What is ideology?

The recent press coverage of my colleague, professor Pierre de Vos’s critique of a speech by advocate Jeremy Gauntlett, made me think about the question of ideology again. In his critique, De Vos writes: “For me what would be interesting and worthwhile would be to have a conversation (or even a heated argument) about the ideological assumptions underlying Gauntlett’s critique. We all come from different perspectives and make different assumptions about the nature of the legal system we would like to see in South Africa. These are not uncontested and for me the problem with Gauntlett’s argument is that it attempts to erase or hide the politics and ideology on which his argument is built and pretends to come from a neutral place.”

For this statement, many commentators on the blog lambast De Vos. One reader writes that De Vos provides no rationale or evidence from which it can be reasonably deduced that Gauntlett’s argument is ideologically motivated. A reader who calls him/herself “spoiler” accuses De Vos of “diving off” into ideological assumptions himself. So it continues, with references to Marxist ideology and also to “ideologically self-pleasing black holes” like the arms deal. Having read through the comments, I found myself wondering whether these commentators really know what ideology means or stands for when they use it. Moreover, do I myself still understand what ideology amounts to?

At this point I found myself reaching for the works of one of the most prolific writers on ideology alive today, Slavoj Zizek — the man they call the most dangerous philosopher in the West. One of the primary reasons why Zizek has this reputation is because of his relentless critique and exposure of the ideological constructions distorting / moulding reality today. How does Zizek understand ideology? What is it for him? Zizek gives a broad definition: ” ‘Ideology’ can designate anything from a contemplative attitude that misrecognises its dependence on social reality to an action-orientated set of beliefs, from the indispensible medium through which individuals live out their relations to a social structure to false ideas which legitimate a dominant political power”. What we can discern from this broad definition is that for Zizek ideology is all about falsity, misrecognition or illusion. If we take our leave for a moment from Zizek and consult another famous philosopher of ideology, Hannah Arendt, she tells us that ideology stands basically for the explanation of the entire course of history with reference to one idea (eg the emergence of the master race or the classless society).

Zizek does not necessarily disagree with Arendt on this definition of ideology, but he seems to be far more interested in the pathological effect of ideology, in the fact that (at its purest) it operates as an invisible, blinding force. Ideology in short, is a kind of make-believe in the sense that, in the face of (sometimes) overwhelming evidence to the contrary we continue to believe in whatever it is we believe, most of the time because it is simply too traumatic to our inculcated sensibilities. Ideology has the effect of a false consciousness, a simple (un)conscious refusal / inability to believe or live otherwise. The relationship between ideology and power is also important as the totalitarianisms of the 20th century have illustrated: ideology backed by an insatiable lust for control and power is ultimately murderous.

Zizek’s critique of ideology reminds us that it operates in a cunning, treacherous, elusive way. There is for Zizek a direct link between the liberal pretence of neutrality or a value-free analysis of society and ideology in its purest form. In short, the claim to neutrality is ideology at its purest. Why? Because it consists in pretending to be something that it constitutively cannot be. Society cannot be studied as if it is a phenomenon of the natural sciences, simply because society is not nature. It also cannot be studied as if there is only one way to understand or explain it. In the same way, to pretend (as Gauntlett does) that the notion of “probing critique” in legal academe is to be attached only to the names of a select few white males, is ideological through and through. (Personally, I shudder when considering the psychoanalysis of the use of the phrase “probing critique” in this context.) In the same way, that the answer, in the form of an overtly rhetorical question, Gauntlett put to his audience when referring to a judgement by former Constitutional Court judge Albie Sachs ie “do you share my inability to understand language like that, and the concern that it is inexact because the reasoning is not rigorous?” is purely ideological. It pretends that there can be disagreement, while the answer is in fact already given by the very rhetorical posing of the question ie of course you share my inability to understand the language and my opinion that it is not understandable because it is not rigorous. Here the question poses merely as the ideological form.

Zizek warns us that there is a danger in merely laughing at ideology, because, ironically so, it is at this very point of laughter that we are exposed to the pure hold that ideology exerts over us. It seems to me that if there is a crucial and critical task for legal academia, it is precisely to expose lamentations such as those of Gauntlett for what they are: clever ideological ruses that tragically reveal to us that as legal subjects we do not, in any sense, live in a post-ideological age.