Aims:
- To introduce a critical definition of ideology.
- To introduce some of the basic principles of Marxist philosophy.
- To explain the extent to which the media constitutes us as subjects.
- To introduce 'culture jamming' and the idea of design activism.
Marxism is:
A political manifesto, leading to socialism, communism and the twentieth century conflicts between capital and labour.
- A philosophical approach to the social sciences, which focuses on the role of society in determining human behaviour, based on concept of dialectical materialism.
- What is Capitalism?
- Control of the means of production in private hands.
- A market where labour power is bought and sold.
- Production of commodities for sale.
- Use of money as a means of exchange.
- Competition/ meritocracy.
- Communist Evolution:
1. Primitive Communism: as seen in cooperative societies.
2. Slave Society: develops when the tribe becomes a city state. Birth of aristocracy.
3. Feudalism: aristocracy becomes the ruling class. Merchants develop into capitalists.
4. Capitalism: capitalists are the ruling class, who create and employ the real working class.
5. Socialism: "dictatorship of Proletariat": workers gain class consciousness, overthrow the capitalists and take control over the state.
6. Communism: a classless and stateless society.
- Ideology:
- System of ideas or beliefs (eg beliefs of a political party)
- Masking, distortion or selection of ideas, to reinforce power relations, through creation of 'false consciousness'.
Ideology is we feel and where it comes from. Its about how and what we do as designers to change the world we love in.
' There is no point in just thinking, you must combine this with action.'
' The ruling class has to represent its interest as the common interest of all members of society.. to give the form of universality and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.'
Karl Marx, (1846) The German Ideology
- Society= economic, political and ideological
Ideology is a practise through which men and women 'live' their relations to real conditions of existence. Ideology offers false, but seemingly true resolutions to social imbalance.
Althusser, (1970) 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses'
The media as ideological state apparatus:
- A means of production.
- Disseminates the views of the ruling class (dominant hegemonic).
- Media creates a false consciousness.
- The individual is produced by nature; the subject by culture. (Fiske, 1992)
- The constitution of the subject
- Interpellation (Althusser)
An example is how newspapers such as the daily star (which the working class would read) are dumbed down and use gossip stories and women flashing their bodies, because they believe that the people who read these papers are uneducated.
Another example of how the media maked assumptions about large groups of people was the london student protests. Newspaper headlines were saying things like 'brainless', 'highjacking' and 'thuggish' to describe the students who were standing up for their rights and the rise in tuition fees.
Marx: Ideology
' Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most of the relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves'.
Berger, Ways of seeing, 1972
Althusser's 'problematic':
The wonderbra adverts undermine women and make it seem as though as long as women have a good rack then they can make it in life, it doesnt even matter if they cant cook!
' Advertisments are selling us something else besides consumer goods; in providing us with a structure in which we, and those goods are interchangeable, they are selling us ourselves.. Thus, instead of being identified by what they produce, people are made to identify themselves by what they consume.'
Williamson (1978), 'Decoding Advertisements'
Adbusters and culture jamming:
Culture jamming is where adverts are altered to change the message so that those who see it interpret a completely different and potentially opposite message than what was to be intended.
Questions to think about:
- What examples of art or design in your field could be determined by social or political factors?
- Where is ideology hidden behind appearance of design?
- What other aspects of political divisions, or class conflict, affect design?
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