Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology

8. Critical and Classical Theory: An Introduction to Ideology Criticism

8 Critical and Classical Theory: An Introduction to Ideology Criticism Philip Wander Rhetoric and ideology limit choices and guide the decisions of men [and women]. For [they] are influenced in their use of the powers they possess, by the rhetoric they feel they must employ, and by the ideological coin in which they transact affairs with one another. The leaders as well as the led, even the hired mythmakers and hack apologists, are influenced by their own rhetoric of justification and the ideological consolidation that prevails.1 C. Wright Mills Ideology criticism does not represent another technique, a new approach to criticism embedded in some mysterious European intellectual tradition. First introduced by French revolutionaries, the term "ideology" referred to the critical study of ideas. Napoleon, annoyed by attacks on his policies and the myths used to justify them, contrasted ideology with knowledge of the heart and the lessons of history. Ideologues, in his view, were mere intellectuals, impractical thinkers with subversive impulses. Marx appropriated the term and used it to mean the ruling ideas of the ruling class. He stressed the connection between established economic interests and the spiritual formulations in law, religion, and philosophy growing out of them and working in their favor. In the twentieth century, critical theorists, those associated with the Frankfurt school of sociology, noting that even the term "Marxism" can be exploited in defense of an established order, used it to designate the lack of totality or completeness in any attempt to generalize. Ideology, in this view, encompasses not only the partiality or party interest in any formulation, but also the connection between what is embraced or concealed and the interests served by a particular formulation. While one may intone a phrase like "ideology criticism" with a solemn and mysterious look, it lives on in the world of affairs as robust common sense-skepticism not as a well of life, but as a leavening making its way 132 Philip Wander among high-sounding ideals, innocence, and hype. No credo, however lyrical, authentically expressed, or truly believed, should escape crossexamination . Criticism takes an ideological turn when it recognizes the existence of powerful vested interests benefiting from and consistently urging policies and technology that threaten life on this planet, when it realizes that we search for alternatives. The situation is being constructed; it will not be averted either by ignoring it or placing it beyond our province. An ideological turn in modern criticism reflects the existence of crisis, acknowledges the influence of established interests and the reality of alternative world views, and commends rhetorical analyses not only of the actions implied but also of the interests represented. More than informed talk about matters of importance, criticism carries us to the point of recognizing good reasons and engaging in right action. What an ideological view does is to situate "good" and "right" in historical context, the efforts of real people to create a better world.2 IDEOLOGY CRITICISM: CRITICAL AND CLASSICAL THEORY Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbo~ (Sappho) Although I have something against the Aristotelian virtue of moderation and of the mean, I do feel myself drawn to the middle in questions like this (between theorists of continuity and theorists of total discontinuity). In any case one has to look at it as an empirical question: in which historical situations could and should fairly strong continuities be preserved with a declining social formation, and in which situations would almost anything have to be rejected to achieve even the smallest step toward emancipation?4 (Jiirgen Habermas) The theory underlying ideology criticism-Critical Theorys-is not confined to a modern world. There are two related lines of argument here, one embedded in the debate between the modernists and postmodernists , and the other in the debate between the ancients and the moderns. With regard to postmodernism, Critical Theory inquires into the social and political conditions for constructing even a postmodernist future. If the possibility for a future exists, if it represents an alternative, and if a collective effort is required to create it, if in other words postmodernism is able to get beyond witnessing the unpresentable to conceive of the possibility for acting, it too will entertain the effort to draw together the Critical and Classical Theory 133 displaced, decentered, deconstructed, and the marginal. In this moment, archaeological sites, carnivals, and rock concerts give way to more functional staging areas. In this...