IDEOLOGICAL CRITICISMS

Ideological and Formal Criticism

"Ideological" criticism can be distinguished from "formal" criticism in a number of ways, but it important to note at the outset that ALL good literary criticism--not just New Criticism or Deconstruction--will involve "close reading" and make references to the formal properties of literature.

"Ideology" has been defined by Marxist critic Terry Eagleton this way:

A relatively coherent but internally conflictive non-homogeneous set of beliefs, representations, and discourses inscribed in material practices and institutions, and, in its dominant capitalist form, generated in part by the nature of economic production, which by constricting social reality in particular modes (sometimes through naturalization, universalization, distortion, systematic exclusion, homogenization etc) so constitutes human subjects as to live their conscious and unconscious relations to that reality in ways which contribute either to legitimizing or reproducing, or to contesting or subverting, dominant forms of political power.

No doubt this is a mouthful, or a pageful, but in any case we should acknowledge, with this definition, the complexity of ideology. That is, ideology is not to be dismissed as "propaganda" or the lies of one's political opponents--most of all, as the definition points out, because it is more or less "invisible" to us most of the time, residing not on the surface of but IN material practices and institutions we take for granted, "constituting" all of us (making us who we are) by mediating (consciously or unconsciously) between ourselves and what we conceive to be "reality." If ideology WERE always perspicuous or apparent to all, there'd be no need for ideological criticism.

Two "material practices" in which we can locate the marks of ideology are literature and criticism. That is, this is not a one-way runway. It is often said that Marxist or feminist criticism brings a certain ideological position to bear on "pure," "neutral" or "beautiful" literary works and thus distorts those works. Understanding ideology allows us to see how Marxist or feminist arguments only approach literature that is itself inescapably ideological itself from another ideological position--that is, another set of "beliefs, representations and discourses" than that which produced the literary work in question. (And of course this explanation is itself ideologically conditioned).

Literature and Ideology

As we've noted already in a lecture on Marxist criticism, Marx saw in every "mode of production" a BASE, the system of economic relations, and a SUPERSTRUCTURE, a collection of political, judicial, religious or ideological institutions which exists to maintain the economic relations (say, between a feudal lord and his serfs, or between the capitalist owner and the wage laborer, or--to shift gears--between men and women) in the BASE. In one sense, the superstructure and all that's there is the "product" of the those in power over the base. In another sense (and this is the sense in which ideology--part of the superstructure--can "contest" or "subvert" the dominant powers that be), the base depends upon the superstructure to re-produce it.

As an element in the superstructure, literature for Marxism is a place where we can usually find the ideology of the powers-that-be inscribed. Granted, not all literature is "affirmative" or agreeable to these powers, but since the means of producing literature has historically been almost always in the hands of those owning the means of other economic production, this is a fairly good bet. Although literature does not simply "hand over" the insidious secrets the superstructure, or the reasons for the masses' lamentable alienation from themselves, it does give ideology a "frozen" form, making it available to LITERARY CRITICS to bring the work of ideology to the consciousness of readers.

Ideological Criticism

So if you haven't guessed already, what ideological criticism comes down to is criticism which sets out to do political work, and that work, for those of you who weren't reading, is to reveal the workings and effects of particular ideological formations--from capitalist laissez-fairism (the target of Marxist criticism) to patriarchy (the target of feminist criticism). Again, every critical method arises from certain assumptions regarding what literature is and what it is for; here (and now we have moved clearly away from New Criticism), literature is not interesting for "itself," but only for the ways in which it can be USED to forward a political agenda. And be careful here: for Marxist criticism, the New Critics' seemingly innocent claim that literature can and should be distinguished from all other discourses and treated in special limited ways is not an innocent but a politically LOADED claim, advancing its own conservative or quietist agenda. In a word, all literature, and all criticism, is in some way political.

In its crudest forms, ideological criticism concerns itself with the CONTENT ("the palm caked hard with dirt," for example, in Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"), but what if a work doesn't concern itself with any of the recognizable traits or qualities of economic or psycho-sexual life and exploitation? Ideo-crit's answer may be that it does not exist to "appreciate" all literature (remember not even New Criticism could deal with all literature) but only to use literature toward its political end. More complex Marxist and feminist literary criticism is able to make nuanced arguments incorporating myriad formal and rhetorical components.