Studying ideology and discourse as knowledge, power and material practices

Abstract

The notion of ideology plays a crucial role in the social sciences in general and discourse studies in particular because it helps us conceptualize, problematize and understand the complex relationship between language use and power structures. In this respect, ideology analysis contributes to a holistic, multilevel and complex understanding of discourse (Shi-xu 2014). The research programs of social scientific approaches to ideology and the still emerging field of discourse studies show several similarities and parallel developments. For both programs, knowledge and power, symbolic realities and their material mediation, as well as the practical production and consequences of knowledge and belief systems are at the very center of interest. During the last century researchers in both fields crossed their way, engaging in debates that enriched the understanding of ideology as a phenomenon as well as of discourse research. It could even be argued that discourse studies were founded on the shoulders of the giants of ideology research. Francis Bacon’s analysis of idola, left Hegelian critique on religion and inverted consciousness fromMarx, to Lukács, and Gramsci’s notion of hegemony have been highly influential when the linguistic turn in social sciences and humanities lead the research agenda to the specific influence of language for the construction of social perception. Here the work of Louis Althusser has to be mentioned. His theory of ideology can be seen as hinge between Marxist notions of ideology and discourse studies. His focus on ideology as representation of an imaginary relationship and a material reality, or the conceptualization of the constitution of subjects through the semiotic practice of interpellation can be understood as a starting point for the arising multidisciplinary research program of critical discourse studies. Finally, Foucault’s work on discourse, power and subjectivation has inspired contemporary scholars analysing knowledge as a political tool that is forming people’s identities (Foucault 1980). Important inputs came also from Fairclough’s work on the relation of ideology and power (1989) as well as from Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) radical stance on hegemony and towards the discursive foundations of realities. Neither discourse nor ideology is a particularly well-defined phenomenon. For both, we can easily find a wide range of definitions (see, e.g. Eagleton 1991; Herzog and Ruiz 2019). In contrast to approaches which perceive ideology as immaterial beliefs, in the last decade we observe a return of ideology critique and theories of ideology in social