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Mike Cormack provides through this book a vital contribution to
the dynamism and excitement of a subject like ideology and its
relevance to cultural analysis. He draws from a range of fields
such as journalism, television, film, fiction thereby combining
the approaches of both the humanities and the social sciences,
bringing an enormous array of innovative material into the
system of critical discussion. He argues that the dissident
individual belongs to the category of free subjectivity, a
position from where he can analyse the Althussserian concept of
"Ideological State Apparatus" as well as the
"Repressive State Apparatus." One is overt, the other
is covert, using ideology through the institutions of religion,
education, mass media and parliamentary system to manipulate the
public opinion. The state thus represents the dominant class
that uses the ISA to produce the dominant ideology that is made
up of myths and beliefs essential for the maintenance of a
society’s hegemonic status.
But here one has
to be a little sceptical towards Althusser’s view of ideology
as "a massively determining force against which individuals
have little power to react." This would completely overrule
the dissident voice that refuses to be silenced. Writing dissent
has been the great instrument of intellectual freedom. It
unlocks our full humanity going beyond the laws and conventions
that govern civil and domestic life. And at this juncture of
human history when we are faced by innumerable wars and
terrorist anathemas, we are aware of dissident writings that
remain indispensable to the realisation and defence of all those
values that define our free will and thus ourselves. Such
writings give access to the whole spectrum of imperialist
intervention in different parts of the world during the last
century.
Mike Cormack makes
it clear that ideology interacts with the cultural production of
"meanings and value," which, according to Raymond
Williams, use language as a material form that depends on
"specific technologies of writing" and
"mechanical and electronic communication systems". The
book has the potential both to interact with and to intervene in
central practices and beliefs of the innumerable ideologies,
which the writer first identifies and then challenges.
As is clear from
Cormack’s arguments, the controlling ideology comes in clash
with the marginalised voices that lead to historical change and
cultural contradictions. It is a commitment to the
transformation of a social and political order which is
blatantly exploitative. The state policy uses ideology to
reinforce power and authority. To achieve this the process of
consolidation and containment is always at work, with an all-out
effort by the state machinery and the various institutions to
subvert any opposition. The tenuous relationship between power
and subversion comes under consideration in the understanding
and demystification of the legitimising basis of ideology. If
the cultural materialist perspective is applied to the
understanding of the working of ideology, it becomes clear that
the purpose is always to bring out the restrictions and
falsifications in human experience brought about by the dominant
order. Politics and performance is of singular interest in the
political interpretation of world events and the other relevant
political documents along with any other evidence to support the
case that rejects all essentialist views of the state
ideological programme. For example, the repeated interrogation
and subversion of the ideological foundations of the American
foreign policy and the contextual influences on different
nations that have come under western dominance go towards a
textual reproduction of economic and political mileage. The book
demonstrates historical and cultural change through the
evaluation of political strategies and their reproduction in the
mass media that particularly fosters a favourable image of the
establishment. Thus, a selfish, political dimension of state
politics emerges from such a study. Universal truths and trust
in single dominant political models stand rejected by the
cultural and political dimension of diversity.
Such a method of
oppositional politics involves the understanding of the
historical context and a textual analysis of false beliefs
founded on contradictions and inconsistencies that misrepresent
political motives. For example, you speak about introducing
democracy in Iraq, but your underlying agenda is to put up a
favourable regime that will align itself with all programmes of
economic gain. Ideology gives a clear overview of the
subject along with a number of case studies from politics, and
other cultural products for the understanding and manipulations
of cultural phenomena where "interpellation" and
"subject formation" become intrinsic to the
ideological analysis of any text or audience.
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IDEOLOGY
is the active collection of social relations and the social
production of meanings; it is the representation a society gives
itself in order to maintain its self-image. The understanding of
social and political structures and the way they impact individual
psychologies has to be understood in terms of language, media and
the education system that operates as a science of ideas. This
science of ideas in the Marxist sense works to bring about
distortion of beliefs and ideas.
