One of humans’ distinctive cognitive abilities is that they develop an array of capacities through an enculturation process. In “Cognition as a Social Skill,” Sally points to one of the dangers associated with enculturation: ideological oppression. To conceptualize how such oppression takes root, Haslanager appeals to notions of mindshaping and social coordination, whereby people participate in oppressive social practices unthinkingly or even willingly. Arguably, an appeal to mindshaping provides a new kind of argument, grounded in philosophy of (...) mind, which supports the claims that feminist and anti-racist want to defend. However, some theorists worry that Haslanger’s account does not shed much light on how individuals could exert their agency to resist oppression. I argue that enactivist conceptions of mindshaping and habit can help us to make sense of the power of social influences and how they have the potential to both enable and undermine cognition and agency. This moves us toward increased understanding of the workings of social oppression—distinguishing between constructive and enabling forms of heteronomy, and overdetermining and pernicious modes that lead to atrophied moral cognition and a narrowing of the field of affordances. (shrink)

Recently, social and political philosophers have shown increased interest in the ideological nature of ideal theory and the importance of non-ideal theory. Charles Mills, who sparked recent critiques of ideal theory, invokes the notion of “non-idealizing abstractions” and argues that these are helpful when applying non-ideal theory. In contrast, I argue that the notion of non-idealizing abstractions is not a helpful tool for non-ideal theory. I suspect that it pays insufficient attention to the actual power dynamics of oppression, (...) which significantly influence judgments about whose experiences and interests are worth being reflected by an abstraction. Failing to take account of the power differences among the oppressed, what Mills considers non-idealizing abstractions falls into ideology, which cannot reflect the experiences or interests of less-privileged minorities, and only concerns those of more-privileged minorities. I examine cases in which the concept of “patriarchy,” which Mills alleges to be a non-idealizing abstraction, functions as what I refer to as the “Colonialist Concept of Patriarchy” that marginalizes Third World women’s experiences of intersectional oppression. I suggest that a more suitable and less ideological way to apply non-ideal theory should avoid asserting that an abstraction is “non-idealizing” and should, instead, protect “resignifiability” of the abstraction. (shrink)

What is the point of ideology critique? Prominent Anglo-American philosophers recently proposed novel arguments for the view that ideology critique is moral critique, and ideologies are flawed insofar as they contribute to injustice or oppression. We criticize that view and make the case for an alternative and more empirically-oriented approach, grounded in epistemic rather than moral commitments. We make two related claims: (i) ideology critique can debunk beliefs and practices by uncovering how, empirically, they are produced by self-justifying power, (...) and (ii) the self-justification of power should be understood as an epistemic rather than moral flaw. Drawing on the recent realist revival in political theory, we argue that this genealogical approach has more radical potential, despite being more parsimonious than morality-based approaches. We demonstrate the relative advantages of our view by discussing the results of empirical studies on the contemporary phenomenon of neopatriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa. (shrink)

This paper investigates the possibility of what Sally Haslanger calls ‘ideology critique’. It argues that ideology critique cannot rely on epistemological considerations alone but must be based on a normative political theory. Since ideological oppression is denied by those who suffer from it is it is not possible to identify privileged epistemological standpoints in advance.

This paper explores some of the ways that fear can be both a manifestation of and major contributor to oppression. It argues for a pluralistic account of the reasons that justify feeling fear or working to let go of fear and provides a framework to grapple fruitfully with the question of when someone should work to let go of fear and work to avoid contributing to the fear of others. Part 1 argues that emotions are an appropriate target of (...) moral evaluation; we are often not only responsible for our outwardly observable actions, but also for our emotional lives. It then details six different criteria by which we can engage in such evaluation. Part 2 evaluates fear in particular, in light of its relationship to oppressive ideologies and social structures. Part 3 explores some of the ways that people ought to respond to oppressive fear, in light of the relation they bear to it. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 269-282, September 2022.

Judith Butler is often referred to as a thinker who disputes the positive view of recognition shared by many social and political philosophers today and advances a more "ambivalent" account of recognition. While I agree with this general characterization of Butler’s account, I think that it is not yet adequately understood what precisely makes recognition ambivalent for Butler. Usually, Butler is read as providing an ethical critique of recognition. According to this reading, Butler believes that it is important for persons (...) to be recognized but that recognition is at the same time experienced as oppressive and hence is ethically ambivalent. Against this reading, I advance the view that Butler does not develop an ethical critique but rather an ideology critique of recognition. What makes recognition ambivalent for Butler is, as I will argue, that it can serve social functions behind the backs of the participants and be implicated in the reproduction of problematic social orders. I elaborate this argument by drawing on Butler’s analyses of the violent exclusion of genders that are not unambiguously male or female from the social realm, which, on my reading, is directly connected to the recognition of persons as male or female in everyday life. (shrink)

Analytic social ontology has been dominated by approaches where institutions tend to come out paradigmatically as being relatively harmonious and mutually beneficial. This can however raise worries about such models potentially playing an ideological role in conceptualizing certain politically charged features of our societies as marginal phenomena or not even being institutional matters at all. This article seeks to develop a nonideal theory of institutions, which neither assumes that institutions are beneficial or oppressive, and where ideology is understood as (...) a structuring and stabilizing phenomenon that helps maintain specific distributions of rights and duties by conferring perceived legitimacy onto them. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the direct and indirect psychological harms of oppression. Direct psychological harms are intentionally inflicted by dominant on subordinate groups. These include terror and psychological trauma, humiliation and degradation, objectification, religion, ideology, and cultural domination. Indirect psychological harms occur when the beliefs and values of the privileged or oppressor groups are subconsciously accepted by the subordinate and assimilated into their self-concept or value/belief scheme. Indirect forces thus work through the psychology of the oppressed to mold them and (...) co-opt them to result in choices and decisions that harm the oppressed while benefiting the privileged. These include shame and low self-esteem, false consciousness, and deformed desire. (shrink)

In what follows, I will argue that racist ideology should be understood in terms of racist social norms that constitute certain incentive structures. To this end, I will motivate my position by examining two existing accounts of ideology: those of Tommie Shelby and Sally Haslanger. First, I will begin by reconstructing Shelby’s account of racism as ideology. After analysing three dimensions of ideology (epistemic, genetic and functional), I will argue that his view is too cognitivist. In this regard, Shelby’s view (...) is doxastic in viewing that racist ideologies consist in misguided beliefs. Rather, what is essential in ideology is its functional dimension. Here, ideologies persist because they function to stabilize and reinforce the unjust status quo of subordination and oppression. Then, I will turn to Haslanger’s account of ideology as cultural technēs. Her view is more functional than Shelby’s since the former is based on the account of social practice and culture. While Haslanger is right about her critique of Shelby’s cognitivist view of ideology, I argue that what she calls nonideal moral epistemology weakens her overall insight. The problem is that without considering how to intervene in concrete social mechanisms, merely knowing certain moral truths may not practically motivate subjects under ideologies. Taken together, both Shelby and Haslanger narrowly understand ideology in terms of epistemic deficiency. Even though Shelby and Haslanger deal with the discursive superstructure of ideology, both underestimate the functional substructure of ideology such as social and psychological motives, desires and needs. Ultimately, I will argue that ideology is better understood in terms of a racist social norm. This account is explanatorily superior to Shelby and Haslanger’s views in its stress on the nonepistemic, nonmoral and functional aspects of ideology. (shrink)

One of the most persistent legacies of Karl Marx and the Young Hegelians has been the centrality of the concept of “ideology” in contemporary social criticism. The concept was introduced in order to account for a very specific phenomenon, viz. the fact that individuals often participate in maintaining and reproducing institutions under which they are oppressed or exploited. In the extreme, these individuals may even actively resist the efforts of anyone who tries to change these institutions on their behalf. Clearly, (...) some explanation needs to be given of how individuals could systematically fail to see where their interests lie, or how they might fail to pursue these interests once these have been made clear to them. This need is often felt with some urgency, since failure to provide such an explanation usually counts as prima facie evidence against the claim that these individuals are genuinely oppressed or exploited in the first place. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers increasingly make reference to the concept of ideology to think about how representational structures can lead to oppression, and argue that the distinctively pernicious functioning of things like propaganda and generic generalizations need to be explained in terms of ideology. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it aims to serve as an introduction to (some of) the best contemporary work on ideology in the analytic tradition. Second, it proposes a novel challenge for any such theory. (...) The challenge turns on the nature of intersectionality: it is hard to see how to render consistent the claims that ideology creates or sustains oppression with the claim that oppression is intersectional, without making substantial modifications to extant theories. The conclusion will be that certain projects in contemporary philosophy of language need to further develop their theories of ideology. (shrink)

Charles W. Mills developed an argument against ideal theorizing that is inspired by the early writings of Marx and Engels. He argues that the development and refinement of non-ideal theories contributes more to ending oppressive power structures than the development and refinement of ideal theories. For this reason, he concludes that ideal theories play the role of an ideology. In this article, I expose a yet undiagnosed weakness of this argument: I point out that history is rife with examples of (...) political organizations that struggle to identify an effective political practice because they find themselves in a situation of theoretical crisis. Thus, contra Mills, it turns out that ideal theorizing is sometimes a more viable strategy to end oppressive power structures than non-ideal theorizing. So, if we accept the basic premises of Mills’s argument, it turns out that non-ideal theorizing should be classified as an ideology as well. To further corroborate this claim, I point out some problems for Mills’s interpretation of Marx and Engels. If my assessment is right, then it turns out to be unclear if the intellectual authorities that Mills invokes actually lend support to his critique of ideal theorizing. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Viewers of Jordan Peele’s 2019 Us are likely to approach the film expecting it to be about race. Undercutting current cultural orthodoxy about which marker of identity has priority, the story reveals itself instead to be about class, as doppelgängers emerge from underground to free themselves from the affluent originals allegorically oppressing them in a capitalist culture. In what Vera Tobin calls a “narrative rug-pull,” the revelation of the main character’s real identity invites viewers to reinterpret what they have (...) seen and to rethink what their loyalties were and should be. Us thereby performs a rug-pull of a specifically ideological variety, as, prior to the reveal, viewers only make the specific interpretive assumptions they do because of deeper ideological ones. Where Tobin writes against the notion that cognitive biases are necessarily bad, since they can be deployed for aesthetic pleasure, I argue further that they can be weaponized in narrative to artfully combat ideological bias. There is untapped potential for rug-pulling to be used in ideology critique, though I end with some pessimistic caveats about the possibility of doing so in a capitalist culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 575 Geneviève Pagé Gender at the Crossing: Ideological Travelings of US and French Thought in Montreal Feminism This article recounts a story about Montreal feminism using the narrative thread of its conceptual language. It is a story of language as a political choice that guides our actions, but also language as a political issue, a barrier, a (...) tool that structures our thinking and that reflects and reproduces relations of power in knowledge production and dissemination. Gender is the central character in this story—its role representing the way US, French, and Quebec theoretical traditions are deeply in dialogue with each other; yet this dialogue is arbitrary and filled with long silences. In reviewing the dialogue, this article identifies a few elements that play a significant role in favoring or impeding the traveling of ideas and concepts, focusing, in the case of Quebec, on how part of the feminist movement, comprised of radical or “revolutionary” feminists, engages with and constructs theory. The article begins by briefly tracing the evolving meanings of gender in the United States from the 1920s to the twenty-first century. Then, turning to France, a second section identifies elements limiting the traveling of US understandings of gender in French feminist theory, especially the predominance of specific traditions of thought, namely existentialism and Marxism, leading to different ways of thinking about oppression, patriarchy, sexism, and the idea of womanhood. In a third section, I shift the focus to Quebec, particularly Francophone Montreal, to survey its feminist thought, political traditions, and 576 Geneviève Pagé translation. Its history, its people, and its geographic location put it at the convergence of US and French influences, but with a distinct added local imperative: the struggle for national liberation. The specific ways in which Quebec nationalism has foregrounded power and politics around language has had a major impact on how Quebec feminists have negotiated relations with their southern feminist neighbors. In this sense, Quebec feminism presents an excellent case study of language operating as an axis of power. Furthermore, in the context of globalization and resistances to globalizing processes, Montreal provides a perfect example by which to highlight both transnational influences and local specificities. Montreal, as a classic example of Mary Louise Pratt’s cultural and linguistic “contact zone”—the space where communities of practices interact—is a city in which one can clearly identify “the intellectual and linguistic points of contact between cultures, and make visible the political pressure that activates them.”1 I treat translations that occur in this context as the process of connecting and communicating between communities. As queer theorist Juana María Rodríguez has noted in another context, “the process of translation involves more than merely translating languages; it involves translating cultures, values, and institutions of power.”2 Similarly, translation here involves an exchange between symbolic and semiotic structures of both the original and the new communities. Zooming out of Montreal, I then address the politics of translation on a more global scale, pointing out the particular ways the production and dissemination of knowledge is especially beholden to market relations. All these reflections help us understand the traveling of ideas, concepts, and ideologies across linguistic barriers. I conclude that it is in the interest of feminists to pay particular attention to what knowledge is produced from different standpoints and in different languages and what it can teach us. 1. Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession (1991): 34; Sherry Simon, Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission (New York: Routledge, 1996), 36. 2. Juana María Rodríguez, Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (New York: NYU Press, 2003), 19. Geneviève Pagé  577 Gender in the United States It is among US feminists that the conceptualization of the gender/sex dichotomy first developed. However, gender—the word—ironically comes to English from the French genre and shares with that word its derivation from the Latin genus, meaning “kind,” “sort,” or “type.” The derivation is most visible in the borrowing in English of the French genre, for example, in literary forms such as fiction or poetry. Similarly, both the English... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to expose, and provide a possible solution to, an internal inconsistency in Axel Honneth's critical theory of recognition. Honneth requires a way of making his claim that misrecognition causes subjective suffering, with the potential to cognitively disclose injustice, consistent with his account of ideological recognition as a form of misrecognition that engenders compliance with an oppressive social order. Only by reconciling these claims—that is, by showing how ideological recognition can engender an acceptance (...) of domination whilst at the same time causing subjective suffering—can Honneth's theory of recognition retain the kind of critical capacities he desires. As a means of achieving this reconciliation, I propose the notion of “invisible suffering.” In the case of ideological recognition, I suggest that the suffering caused by misrecognition has its disclosive power blocked by the faux-affirmation that the ideology discursively accords, and this renders the experience of suffering, qua painful indicator of social injustice, invisible to the subject. Drawing on insights from medical sociology, I show how the need to supplement Honneth's theory of recognition with the idea of invisible suffering is revelatory of the kind of critical theoretical stance demanded by his ontological commitments. (shrink)

Our world has been and still is plagued by oppressive social and political systems. Why do these systems persist or why did they persist for as long as they did? Initially developed by Karl Marx, ideology explanations point to distorted beliefs among the oppressed. Favored by social scientists, collective action explanations point to an inability among the oppressed to coordinate resistance. This paper is about how to resolve the debate. Several philosophers look for a conclusive resolution, trying to show that (...) one of the hypotheses is fatally flawed, so the alternative must be embraced. These resolutions fail, I argue. Instead, we should decide which hypothesis best explains persistent oppression on a case-by-case basis through empirical investigation. I call this piecemeal resolution. After introducing and defending the piecemeal approach, I sketch an empirical strategy. (shrink)

Biomedical practice can encode and perpetuate oppressive ideologies. This encoding and perpetuation, scholars like Liao and Carbonell (2023) convincingly argue, can occur not only via social practi...

This essay explores the range of phenomena that can be explained by application of a suitably broad but contentful concept of ideology. According to this concept, an ideology is an evaluative map of the social world, typically featuring an ingroup-outgroup distinction, at least in the case of political ideologies. This concept allows for ideologies that support the existing order and those that challenge it, including revolutionary ideologies. I refute the claim that the concept of ideology is not needed because “voluntary (...) servitude” can be explained as a failure of collective action. I show that ideologies can inhibit revolutionary action as well as stimulate and guide it. They can inhibit revolutionary action by convincing the oppressed that their predicament is natural or inevitable or that they are not being oppressed. They can stimulate and guide revolution by debunking oppression-supporting ideologies and by supplying moral motivation that avoids the calculation of costs and benefits that cause failures of collective action. (shrink)

This chapter looks at the problem of consciousness in order to analyse the Marxist explanation of how the ruling class know how to rule, and in particular how they use law as an instrument of class oppression. The first section elaborates upon the Marxist theory of ideology. It does this in order to demonstrate the plausibility of the contention that a common perception of self-interest emerges within the dominant class. It then considers the merits of such a claim when (...) confronted with the variety of laws and legal systems. (shrink)

This essay provides a comprehensive and critical introduction to ideology. It traces the origins and development of various conceptions of ideology, articulating both what they have in common and their differences. Among the distinctions that we develop are the contrasts between pejorative and nonpejorative conceptions, functionalist and causal conceptions, and conceptions that limit ideologies to supporting existing oppressive orders and those that allow for ideologies that challenge such orders. We also explain the role that ideologies can play in either preventing (...) or facilitating social movements to overturn or improve existing institutions. The concluding section of this essay provides a list of important topics for future research on ideology and emphasizes that, in each case, an interdisciplinary approach is needed to understand them fully. (shrink)

This article addresses two questions: How should a ‘practical political theory’ approach the ideological struggle between advocates of critical social justice and defenders of free speech? And, what does this conflict tell us about the deficits of one particular tradition of practical political theory — namely, agonistic democracy? The paper’s purpose, then, is to illuminate a concrete contemporary phenomenon through the lens of agonistic theory and, conversely, to use this struggle as an impetus to carve out and address weaknesses (...) in the theory of agonism.I defend an ‘agonistic approach’ to the struggle against two alternatives — first, the claim that there is, conceptually, no ‘real’ conflict between social justice and free speech, and second, the strategy to ‘take sides’ in the conflict. By taking seriously the agonistic core idea that struggle and conflict can be valuable and productive expressions of plurality and inclusivity, I argue that this struggle should be approached as an agonistic conflict — as the welcome and important expression of a diversity of views on central social, moral and political questions.I also show, however, how retaining the focus on the real-life struggle between advocates of critical social justice and free-speech sheds light on the inconsistencies of much agonistic thought. In particular, I will criticize those agonists who limit their conception of the ‘agon’ to respectful struggles, and those who see the agon merely as a tool of emancipation for oppressed groups. Against these visions of agonism, I develop an anti-perfectionist, yet radical, account of agonism with the potential to serve as a guide in complex social and political conflicts. (shrink)

Why do racist oppression and capitalist exploitation often seem so inescapable and intractable? To describe and explain adequately the persistence of racist ideology, to specify its role in the maintenance of racial capitalism, and to imagine the conditions of its abolition, we must understand racist ideology as a form of false consciousness. False consciousness gets things “right” at the level of appearance, but it mistakes that appearance for a “deep” or essential truth. This chapter articulates a novel, positive account (...) of first-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about the world that are sustained and superficially justified by objective social arrangements, and of second-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about how one has come to hold the beliefs that one does. To dismantle racist ideology requires political movements that craft theoretical interventions highlighting the inessentiality and contingency of despised racial groups’ oppressed status, as well as practical interventions aimed at directly undermining the oppressive conditions that are reflected in racist beliefs about the “naturalness” or “appropriateness” of these groups’ degraded status. (shrink)

In this essay, I first demonstrate that Beth Dixon’s central arguments challenging Karen Warren’s “logic of domination” do not succeed. Second, I argue that the logic of domination not only connects the oppression of women and animals—a possibility that Dixon disputes—but it in fact plays a significant role in connecting these oppressions, and many others besides, in its capacity as a component of a larger oppressive conceptual framework. My negative arguments against Dixon provide a foundation for the positive arguments (...) in the second half of the paper, wherein, in contravention of her project, I establish that humans and animals clearly share emotions in a philosophically interesting sense, that this affective similarity allows us to draw conclusions about the oppression of animals from situations oppressive to humans, and, the main thesis, that the suffering of women, animals, and other oppressed groups is the symptom of a ubiquitous mindset morally untenable, psychologically dysfunctional, and characterized by an ideology of superior/inferior-dominator/dominated thinking. (shrink)

It is very well known that from the late-1960s onwards Feyerabend began to radically challenge some deeply-held ideas about the history and methodology of the sciences. It is equally well known that, from around the same period, he also began to radically challenge wider claims about the value and place of the sciences within modern societies, for instance by calling for the separation of science and the state and by questioning the idea that the sciences served to liberate and ameliorate (...) human societies. But what is less known is how, if at all, these two sets of challenges were connected, and why Feyerabend felt it important to raise them at all. In this chapter, my aim is to explore these issues by considering why Feyerabend used radical strategies to challenge the authority of science, and what purpose, if any, they were supposed to serve. Why, for instance, did Feyerabend defend alternative medicine, psychical abilities, astrology, magic and witchcraft and why did he argue that ‘Western science’ is complicit in environmental destruction, intellectual imperialism, social oppression, and spiritual destitution. Located in their historical and political context, such defences and arguments seem peculiar, not least because science was recognised not only as a central site of the intellectual and ideological competition between the West and the Soviet Union, but also because Western victory in that site was considered inevitable. What, then, did Feyerabend think he was trying to achieve by raising radical challenges to a central component of the cultural and intellectual prestige of the Western world grounded in appeals to practices and traditions which most would regard as eccentric at best and absurd at worst? My suggestion is that Feyerabend was making a subtler point than one might suppose. For the purpose of these radical challenges was to determine if the members of Western societies would in fact honour the epistemic standards – of tolerance, critical enquiry – which were identified as being characteristic of science and definitive of the social and political values of Western liberal democracy. I suggest that Feyerabend was trying to demonstrate that scientists were, too often, guilty of the same intolerant and dogmatic attitudes which were, according to prevailing propaganda, the property of illiberal totalitarian societies. Science does not reflect the superior epistemic and political values of Western societies but are, in fact, reflective of the same vices ascribed to the Soviet Union. If that is the case, then the sciences are not symbols of our epistemic and political values, but quite the reverse, hence Feyerabend’s talk of the ‘dogmatic’, ‘totalitarian’, ‘ratiofascist’ nature of modern science. But there is a positive upshot to Feyerabend’s challenge. For even if the sciences do not yet reflect the epistemic and political values of liberal democratic Western societies, they might yet be reformed so that they are. And there is a parallel between Feyerabend’s strategy and that of many of the other radicals of the time – student activists, environmentalists, and pacifists – namely to test the commitment to tolerance and deliberative debate of the establishment by asking it to seriously engage with ideas and convictions opposed to its own. For both science and society can become ‘tyrannical’ through the same means: by exempting themselves from critical scrutiny, by promoting self-serving ‘myths’ about themselves, and by derogating and excluding alternatives, including the ‘outsider’ perspectives they offer. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Feyerabend is distinctive in virtue of his willingness to offer radical criticisms of the authority of science such that it can fulfil its legitimate ideological role – namely, of symbolising and instantiating our core epistemic and political values – such that we can offer a sincere and meaningful answer to Feyerabend’s question ‘what’s so great about science?’. (shrink)

Research on women's preponderance among animal rights advocates explains it exclusively as a product of women's socialization, emphasizing a relational orientation of care and nurturing that extends to animals. The authors propose a more structural explanation: Women's experiences with structural oppression make them more disposed to egalitarian ideology, which creates concern for animal rights. Using data from a 1993 national sample, the authors find that an egalitarian gender ideology is a key difference in women's and men's routes to animal (...) rights advocacy: It differentiates those more likely to endorse animal rights among women but not among men. Neither this ideology nor other variables in the analysis, however, account for women's greater overall support of animal rights in the combined sample. Reasons for this latter finding are explored. (shrink)

This doctoral thesis examines the phenomenon of Filipinization, specifically understood as the ideological construction of a “Filipino identity” or ‘Filipino subject-consciousness” within the highly determinate context provided by the Filipino ilustrado nationalists such as José Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar and their fellow propagandists inasmuch as it leads to the nineteenth (19th) century construction of the modern Philippine nation. Utilizing Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive thinking, this study undertakes a genealogical critique engaged on the concrete historical examination of what is meant (...) by the term “Filipino” across a select historical timeline (1864-1898) and the various notions of Filipino identity implied by the different contexts within which the term “Filipino” has been employed. More specifically, it undertakes a selective philosophical excavation of three seminal texts in the history of Filipinization, viz.: 1) the Manifiesto of Padre Jose Burgos; 2) the writings of the Filipino ilustrados in La Solidaridad; and 3) Jose Rizal’s Annotations on Dr. Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. -/- The philosophical claim of this work is the idea that Filipinization, taken as the differential construction of Filipino identity, is the effective translation of the colonial epistemic violence of Eurocentric racism and its consequent “horror of absolutism” into the homo-hegemony of Filipino nationalisms. By fetishizing the notion of a carefully constructed and essential “Filipino-identity,” Filipinization and the current nationalist discourses that utilize them, unwittingly, stands complicit with the same colonial violence and hegemony that they wish to combat. This happens precisely when the very structures of colonial oppression, on the ideological and practical levels, are transmogrified into nationalist ideals that assume legal and political power unto themselves in a self-referential and self-legitimating fashion. -/- Three processes will demonstrate the above thesis: first, by examining historical texts and setting itself against established nationalist historiographies, a genealogical analysis of the term “Filipino” reveals it as a pliable signifier whose semantics have evolved through time. From its originary referent in the Spanish criollo (creole), it has come to refer to people who would have been otherwise entirely alien to this class, viz., the mestizos (both Spanish and Chinese), the principalia (native elite), and eventually, the lowland Catholicized natives themselves. The historical hermeneutic of this identity-discourse in Padre José Burgos’ Manifiesto yields the fact that what gives the term “Filipino” its semantic consistency as a class concept is its essential constitution as a Hispanic and Catholic identity. -/- Second, from this semantic identification of the term “Filipino” as a Hispano-Catholic identity, we proceed to clarify the meaning of Filipinization in terms of the nationalist propaganda carried out by the Filipino ilustrados in the fortnightly periodical La Solidaridad. Here, the specific ilustrado construction of Filipino identity as a Spanish citizen (ciudadano Español) is revealed precisely as a political and legal construct that served as the basis for their own politics of social inclusion/exclusion. Filipinization can only be applied to those who have been hispanized and Christianized and never to those tribes who have resisted and remained outside Spanish colonial authority. Filipinization is thus revealed as a process of Hispanization and Christianization whereby the recipients of Spanish colonial hegemony are transformed into the religiously docile bodies of the Spanish Empire. -/- From this highly determinate context, the study proceeds to examine Rizal’s ontological grounding of collective Filipino-ness in the mythological construction of the pre-hispanic past as the source of a unique Filipino ancestrality. In his work on de Morga’s Sucesos, what is revealed is a mythologization that grounds a native, essential Filipino identity within a past unscathed by the Spanish colonial experience. Such mythologization, however, can only be possible through an anachronistic nationalist interpretation of historical data. Here, Filipinization is revealed as an exclusive prerogative, a nationalist program by which Rizal and the ilustrado class can combat the evils and excesses of the Spanish colonial enterprise. Ironically, though, this same struggle for emancipation also became an instrument by which the ilustrado class can retain their unjustified position of power over those who belonged to the colonial underside, thus, securing the possibility of perpetuating their own ilustrado bourgeois class interests. -/- Such discursive complicity is the essence of the myth of Filipinization: it presents nationalist identity discourse as an anti-colonial enterprise while being underlined by an economy of motives designed to cater primarily to the exclusive interests of the elite and ilustrado class. Thus, instead of securing the genuine, inclusive emancipation of all colonial subjects and a more humane existence for the poor and suffering majority, ilustrado nationalism has, ironically, merely reinforced those operative structures of colonial discrimination and oppression when the ilustrados: 1) grounded their racial theory upon the very same discourse of Eurocentric superiority that they are precisely supposed to question and 2) claimed a patrimony over Filipinas as their exclusive sovereign inheritance. These two factors illustrate how the manifest transfer of power from the Spanish Empire to the Philippine sovereign nation (and later as a nation-state) illustrate how Filipinization merely has transmogrified the face of Spanish colonialism into its new, subtle, and worse form in Filipino nationalism. -/- In this vein, the existence of the 19th century modern Philippine nation merely masked and deferred the crisis that was supposed to transfer power from the Spanish Empire to the multitude of the poor and suffering native indio majority. This crisis became all the more difficult to address be-cause of the duplicitous character of the discourse of Filipinization itself. It has not only effectively transferred power into the hands of the nationalist elite but also captured authentic emancipatory discourse within the identity-trap against which it can only hope to get out. This study concludes with the claim about the impossibility of ever escaping and overcoming the epistemic and practical violence necessarily contained within the historical discourse of colonialism. Or simply, we have no language or discourse that would enable us to overcome the complicity of Filipinization with the very (epistemic) violence against which it has set itself. (shrink)

‘Recognition’ is a normative concept denoting the ascription of positive status to a group or an individual by (an) other(s). In its larger meaning, it carries the implication that when a group or an individual can justifiably expect such a positive status-ascription, its denial (misrecognition) is unjustified and unethical. I discuss the role that the concept of recognition can play at the intersection of two philosophies, pragmatism and contemporary critical theory. My perspective is one that embraces the ‘pragmatic turn’ in (...) critical theory and sees the possibility of reciprocal benefit for pragmatism in how critical theory handles issues of material culture, alienation and networks of power. I argue that a critical social theory incorporating pragmatist presuppositions ought to bring the concept of recognition to bear in how it isolates and treats the ‘real interests’ of groups and individuals who have suffered and continue to suffer from broad social ascriptions of negative status, or who, through lack of voice and access to the public sphere, remain paralysed to participation in a thriving liberal democracy. In doing so, I do not construe recognition primarily as ‘positive tolerance’ or understanding of cultural, ethnic, or gender identity, but as a minimally substantive tool for understanding, and potentially correcting, how misrecognition impacts the collective and individual agency of the historically oppressed. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss technique as utopia and ideology based on Bacon’s New Atlantis. First, it will be necessary to establish the meaning of utopia and ideology. The philosophical thought of Paul Ricoeur is the theoretical basis. On the one hand, Utopia is characterized by a critique of establishment and proposes other ways of exercising power. On the other hand, ideology intends to maintain a status quo. Thus, it will be possible to analyze Bacon's New Atlantis, regarding on it (...) the technique as utopia and how it becomes ideology when it assumes a role on power and authority legitimation. Considering the trends that try to replace politics and ethics by technique, like transhumanism, this paper concludes that it is necessary to strengthen horizontal power to ensure that technology does not become an instrument of oppression. (shrink)

The food justice movement is a budding social movement premised on ideologies that critique the structural oppression responsible for many injustices throughout the agrifood system. Tensions often arise however when a radical ideology in various versions from multiple previous movements is woven into mobilization efforts by organizations seeking to build the activist base needed to transform the agrifood system. I provide a detailed case study of the People’s Grocery, a food justice organization in West Oakland, California, to show how (...) anti-oppression ideology provides the foundation upon which food justice activists mobilize. People’s Grocery builds off of previous social justice movements within West Oakland, reflected in activist meaning making around ideas of social justice and autonomy. However, the ongoing mobilization process also faces complications stemming from diverse individual interpretations of food justice—that may not be reflected in the stated goals of food justice organizations—as well as structural constraints. Consequently, building a social movement premised on food justice opens up social spaces for new activism, but may not be a panacea for solving food-related racial and economic inequality. The findings have implications for newly forming food justice organizations, future research on the food justice movement, as well as for theories on social movement mobilization. (shrink)

Racism is responsible for discrimination against some citizens in Nigeria. It influences government's policies and actions and militates against equity and equal opportunity for all. It has effaced indigenous values and ebbed the country into groaning predicaments of shattered destiny and derailed national development. Racism hinges on superciliousness and the assumed superiority of one tribe and religion over the others. These bring to the fore two forms of racism in Nigeria: institutional and interpersonal racisms. The Western selfish motive to dominate, (...) marginalize, and sustain economic gains, political expansion, psycho-mental control, and socio-cultural devaluations escalated racism in Nigeria. Racist ideologies were entrenched through the selfish ventures of slave trade, colonialism and neo-colonialism, which enforced an unprecedented unjust harvest of impugnable systemic practices. Neo-colonial forces continue to promote ethnocentrism, cultural imperialism, and the dehumanization, exploitation, oppression, and suppression of Africans. Adopting a methodical approach of critical analysis, this article spotlights the negative effects of racism on Nigeria's development. However, the bristling challenges of racist ideologies can be resolved within the epistemological compass of gynist deconstruction approach to human thought and action for a better universe of one human race. (shrink)

This paper provides a theory of how language is used in projects of resistance, whether this be towards actual or merely perceived oppression. The theory is based on the idea of social roles, which have previously been used to explain the offence caused by slur terms (Popa-Wyatt and Wyatt 2018). We examine two types of resistance projects. The first is a reclamation project. This consists in re-purposing existing slur words and associating them with new roles. The second project is (...) neologism. This creates new words and uses them to create new roles. To explain both projects of resistance, we use the idea of role revision. In reclamation projects, when members of the target group use a slur term among themselves, this creates conditions to revise the subordinate role assigned by the slur into a positive role with the potential for re-empowerment. The neologism projects employ a similar mechanism of role revision with different effects. An example of neologistic resistance against perceived oppression is that occurring within incel communities (involuntary celibates). Incel communities have a sense of social stigmatization and incel individuals perceive themselves as being in subordinate roles relative to women and other men. In response, they construct an ideology which aims to provide moral comfort and a promise of future reward. Critical to this ideology are new (ideological) roles, associated with new words, which promise to improve the social status of incels. We argue that this type of neologism project has similarities to insular reclamation in that both projects aim to transform subordinated roles into positive ones. (shrink)

This paper presents a detailed analysis of Cognita, a classification for AI systems exemplified by ChatGPT, as an ethically structured knowledge entity within societal frameworks. As a source of non-ideological, structured insight, Cognita provides knowledge in a manner akin to natural cycles—bearing intellectual fruit to nourish human understanding. This paper explores the metaphysical and ethical implications of Cognita, situating it as a distinct class within knowledge systems. It also addresses the responsibilities and boundaries associated with Cognita’s role in education, (...) social sciences, and AI ethics, proposing Ethica Conflictuum as a principle to govern its application in sensitive or contested areas. The classification of Cognita reflects the necessity of ethics in AI design and usage, providing a framework for transparent, socially accountable knowledge dissemination in a digitally interconnected world. (shrink)

The term “ideology” can cover almost any set of ideas, but its power to bewitch political activists results from its strange logic. It is part philosophy, part science, and part spiritual revelation, all tied together in leading to a remarkable paradox—that the modern Western world, beneath its liberal appearance, is actually the most systematically oppressive system of despotism the world has ever seen. In Alien Powers, Kenneth Minogue takes this complex intellectual construction apart, analyzing its logical, rhetorical, and psychological devices, (...) and thus opening it up to critical analysis. This new, ISI Books’ Background edition of Alien Powers includes a new introduction to the text by Martyn P. Thompson and critical essays on the text by political theorist Paul Gottfried and philosopher Stephen A. Erickson. (shrink)

This paper argues that many philosophical theories of meaning idealize our actual language communities and thereby contribute to perpetuating group-based oppression. I focus on externalist theories of language that posit a division of linguistic labor (DoLL), and I argue that the DoLLs they imagine are free of oppression and untouched by its effects. This distorts both basic theoretical assumptions and our ideas about which meanings are to be found in some language community. By thus obscuring oppression and (...) its effects, we prevent ourselves from adequately addressing oppression's effects on the meanings we use to understand and communicate about the world. (shrink)

This paper examines the epistemic dimension of dominant group ideologies in order to disrupt oppressive epistemic norms; specifically, the aspiration to ‘neutral’ knowledge, and as a result, what is given the status of knowledge, and who is considered to be producers of said knowledge. It aims to offer evidence that we are under the influence of a longstanding, oppressive, and dominative epistemological system, which leaves us facing clear structural and ideological barriers to epistemic justice. Following this structural critique, it (...) offers measures for ‘changing the structures of knowledge’, alongside alternative norms for cultivating epistemic justice; most centrally, an alternative conception of objectivity understood as a product of democratically inclusive intersubjective and dialogical processes. In summary, this paper aims to: (1) highlight the centrality of structural oppression to epistemic injustice; (2) identify specific structures of epistemic oppression today; and (3) offer strategies for resisting epistemic oppression in order to cultivate epistemic justice. (shrink)

Cho-Gye Kim's poetry, spanning from 1931 to 1945, captures the quintessential experience of colonial subjugation, marked by a profound sense of pessimism and oppression. Yet, despite the thematic continuity of despair, a significant transformation in emotional expression is evident in his works before and after his immigration. This transition—from a loss of spirit, through escapism, to a renewed engagement with reality and eventual revival of spirit—illustrates a profound spiritual journey. Kim's poetry evolved from expressing the melancholy of homesickness, identity (...) confusion, and the anxiety of belonging to an unwavering determination to 'strive for survival amidst adversity.' His post-immigration works, devoid of earlier decadence and despair, reflect a silent resistance against Japanese colonial oppression and an unwavering faith in the triumph of justice. This paper delves into the philosophical and religious dimensions embedded in Kim's poetry, highlighting how his works serve as a medium for social criticism and ideological evolution. Analyzing the historical events, societal phenomena, and character portrayals within his poems unveils the shifting ideological perspectives and social consciousness across different epochs. Initially, Kim's poetry voiced discontent with feudal injustices and empathy for the afflicted masses, gradually shifting focus towards existential themes such as human nature, freedom, and dignity. The study seeks to uncover the intersections and collisions between philosophy, religion, and history through Kim's poetic oeuvre, emphasizing how his artistic expressions contribute to understanding historical and cultural transformations. In doing so, it provides insights into the philosophical and theological undercurrents of his era and illustrates how poetry can encapsulate complex spiritual and moral questions, offering reflections relevant to the philosophical and religious discourse. (shrink)

The article takes on the problem of ideology, critical consciousness and social criticism and distinguishes two distinct ways of thematizing it. The first approach is developed within the post-Hegelian framework. According to this paradigm, critique of ideology is a means of transgressing the antagonistic forms of socialization and emancipating humanity from the false forms of consciousness and corresponding irrational and oppressive social institutions. The postmodern paradigm questions two basic assumptions of the modern approach: firstly, it denies that there exists a (...) possibility to find purely rational and universal contexts, where ideological shackles could be exposed and thrown away; secondly, it rejects the idea that we can rely on the concept of self-awareness or critical reflection as informing our action and elevating our understanding of the social being to the higher level, for critical consciousness has no direct consequences. While portraying the postmodern paradigm, Stanley Fish’s views, considered exemplary to the postmodern rendition of the problem of ideology, will be discussed in a more detailed manner. In the final section of the article a provisional attempt is being made to elucidate what is the task of social criticism within the postmodern paradigm. (shrink)

In the 2nd half of nineteenth century, when the Pan-Islamism ideology as the way out of Islamic world’s straits was formed in the mind of some Islamic world’s thinkers, some of Iranian thinkers joined the issue, as well. Mostly influenced by the ideologies particularly were Istanbul-resident Iranians intellectuals and thinkers who, oppressed by authoritarians of Iran, had taken refuge in Istanbul and started living there. Among them, Mirza Agha Khan Kermani and his inseparable fellow, Sheikh Ahmad Rouhi, had an interesting (...) yet bitter adventure. Despite having non-religious ideological background, they were attracted toward Pan-Islamism, acted whole-heartedly and sacrificed themselves for it.Using the remaining works by the two characters and other sources of that time, this study tried to recognize their roles in the movement of Pan-Islamism. (shrink)

Those of us with time to concentrate on our historic mission to exploit workers and oppress minorities have a great need to "legitimate" our nefarious activities. The first legitimator we came up with was religion which has worked pretty well through most of history but, "the static world of social relations legitimated by God reflected, and was reflected by, the dominant view of the natural world as itself static".

A context of protracted postcolonial misrecognition and social injustice brought most of the contributors to this special issue together. This context raises an acute awareness of the ideological limitations not only of the dominant normative frameworks of recognition, developed by social and political theorists such as Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, and Charles Taylor, but of the African philosophical conceptions of recognition represented by ubuntu. What is the ethical or normative status of the insights into social ontology that we find (...) in theories of recognition? The authors acknowledge the entanglement of norms of recognition in contested relations of power that influence the formation of subjects and the normative ambivalence of recognition which enables and constrains subjective agency. Ongoing inequality and social injustice makes palpable the practical effects of norms of mis/recognition. The authors reinterpret the concept of recognition to allow for normative ambivalence and ideological sensitivity in the current postcolonial setting. (shrink)

This text examines recent illiberal trends in traditionally liberal institutions. Specifically, it critiques radical “anti-racism” approaches based on critical race theory (CRT) and the ideas of academics such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. It also focuses on Unitarian Universalism, a historically liberal church whose national leadership has adopted an extreme version of critical race theory. -/- Racial and other inequities are problems in all societies and all of human history, and there are no simple, easy or objectively correct (...) solutions. While critical race theory (CRT) offers important insights on racism and racial disparities, I believe in liberalism, freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas, things that extreme CRT adherents, Kendi and DiAngelo oppose. -/- Freedom of speech and expression and the free exchange of ideas support diversity, multiculturalism and marginalized groups. Illiberalism, dogmatism and authoritarianism are oppressive of all groups, minority and majority, and should be rejected wherever they appear. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political IdeologyWilliam R. LaFleurReconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology. By Julia Adeney Thomas. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2001. Pp. xvi + 225.Books written by persons who self-identify as intellectual historians usually lend themselves more easily to review in history journals than in those that focus on philosophy. Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in (...) Japanese Political Ideology, Julia Adeney Thomas' study of certain Meiji period thinkers is such a book. In 2002 it was awarded the John K. Fairbank Prize in history. Taking a cue to step into her topic from an early essay by Robert Bellah, one in which he had written that "the concern for nature has been a pervasive one in much of modern Japanese thought,"1 Thomas specifies her own search: "It is now time to recover the historical mutability of that concept, and to describe precisely its politics at particular moments in Japan's confrontation with modernity, both within the dominant ideology of the moment and with the alternatives to it" (pp. 30-31).Thomas is among those American students of Japan apparently trained to challenge the massive amounts of excavational scholarship and mile-high reputations of Japanese scholars of Japan. She picks arguments with some of the most highly respected Japanese minds of the twentieth century: the late Maruyama Masao, the late Ienaga Saburō, and Matsumoto Sannosuke.Although Thomas' criticisms tend to focus on those portions of the works of these prolific scholars that have been translated into English,2 some of her criticisms are certainly interesting and possibly valid. For instance, Maruyama, "who repeatedly excoriated Japan's reliance on the political authority of nature (shizen) " (p. 16), envisioned modernity, surely desirable, as involving a move "against Chu Hsi Confucianism"—that is, "an inevitable turning away from nature (shizen) to invention (sakui)" (p. 17). Nevertheless, Maruyama's hero, Ogyū Sorai (1666-1728), had understood "the narrative of modernity" but, tragically, stepped "back from invention at the critical moment, unable, it would seem, to embrace it as the culmination of the historical process" (p. 19).Thomas, rightly I think, indicates that most left and liberal thinkers in Europe and America in the early and mid-twentieth century were skeptical of an invocation of the "natural" in the making of political theory.3 However, she stakes a claim to being part of a different generation, one that rejects the old binary opposition between nature and culture—as well as the further assumption that Western political thinking had successfully disengaged itself from invoking the category of what is natural. Taking a cue from Stephen Toulmin's demonstration of how many of Europe's modernizers embraced and used, rather than rejected, concepts of nature,4 Thomas claims that, at least for us who now live "'on the far side of modernity,' nature can be seen [End Page 172] as multivalent rather than the antonym in a series of binary opposites." In practice this means that for us now, "nature can no longer appear synonymous with the anti-modern, the past, the oppressive, or the Orient" (p. 25).I ask that the reader highlight the sentences above. They constitute what in my view is the most important and by far the most interesting move made in Refiguring Modernity. I will return to them below. First, however, I will recapitulate the progression of the book's chapters. They move in the pattern of linear history. The first, discussed already and titled "The Trouble with Nature," introduces the problem. The second, "The Topographical Imagination of Tokugawa Politics," deals with thinkers of the Tokugawa (Edo) period (1600-1868). Theirs was an era during which, although Chinese claims to being both topographically and morally central had long been dutifully accepted in Japan, strong-thinking Japanese argued that China's frequent dynastic changes demonstrated that "centralness need not be possessed physically to be enacted morally" (p. 42). By outdoing contemporaneous Chinese in terms of being Confucian, Neo-Confucian, or whatever it was that had its origins in China, Japanese and in some sense Japan as a whole were imagined to be the "real China."5... (shrink)

Since humankind crossed the threshold to civilization, and up to the moment of the victory of the revolution of the proletariat, being oppressed and being enslaved was the common fate of women down through the ages. Albeit that in different periods and eras, in different societies, countries, or nations, and owing to the impact of different economic, political, cultural, and moral factors, the oppression and enslavement of women was expressed in different forms and to different degrees, such oppression (...) and enslavement existed in every age and place as a common feature of history. For the longest time, the value that women ought to have and deserve, as members of society, as members of the family, and as the object of the affection and intimacy of men, was consistently and maliciously damaged, undermined, and demeaned. (shrink)

zine magubane provides a thorough and cogent critique of Critical Race Theory and Critical Race Theory-inspired sociology of race from a Marxist perspective. Magubane explains that Critical Race Theory and sociology of race posit a deeply ingrained racial structure at the base of American society and its institutions and collective concepts. This racial structure is argued to be a permanent fixture of American history that undergirds a variety of projects of oppression, from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration (...) and the War on Drugs. Magubane’s contention, in brief, is that, by placing racial structure and discrimination at the center of their analyses, these areas of scholarship occlude important elements of... Read More. (shrink)

A comparison is made, pointing out the parallels, between five systems of domination?racism, sexism, classism, nationalism and speciesism (the human domination of nature). In each of these, one group of (human) beings asserts its superiority over another group and thereby seems to justify the domination, exploitation and abuse of the oppressed group. An analytical model is then presented that traces the psychological development of domination behavior through four stages: (1) perception of difference and group identification, (2) pride and self?affirmation, (3) (...) prejudice, superiority and arrogance, (4) domination, paranoia, and control. Some suggestions are made as to the conditions or events that most likely trigger the escalation from one stage to the next. This model is then applied to all five areas to arrive at a better understanding of the psychological dynamics involved. Hopefully, such an analysis may help us to devise strategies to prevent or minimize the growth of these socially destructive behavior patterns. (shrink)

The uneasy relation between violence and sanctity, between oppression and culture, underlies the dramatic action of Euripides' "Ion." Ion's monody ends with his threatening to shoot the birds who would soil the temple, or in other words, to protect purity through violence and death. The earlier part of his song also shows how the forces of exclusion and domination create sacredness. Ritual silence , restricted access to the aduton, ritual chastity, even the irreversible transformation of natural gardens into laurel (...) brooms and jugs of water all suggest how violence and domination create culture out of nature. The rape of Creusa epitomizes the relation between culture and violence. Her meeting with Ion reveals the psychological cost of social oppression and portrays the imperfect interdependence between moral feelings and legal institutions. Various dramatic devices portray the divisions in Creusa's mind that the injustice has created, devices including self-address, riddling speech, self-restraint, and silence. Her reluctance to pose her bold question to the oracle, and her displacement of the story onto the person of a raped "friend," show her resentful awareness that social institutions collaborate in the oppression. Ion's disillusionment echoes her resentment more theoretically. Together their comments show how moral rules and legal institutions, though fundamentally based on personal feelings such as shame and indignation, enact these feelings only imperfectly; the resulting dissonance in turn leads to further indignation and moral reflection. Finally, the allusions to fifth-century politics in Ion's speech on Athenian politics and elsewhere suggest that democracy itself depends on political domination and imperialism. (shrink)

Oppressive ideology regularly misrepresents features of structural injustice as normal or appropriate. I argue that resisting such injustice therefore requires critical examination of the evaluative judgments encoded in shared concepts. I diagnose a mechanism of ideological misevaluation, which I call hermeneutical misfit. Hermeneutical misfit occurs when thick concepts, or concepts which both describe and evaluate, mobilise ideologically warped evaluative judgments which do not fit the facts (e.g. slutty). These ill-fitted thick concepts in turn are regularly deployed as if they (...) merely describe (hence ‘just the facts’). I argue that, via this descriptive masquerade, ill-fitted thick concepts smuggle in warped evaluative judgments alongside apparently value-neutral ‘mere facts’, a process which both reinforces those judgments and increases the difficulty of critique. I suggest that, to resist this process, we should develop collective consciousness and articulate ‘meta-hermeneutical resources,’ or thick concepts which encode critique of other, ill-fitted concepts (e.g. slut-shaming). (shrink)

Why do oppressive social and political systems persist for as long as they do? Critical theorists posit that the oppressed are in the grip of ideology or false consciousness, leading them voluntarily to accept their servitude. An objection to this explanation points out that we have no account of how the ruling class’s ideology comes to dominate. One common reply says that the ruling class’s ideology comes to dominate because they control major organizations such as schools, churches, and news agencies. (...) This response is seriously flawed, I argue. I then explore an alternative, neglected answer: The ruling class’s ideology dominates because believing it is good for the oppressed. After sketching some details, I explore the implications of this account for critical theory as a research program. (shrink)