Ideology After Poststructuralism

Ideology is one of the most hotly disputed terms in the lexicon of social and political theory. It continues to generate intellectual dispute more than 200 years after its birth in the fervour of the French Revolution. The most recent battle-lines around the idea of ideology have formed in the aftermath of the strident critique of ideology launched by post-structuralists such as Foucault and Deleuze. Their claim that "there is no such thing as ideology" has created a theoretical environment which polarizes critical opinion either for or against ideology. This work aims to break with this culture of antagonism by bringing together leading scholars in the field to establish a dialogue between post-structuralism and ideology critique. For the post-structuralists there is a need to generate a sensitive account of ideology so as to bolster their claim that they have a significant contribution to make to social and political criticism. For the ideology theorists there is a need to engage with the post-structuralist critique of ideology without taking the assumptions that post-structuralists have so thoroughly criticized. The essays in this book aim to show how the intellectual posturing of recent decades has closed off debate in this area to the detriment of both post-structuralism and ideology critique.