Ideology, racism, and critical social theory

Philosophical Forum

Volumn 34, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 153-188

  Shelby, Tommie ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 49749102707     PISSN: 0031806X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9191.00132     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. Karl Marx. "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction," The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978) 54
2. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997) xxx
3. See, for example, H. B. Acton, The Illusion of the Epoch: Marxism-Leninism as a Philosophical Creed (Boston: Beacon, 1957) 172-79, 192-213
4. Martin Seliger, The Marxist Conception of Ideology: A Critical Essay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)
5. Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
6. and Michael Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996)
7. For example, Elster contends that "the Marxist theory of ideologies has had its full share of obscurantist and pretentious expositions. In addition to the usual pervasiveness of ill-founded functional explanations, this domain also offers great scope for arbitrary explanations in terms of "similarities" or "homologies" between thought and society. With some notable exceptions [here he cites G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978) ch. 5
8. and Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory], the practitioners in this area have engaged in fric-tionless speculations that have brought it into deserved ill-repute." Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) 460
9. See, for example, Pierre L. van den Berghe, Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1978)
10. John Gabriel and Gideon Ben-Tovim, "Marxism and the Concept of Racism," Economy and Society 7 (1978) 118-54
11. Leo Kuper, Race, Class, and Power: Ideology and Revolutionary Change in Plural Societies (London; Aldine, 1975)
12. John Rex, Race Relations in Sociological Theory (New York: Schocken, 1970)
13. Stuart Hall, "Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance," Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (Paris: UNESCO, 1980) 305-45
14. Robert Miles, Racism (London: Routledge, 1989)
15. Barbara J. Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America," New Left Review 181 (1990) 95-118
16. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Racisms," Anatomy of Racism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990) 3-17
17. Colette Guillaumin, Racism, Sexism, Power, and Ideology (London: Routledge, 1995)
18. Lawrence Bobo, James R. Klugel, and Ryan A. Smith, "Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Antiblack Ideology," Racial Attitudes in the 1990s, ed. Steven A. Tuch and Jack K. Martin (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997) 15-41
19. Thomas C. Holt, The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)
20. and George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)
21. For useful discussions of the history of this usage, see Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (San Diego: Harcourt, 1936)
22. Jorge Larrain, The Concept of Ideology (Athens: University of Georgia, 1979)
23. and Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991)
24. See, for example, Clifford Geertz, "Ideology As a Cultural System," The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic, 1973) 193-233
25. There is logical space left open for an evaluative conception of ideology that expresses approval. In the hands of its originator, Antoine Destutt de Tracy, the term "ideology" did have a positive sense, as opposed to a negative or merely neutral one. See David McLellan, Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1995) 5
26. and Christopher L. Pines, Ideology and False Consciousness: Marx and His Historical Progenitors (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993) 36. But since this position on ideology is not one taken by Marxists - or anyone else these days - I leave it aside
27. Against the current "post-Marxist" tendency to adopt a neutral conception of ideology (which also happens to be the received view among mainstream social scientists and historians), Jorge Larrain has argued forcefully for the need to retain the critical sense of ideology. See, for example, his "Stuart Hall and the Marxist Concept of Ideology," Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (London: Routledge, 1996) 47-70
28. Compare Louis Althusser. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," Lenin and Philosophy (New York: Monthly Review, 1971) 45
29. also see his "Theory, Theoretical Practice and Theoretical Formation: Ideology and Ideological Struggle," Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists & Other Essays, ed. Gregory Elliot (London: Verso, 1990) 24
30. This is not, of course, to suggest that from an explanatory, moral, or political point of view these media are any less important. For an insightful analysis of the role of mass media in the production and dissemination of ideology, see John Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture: Critical Social Theory in the Era of Mass Communication (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990)
31. This idea is developed in Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1987) 119-52
32. Charles Taylor, "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man," Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Geertz 208-13
33. and Fredrickson, Racism, chs. 1-2
34. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 17
35. See Appiah, "Racisms" 4-5
36. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International, 1970) 65
37. For example, Arthur de Gobineau, "Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races," Gobineau: Selected Political Writings, ed. M. Biddiss (London: Cape, 1970)
38. or, more recently, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free, 1994)
39. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1., trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Vintage, 1976), ch. 1
40. For a particularly helpful discussion of the relationship between phenomenal forms and ideology, see John Mepham. "The Theory of Ideology in 'Capital,' " Issues in Marxist Philosophy, vol. 3, ed. John Mepham and David-Hillel Ruben (Sussex: Harvester, 1979)
41. Also see Stuart Hall, "The Problem of Ideology: Marxism without Guarantees," Stuart Hall 25-46
42. Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" 162
43. Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979) 188
44. Jon Elster, "Belief, Bias and Ideology," Rationality and Relativism, ed. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982) 123
45. Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989) 21
46. Larrain, Concept of Ideology 48
47. Kai Nielsen, Marxism and the Moral Point of View: Morality, Ideology, and Historical Materialism (Boulder: Westview, 1989) 98
48. Richard J. Bernstein, The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976) 109
49. John Torrance, Marx's Theory of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 191
50. Allen W. Wood, Karl Marx (London: Routledge, 1981) 118
51. There is a debate over whether Marx's conception of ideology is epistemic. See, for example, Joe McCarney, The Real World of Ideology (Brighton: Harvester, 1980)
52. Charles Mills, " 'Ideology' in Marx and Engels," Philosophical Forum 16 (1985) 327-46; and Pines. However, my concern is not so much with what Marx "really" meant by "ideology," but with providing a reconstruction of the notion that will be useful for present theoretical and practical purposes within a broadly Marxist framework. I therefore will not pause to enter into this exegetical dispute
53. Also see Hall, "The Problem of Ideology" 33-40
54. Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)
55. and Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 2001)
56. William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)
57. and When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Knopf, 1999)
58. Also see Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993)
59. There is no doubt that Marx believed that many normative belief systems are ideological. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels repeatedly refer to moral, political, legal, religious, aesthetic, and philosophical ideas as "ideological" or "illusions." Of course, this does not mean that they must think all such ideas in each of these categories are ideological, but it is clear that they believe that at least some ideas from each are. See Marx and Engels, German Ideology 47, 60, 67-68, 80
60. and Charles Mills, "Marxism, 'Ideology' and Moral Objectivism," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 24 (1994) 373-94
61. For strong versions, see Donald Clark Hodges, "Historical Materialism in Ethics," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 23 (1962) 1-22
62. Anthony Skillen, "Marxism and Morality," Radical Philosophy 8 (1974) 11-15
63. Andrew Collier, "The Production of Moral Ideology," Radical Philosophy 9 (1974) 5-15
64. and Richard Miller, Analyzing Marx (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), ch. 1
65. Moreover, some have thought that aesthetic beliefs and theories can be ideological. For a compelling statement and defense of this view, see Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984)
66. There have been important Marxist responses to postmodernism. See, for example, Terry Eagleton, Illusions of Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996)
67. Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991)
68. Norman Geras, Discourses of Extremity: Radical Ethics and Post-Marxist Extravagances (London: Verso, 1990)
69. and Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987)
70. See, for example, Ashley Montagu, Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (London: Oxford University Press, 1974)
71. K. Anthony Appiah, "Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections," Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race, K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)
72. and Naomi Zack, Philosophy of Science and Race (New York: Routledge, 2002)
73. For a historical perspective with a focus on antiblack ideology, see Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North CarolinaPress, 1968)
74. and GeorgeM. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character andDestiny, 1817-1914 (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1971)
75. Also see Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997) 53-62
76. In speaking of "racialized groups," I follow Lawrence Blum's definition of racialization: "the treating of groups as if there were inherent and immutable differences between them; as if certain somatic characteristics marked the presence of significant characteristics of mind, emotion, and character; and as if some were of greater worth than others." See his "I'm Not a Racist, But.. . ": The Moral Quandary of Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002) 147
77. See, for example, Elster, Making Sense of Marx, ch. 8
78. Zizek; Pines; and David Weberman, "Liberal Democracy, Autonomy, and Ideology Critique," Social Theory and Practice 33 (1997) 205-33
79. Friedrich Engels, "To Franz Mehring, 14 July, 1893," The Marx-Engels Reader 765-67
80. Cf. Elster, "Belief, Bias and Ideology" 147
81. and Roger S. Gottlieb, "A Marxian Concept of Ideology," Philosophical Forum 6 (1975): 391-92
82. See Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Genealogy of Morals," in On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Vintage, 1967) 15-166
83. and Sigmund Freud, Future of an Illusion, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961)
84. and Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961)
85. See, for example, Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Community or Chaos? (Boston: Beacon, 1967) 27
86. Habermas makes this point forcefully against Foucault's account of the relationship between power and knowledge. See his The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity 273-76
87. In fact, to focus exclusively on the epistemic inadequacies of a form of social consciousness while ignoring its oppressive practical consequences would be to turn the critique of ideology into the mere criticism of ideas - something that would be very un-Marxian indeed. See Charles W. Mills and Danny Goldstick, "A New Old Meaning of 'Ideology,' " Dialogue 28 (1989) 417-32
88. and Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" 132-33
89. Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Ballantine, 1992) 184-206
90. Dinesh D'Souza, The End of Racism: Principles for a Multicultural Society (New York: Free, 1995) 245-87
91. Guillaumiri 61-98; Barbara J. Fields, "Ideology and Race in American History," Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) 143-77
92. Anthony W. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
93. and Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000)
94. Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki, The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); and Mendelberg, esp. ch. 4
95. Cornel West, "Race and Social Theory," Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (New York: Routledge, 1993) 265-67
96. also see his "Marxist Theory and the Specificity of Afro-American Oppression," Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988)
97. See Edna Bonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," American Sociological Review 37 (1972) 547-59
98. and "Abolition, the Extension of Slavery, and the Position of Free Blacks: A Study of Split Labor Markets in the United States, 1830-1863," American Journal of Sociology 81 (1975) 601-28
99. Also see W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (Cleveland, OH: Meridian, 1964) 17-31
100. and David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1999)
101. Nietzsche often engages in this form of critique. See, for example, On the Genealogy of Morals. Foucault is perhaps the most influential contemporary proponent of this approach. See, for example, Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1995)
102. and The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1990)
103. For further argument in favor of this view of racism, see my "Is Racism in the 'Heart'?" Journal of Social Philosophy 33 (2002) 411-20
104. Marx and Engels, German Ideology 41
105. See Capital, vol. 1., 677
106. and Marx and Engels, German Ideology 47
107. Also see, Cohen, Marx's Theory of History 330-31
108. For a (somewhat abstract) discussion of some of the ways in which structures of oppression are socially reproduced, see my "Parasites, Pimps, and Capitalists: A Naturalistic Conception of Exploitation," Social Theory and Practice 28 (2002) 381-418
109. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971)
110. Indeed, Marx and Engels sometimes suggest this explanation themselves. See Marx and Engels, German Ideology 64-65
111. Elster, "Belief, Bias and Ideology."
112. Oliver C. Cox, Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (New York: Monthly Review, 1959)333 n
113. See G. A. Cohen, "Forces and Relations of Production," Analytical Marxism, ed. John Roemer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
114. Giddens 167; and Larrain, Concept of Ideology 47
115. See, for example, Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon, 1971) 280