to use his own phrase) of the North American news media. Nothing approaching ideology-critique."
[Angelus writes this even though Chomsky has often said that he is interested in understanding ideology. So I think that it is Angelus that is using the word ideology in the way Carrol ascribes to me in the above post.]
Carrol wrote: "When the problem raised here would occur in my classes I would begin by pointing out that there are more 'things' out there in the world than there are words in any language. It follows that one cannot avoid using the same word for many different 'things,' some of which things will, actuallly, be radically different from each other. Jerry here, I think, responded more testily than necessary through a failure to remember this fact (I'm sure he's aware of it). What often flows from this is that one party in a conversation, while insisting on the Humpty-Dumpty privilege him/herself will deny that privilege to his/her interlocutor."
JM: Perhaps I was testy, but Angelus makes me testy. He speaks as if he has exclusive hold of truth. I think though it was Angelus who was excluding Chomsky from a "critique of ideology". In other words Angelus is saying that when Chomsky speaks of refers to ideology in the vernacular, he is not performing a "critique of ideology" but is simply doing something else that doesn't (or barely) helps us to understand ideology. I wasn't excluding Angelus from such a critique. So if anyone was limiting the meaning of the notion of "critique of ideology" I don't think it was me.
But Angelus excluded Chomsky's writings for what reason? Because Chomsky doesn't share Angelus' view that ideology can be analyzed theoretically, and because Chomsky argues that such terms cannot be a theoretical term. It must be a specialized "critique" of ideology in Angelus' sense of the word or it is not a critique at all.
So I get testy because this idea that there is some kind of scientific way of talking about ideology happens to exclude and if you don't discuss ideology in such a way you are only propping up the status quo, excludes people of my ilk. We are simply wrong. We don't recognize science.
There is a difference between saying that Tq is a useful term when studying society and saying that "Tq1" is a scientific concept, and when used scientifically can only be used in the context that the scientific theory puts it. For any term Tq it is possible to use the term as "Tq" or "Tq1".
Carrol wrote: "Let me resort to artificial symbolism. I shall use Tq to refer to that feature of any social order which Angelus and I (probably with some differences) have used the _word_ "ideology" to name. Now it is perfectly possible that Jerry and others would wish to deny that there is anything in the world corresponding to Tq. Perhaps according to them Tq like unicorns or golden mountains, simply does not exist, except as a concept in the heads of those who speak of it. If there are those on this list, Jerry or others, who deny the social reality of Tq, a debate over that would be illuminating, _if and only if_ it did not involve pointless squabbles over the meaning of the word "Tq." We can't debate the existence of unicors if some say "unicorn" means a mystical horse-like animal with horn extending from its forehead while others claim it means a beast of burden used in Tibet."
JM: But I am not questioning the "existence" of a phenomena that can be labeled "ideology". I think we are referring to a real phenomena. Obviously Chomsky acknowledges the phenomena also, for instance:
""Critical analysis in the ideological arena seems to me to be a fairly straightforward matter as compared to an approach that requires a degree of conceptual abstraction. For the analysis of ideology, which occupies me very much, a bit of open-mindedness, normal intelligence, and healthy skepticism will generally suffice." Chomsky.
Carrol writes: "CBC, AN (and others) want to insist that what I here name "Tq" not only exists but that an understanding of it at a theoretical level is of great importance in understanding the world we live in."
But this is precisely the starting place of the argument. It pertains to issues that have come up in this forum often. In my view Angelus does not show much understanding of the limits of theory, but again that is the point which must be measured by debate and discussion. I would be willing to discuss why good theories are thin and deep, etc., and why in these areas we don't have good theories, but Angelus has already concluded that such arguments only excludes you from talking about ideology in the first place. Angelus does not discuss the point specifically, he just excludes all of us who have a different understanding from actually discussing the phenomena.
So already there are three problems in relation to Angelus' way of putting these matters: (To take up your symbolism I distinguish "Tq" which is "Tq-simpliciter" and "Tq1" which is "Tq as a theoretical concept".) 1) He has to show that "Tq1" is proper in the theoretical context he claims and therefore his restricted definition of "Tq" holds, in this theoretical context. This means that Tq1 offers more explanatory power than Tq simple and that the theoretical context is the source of this explanatory power. (2) He further has to show that my use of the term Tq in natural language is somehow restricted, or should be dismissed, by his use of "Tq1" in the context of theory. And (3) I think he further has to show that his use of "Tq1" does not find a vernacular expression in Chomsky's or my use of Tq, further more Angelus seems to be saying that "Tq1" cannot be expressed by using Tq on principle, that anyone who expresses Tq outside of a theoretical context is in principle wrong. I think he has to do all of this if he is to maintain his dismissiveness of Chomsky in the particular way he is dismissive of Chomsky. Because note, Angelus maintains that Chomsky offers no critique of ideology, and in fact seems to maintain that he doesn't "really" discuss ideology at all. (I may be wrong on this last point but Angelus certainly leaves this impression.) Angelus does not do any of this and never has.
On the third point it is equivalent to saying that physicists who explain the view of space-time as derived from relativity theory in the vernacular language are doing something wrong or illegitimate or are somehow doing harm to relativity theory.
Carrol wrote: "And one more thing: If a writer (for example) offers a powerful description of Tq WITHOUT, as it happens, using the word "Tq," that does NOT mean that that description cannot, usefully, by others be labelled an "Analysis of Tq." "
I think you are referring here to the fact that Marx does not use the term ideology after 1857 and does not use it at all in his major publish work _Capital_. In the mean time Angelus recommends _Capital_ as an example of "ideology critique." Well in good. I too believe that _Capital_ is a good critique of the ideology of economic thinking. But nowhere in _Capital_ is the term "ideology" thought through as a theoretical concept. Angelus seems to maintain that ideology is somehow central to Marx and to the tradition of Marx and that discussion of "ideology" on a theoretical level is impossible without accepting his view of Marxism, and perhaps discussion of ideology-simple is impossible without Angelus' access to theory. The idea that the term "ideology" is central to Marx is a post-1914 construct that arose for interesting reasons in the intellectual history of marxism. This does not say anything necessarily about "ideology", but Angelus seems to present a bit of a Whiggish view of his theoretical musings.
Carrol wrote: "I have not in this post attempted to descirbe Tq or to provide any analysis of it. My only point is to clarify usages of the word "ideology," and to indicate that the word is and has been used (quite legitimagely) to label rather different things."
Me too. It is Angelus you should be correcting here.
Jerry Monaco
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