Ideology After Poststructuralism

Leading scholars discuss ideology and hotly contested post-structuralist theory

Ideology is a hotly disputed term in social and political theory. It continues to generate intellectual dispute more than 200 years after its birth in the fervour of the French Revolution. Most recently, post-structuralists such as Foucault and Deleuze launched a strident critique claiming that 'there is no such thing as ideology', creating a theoretical environment which polarises critical opinion either for or against ideology. Ideology after Poststructuralism aims to end this culture of antagonism by bringing together leading scholars in the field to establish a dialogue between post-structuralism and ideology critique. For the post-structuralists there is a need to generate a sensitive account of ideology so as to bolster their claim that they have a significant contribution to make to social and political criticism. For the ideology theorists there is a need to engage with the post-structuralist critique of ideology without taking the assumptions that post-structuralists have so thoroughly criticised. The essays in this book show how the intellectual posturing of recent decades has closed off debate to the detriment of both post-structuralism and ideology critique.