Kamis, 02 Desember 2010

About Ideology and Cultural Practices


Introduction

The word 'ideology' does have such a bad connotation in everyday life. He is associated with deception, mystification, duping, and political conflict. His name was attached to irrationality, emotional, and blind fanaticism. Ideology attached to the memory of violence and conflict a war between the Western bloc led by the United States and the Eastern bloc under U.S. control.

Moreover, the history of ideological war has killed millions of people in the second world war, plus millions of other victims of Nazi Germany's government-led Hitler's fascism. After the world war which was won by the Western bloc and the victory of neoliberalism in the economic understanding of trade, and the observers had to rush to claim that the 20th century this was the end of the world's ideologies. A full period marred by violence, intrigue, and political conflict.

Connotative views about the concept of this ideology actually can be traced from the history of the term dipergunakannya own ideology. This term is a derivation of the ideologues who emerged after the French Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte used the term ideology to attack his political opponents who have ideas that are not realistic kepenntingan associated with the new French-country interests at the time. [1]

Furthermore, Marx and Engels gave a systematic elaboration of the ideology. Connotative color is still so embedded in their views. Marx used the term ideology to attack and expose distortions, illusions and inversions that form the philosophical tradition of Hegelian idealism Germany.

By basing ourselves on the method of historical materialism, Marx criticized the ideologists of Germany is that their minds alienated from life. Marx's opinion, capitalism has given birth to an understanding / knowledge that does not reflect the actual reality (false knowledge), that is the reality of class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat in the industrial-capitalistic society. [2]. Knowledge that does not reflect reality or the awareness that teralenasi of praxis is called ideology. Ideology is a false representation about the man and the world because it considers the existing situation as natural, ahistorical, and memistifikasi a social order. In connection with society, ideology is part of the superstructure that serve power of economic substructure. Ideology legitimates the social and economic relations, as well as ruling-class weapons. [3]

Classical view of ideology is now reaping the sharp criticism. Classical view and connotative about ideology has obscured the fact, that ideology actually operate in the realm of everyday life, even more dominant in a particular social order. Even the ideology as a cultural practice relative has its own autonomy, and can not be reduced simply productive forces and economic groups. In everyday culture, the folk performing arts, Tayub, ketoprak or ludruk art, even in the ritual istighasah, [4] for example, can be ideological, or entered by the various interests and power. Ideology is no longer centered person and a political doctrine of power, but scattered in the realm of everyday life, as power is dispersed in the entire social order.

To understand this phenomenon, I utilize many insights of thinkers and philosophers (post) structuralist, especially Louis Althusser [5] and Michel Foucault [6] as well insihgt of the discipline of anthropology and history that contributed to something very important in the development of the concept of ideology and culture .

Foucault and Power Production


Sharp critique of the ideology of Marx's view was conducted by Michel Foucault. According to Foucault, Marx still trapped in a dream and longing for a form of truth or knowledge that is free of distortion, deception and illusion. He is tempted to contrast between false knowledge and true knowledge. That the idea or knowledge that reflects the reality that is true. Here Marx considers more prior reality of ideas and mental life are secondary to the economic determinants of material. While her ideology should be contrasted with what was perceived as truth. [7]

According to Foucault, discourses, knowledge-knowledge and its institutions penopangnya in itself does not contain categories of right or wrong. Because every society and every era has its own forms of discourse in which those truths are built. Truth is the attainment of knowledge systems that control the social order which contains the techniques, the procedures, types of discourse, and technology developed.

The issue of "truth" is always associated with power relations in social and political sphere. "Truth is not outside power" [8]. Because the truth is in many ways and practices of human life in regulating themselves and others. Truth is produced by the formation of regions where the practice is right and wrong can be created in all the rules and relevant. Therefore, every science has its own regime of truth.

How is power and truth that relate to each other? According to Foucault, the second is in the discursive practices, a place where words, actions, rules are applied, the reasons given meet and interact, as well as right and wrong are determined in it. Through archaeological research, Foucault investigates documents, places, and a variety of worker and public ritual, a place where the genealogy of the forms of history ("moral technology", "regime of rationality") is present: Such as: the practice of clinical medicine, imprisonment as punish the practice generally, and how crazy people are considered mentally ill. Through this historical evidence, Foucault pointed directly at the practices of power. Type these practices are not only governed by institutions, is determined by ideology and guided by pragmatic circumstances, but also affects their regularity, logic, proof strategies themselves and their reasons.

Thus it can be said that ideology is actually interwoven-kelindan with discursive practices in a society where power relations take place and the truth is created.

Althusser and Ideological Apparatus

If Foucault suggests that power is spread in social relations through discursive processes, Althusser contributes to how ideology operates and how the ideologies are reproduced and maintained.

First of all by refusing to Marx, he argues that we can not possibly capture the true reality because we depend on the language. At most, we can only feel but not the 'real state', the ways in which we have established in ideology through the processes of recognition complex. According to Althusser, ideology does not reflect the real world, but rather represents the "imaginary relations" of individuals against the real world. For Althusser, ideology is a necessary feature of society as far as communities are able to give meaning to form its members and changing existential conditions. Human society hide ideology as the elements and atmosphere which is indispensable for breath and life of their history. [9]

Second, ideology has a material existence, namely apparatus and its practices so that ideology can live in it. In the apparatus and ideology of these practices are believed and internalized by all groups, and continues to reproduce the conditions and relationships existing social order, ie, capitalist industrial society. According to him, for ideology is accepted, believed and internalized by all groups, then he should dimaterialkan. The ideology of living in small group practices, in images, and objects used and designated community, and within these organizations. For example, in schools, households, trade organizations, media, sports, courts, political parties, universities and so on. Ideology, according to Althusser, exist in and through these institutions kembaga. The apparatus is the material existence of ideology. [10]

Third, the ideology of the individuals forming the subject of concrete. [11] In the apparatus, ideology and diinterpelasi socialized within the subject. Interpellation this subject and form the reality appears to us as 'true' and 'clear'. For example like this: when we ride a motorcycle, suddenly there was a whistle behind us. Concurrent imagined in our minds: there is no violation of the police and that maybe we do. Then we looked away and turned around. The presence of the disposition of the 'right / wrong', or 'breaking / not breaking' and the subordination of the discourse of the authorities (police) basically have demonstrated the presence of an ideology. Ideology move ourselves in non-conscious, through a subjective process of interpellation. If if we do not recognize that the interaction with police is ideological, precisely where the power of ideology. Namely 'denegasi' practical than ideological character of its own. Ideology works in non-conscious and become part of life and everyday lifestyle.

Apparatus of ideological hegemony is a tool [12] the most sophisticated to preserve the authority, to preserve the structure of the dominant class, and perpetuate oppression. How, with try as much as possible for the ideology that was believed by all classes and groups, both ruling and ruled class. According to Althusser, this is where the characteristics of confusing ideology played a role. "The function of ideology is the class that the ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling class; Ideology ruling helped the ruling class in control of the exploited class as well as establish itself as the ruling class." [13]

The theory of ideology as a fraud ruling shows that those who are in a dominant position actually was not present naturally or because of his expertise. Because if so then no longer needed an ideology, nor do I need to explain or defend their exploitation. Instead it shows the persistence of social stratification-dominant political and ideological legitimacy requires both sides of the rulers and ruled. When ideology is accepted by both parties, this means that the power structures and unequal privelegi it could be preserved. In this context, ideology often use the "language of reciprocity". He pointed out that imperialism considers itself legitimate because they feel responsible or deserving bertanggng build social units and the importance of harmonious social relations. [14]

What Althusser put forward provides new insight about the idea of how ideology is formed and maintained and what its effects. For example: how institutionalized class distinctions through social institutions such as schools, how the educational institutions that put the community in relationship classes that exist, how the myth of individual equality, equal opportunities, and achievements of individuals included in the text and the practice of school programs and education policies national. Common myths that grew up in the "production of inequality" (the production kelomopok inequality and social class, gender discrimination, for example) show that ideological ideas. [15]

Other ideological function is to connect people to each other, with a world and especially themselves. Ideology provides a specific identity. [16] For example, if an individual believe in God then go pray regularly, confess his sins and so on, then realized in the belief that certain practices are governed by rituals by providing ceremonies involving motion and posture as an expression of power are interlinked and related to the ideological apparatus.

From the examples above it is clear that an idea to load as well as action, sentiment, and gesturenya. Ideas that live in the actions. This action then become everyday practice controlled by the ritual that he did. These three things (ideas, practices and rituals) are the material aspects of the ideological apparatus. In the ideological apparatus to work, produce subjectivity, and confirms the identity of who we really are.

Ideology as a Cultural Practice

The more clearly now, the ideas of Althusser and Foucault on top gives a large share of new thinking about the concept of ideology. Ideology is no longer seen as right or wrong, but precisely to provide the basic framework is fundamental to the individual in interpreting experience and 'live' in accordance with their conditions. This basic framework is not only mentally, but exist as a practical day-to-day life groups. With regard ideology as material practices or cultural practices, then we can say that ideology is alive because it moves and also man himself always lived in an ideology, in particular in the representation of his world.

In the cultural practices and habits of everyday real ideology is reproduced. Namely, through the ideological apparatus as defined by Althusser. If so, the practical ideology of entering the entire space in everyday life we are non-conscious. Ideology becomes an organic part of the social totality and in daily activities. [17] Because of social units is an ideological formation, the product of discursive formations of power (according to Foucault), or the effects of varying ideological apparatus (Althusser language), then to understand the totality of social and cultural needs "exegesis" as historical texts and literature.

The view that culture and ideology is a daily phenomenon does not necessarily mean the grip of ideology has been weak, or may be deemed to have ended. Indeed, ideology and power has gripped the entire social order is more extensive and complex than what had been imagined. Ideology operates in all lines and are produced continuously in rituals and gatherings, arts-art, and images-images in which ideological representations and categories generated and disseminated. Therefore, ideology is now no longer be understood simply as a product ruling class or the effect of the forces of production. Rather it results from a combination of various other elements and power complex and scattered.

In the current cultural discourse, as the view of Stuart Hall, culture indeed no longer be understood as a reflection of other practices in the world of ideas. But he himself is a practice, namely the practice of "tagging" that generate meaning. So for the structuralist and post-structuralist, cultural studies emphasis is now shifting from the problem of cultural content to the types of arrangement (ordering), the question of what to how that culture systems. [18] For example, in the era of globalization marked with advances in technology and means of communication today, people actually fed by the production of consumption. Here the power of capital to bring the power of representation through the power of signs and symbols: in advertising and fashion, for example. Political consequence is that the entire social order is actually the result of a course of construction, and concurrent with, the power of capital which is produced continuously.

In short, ideology is now a cultural practice, an effect that is culturally and related institutions, groups, and certain structures. Ideology operates in 'spread' (decentered) and presents itself in the 'ideology-as-culture.' That is, ideology is in the complexity of the relationships between various forms of culture (knowledge, images, etc.) and its institutions, as well as discourses and apparatus-apparatus.

Then the question if the culture of everyday not out of ideology, what about the science of science. Is he too ideological? Foucault asserts that power relations are not beyond the types of relationships such as economic processes, knowledge relationships, sexual relationships, and others. Rather it is precisely the power immanent in the process of the relationship. [19] Power is a diverse power relations that operate and establish the organization in that space. Thus, social science now also be viewed as a configuration of forces that shape the landscape of modernity and late modernity. Social science itself is a strength and a culture that is not free from interest. Likewise, natural science. He also could not be separated from the interests or the consensus of the scientific community.

From the above description more clearly now how great a contribution to the (post) structuralist especially Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault in enriching the notion of ideology and culture. Both unmasked the operation of ideology with rethinking the rule, how to work, and manifestation manifestations, not least in social science. There is no location boundaries of ideology. Ideology does not just exist in the collectivity of bourgeois society or the structures of wealth and their work, but spread to the entire social order. He is not merely mental, but also material and historical existence. There is a linkage between knowledge and institutions, areas of knowledge and cultural practices as a place of power (social, economic, political) is produced.

Conclusion

Today we can no longer think of ideology and how it works in the sense of false consciousness or memperlawankannya with science, as do the classical Marxist. Ideology as a knowledge-knowledge which is run by an interest in precisely into everyday cultural practices that provide orientation and identity of a group. Ideology scattered as scattered power in the discursive practices of life.

Ideology enter in our daily life, in the web of life. By borrowing the study of myths and signs, can be said that if the culture is a symbol system that consists of various systems of signs, while the markers themselves are arbriter as Barthes says, then we really could see how a culture and all forms of ritual and daily life days into the arena of ideological struggle for power plays. Culture is a social convention is the target of systematic to be made as if scientific, into myth. [20] Dismantling the rules or codes behind the myth is the task of cultural studies today.

Reading Material:

Althusser, Louis, For Marx, (transl. By B. Brewster), Routledge, New York, 1969

Amrih Widodo, The Stage of the State, Art of the People and Rites of Hegemonization. This paper was presented at a seminar titled "bases Material Culture" organized by the Foundation spes and the Graduate Program Satyawacana Christian University, Salatiga, 4 September 1991

Budianta, Melani, et al, Linguistics Discourse Analysis of the Deconstruction, Publisher Channel, Yogyakarta, 2002

Hebdige, Dick, subculture The Meaning of Style, Routledge, London & New York, 1979

Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Billing & Sons Ltd., Guilford, London and Worcester, 1969

Foucault, Michel, Power / Knowledge: Selected Interview with Michel Foucault "(ed. By Colin Gordon), Pantheon, New York, 1980

Gluckmann, Miriam, Structuralist Analysis in Contemporary Social Thought, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and Boston, 1974

Jenks, Chris, Culture: Key Idea, Routledge, London & New York, 1993

Larrain, Jorge, Concept of Ideology, Publisher LKPSM, Yogyakarta, 1996

McCarthy, E. Doyle, Knowledge as Culture, Routledge London & New York, 1996

Poster, Mark, Existential Marxism in Postwar France From Sartre to Althusser, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1975

Zizek, Slavoj (ed.), Mapping Ideology, Verso, London-New York, 1994

Storey, John, Theory of Culture and Pop Culture (terj.), Publisher Pen, Yogyakarta, 2003

Thompson, John B., Analysis of Ideology, Publisher IRCISOD, Yogyakarta, 2003


[1] E. Doyle McCarthy, Knowledge as Culture, Routledge London & New York, 1996, p.. 32

[2] Perhaps the easy example is the absence of understanding in ita awareness that what we buy at the market or shopping malls are the result of the exploitation of the workers.

[3] Mark Poster, Existential Marxism in Postwar France From Sartre to Althusser, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1975, p.. 344. Can be compared with E. Doyle McCarthy, Knowledge as Culture, Routledge London & New York, 1996, p.. 33

[4] In the tradition there is a ritual that became NU NU identity known as istighotsah. He pleaded to God means prayer of salvation and awake from the catastrophe. As a tradition, istighasah in its development did not escape the influence of interests and power. Istighasah than as a ritual prayer, he could also become a symbol of resistance NU marginalization by New Order regime. Sometimes he became the strength of the defense power of certain elites.

[5] Athusser was born in Algiers the French structuralist thinkers in 1918. He joined the Communist Party in 1948. His work is influential is For Marx (1965) and Lenin and Philosophy (1969). His thinking should reconcile Marxism and structuralism

[6] Foucault is a thinker poststrukturlis. Born in Pointiers, France, in 1926. Completed studies at the Ecole Superiore Normanle 1946, then deepen to reach licensing philosophy Thun 1948. He also won a license in psychology is also a diploma in psychopathology. He had joined the French Communist Party until 1951. His works are Maladie mentale et personnalitte (mental illness and personality) published Thun, 1954, Histoire de la Folie (History of Madness), The Birth of Clinic, Archaeology of Knowledge, Disciplines and Punish and The History of Sexuality. He died in 1984 in the age of 57 due to AIDS.

[7] E. Doyle McCarthy, Knowledge as Culture, Routledge London & New York, 1996, p.. 37

[8] Foucoult, The History of Sexualiy, hl. 131-133 quoted from E. Doyle McCarthy, Ibid. p. 38

[9] See, John B. Thompson, Analysis of Ideology, Publisher IRCISOD, Yogyakarta; see also John Storey, Cultural Theory and Pop Culture (terj.), Publisher Pen, Yogyakarta, 2003, hal.160-172

[10] Quoted from E. Doyle McCarthy, Ibid., P.. 41.

[11] E. Doyle McCarthy, Ibid. things. 41-42

[12] Althusser did much to take the ideas of Antonio Gramci mainly about the organic intellectual. Organic intellectual is intended by Gramsci focused on individuals, but Althusser use it on the community collective organic intellectual. That is the power of the state with its ideological apparatus. Althusser have called ideological State Apparatus (ISA), which is ideological. This he confused with Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) that is repressive. Description of Althusser, "Ideology and ideological State Apparatus (Notes toward Investigation)" in Slavoj Zizek (ed.), Mapping Ideology, Verso, London-New York, 1994.

[13] Quoted from E. Doyle McCarthy, op.cit., P.. 39

[14] With this idea was very noticeable that Althusser really a genuine Marxist, that bourgeois ideology is not only owned by the capitalists but also diapropriasi by the proletariat. Here a vague idea about the importance of Gramsci's hegemony to reach consensus are very visible.

[15] E. Doyle McCarthy, Ibid. things. 40

[16] Ibid. things. 41

[17] Amrih Widodo in research antropologinya to show Tayub in Blora, Central Java showed that Tayub which was originally a folk show or part of the ritual circumcision, Deso clean, and the marriage began to change during the period 1987-1991. Government to enter its ideology (the interests of the tourism industry and regional symbols) with 'improving status' into Art Tayub. Among others by conducting training and upgrading programs to change the structure and origin of Tayub. See Amrih Widodo, The Stage of the State, Art of the People and Rites of Hegemonization. This paper was presented at a seminar titled "bases Material Culture" organized by the Foundation spes and the Graduate Program Satyawacana Christian University, Salatiga, 4 September 1991.

[18] Quoted from E. Doyle McCarthy, op.cit., P.. 44

[19] Foucault, Power / Knowledge: Selected Interview with Michel Foucault "(ed. By Colin Gordon), Pantheon, New York, 1980, p. 94, quoted from E. Doyle McCarthy, Ibid. things. 44

[20] Barthes apply the methods that are rooted in linguistic culture into social phenomena seperrti photos, movies, food, clothing, and so on. In studies of culture, Hebdige well blended the ideas of thinkers like Althusser, Gramsci and Barthes is to understand cultural phenomena such as lifestyle subcultures. See, Dick Hebdige, subculture The Meaning of Style, Routledge, London & New York, 1979, especially the first section "From Culture to Hgemony".


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