Ideology

7.3 Ideology

We call ideology the interconnected set of beliefs, ideas, values, and norms that structure the worldview of a person or group. Ideology is generally invisible, especially for the individuals or groups whose views and opinions are largely defined by it. For example, a devout Christian or Buddhist will probably not identify his beliefs as constituting an ideological view of the world, but rather the way things actually are. But all of us are, in one way or another, subject to different ideological positions, whether we adhere to rationalism, liberalism, communism, or other structured systems of thought and value. These ideologies influence to a large extent the meanings we ascribe to ourselves and to everything else in our life/world, including other people.

Narrative discourse is particularly effective at communicating ideological views without necessarily stating or even recognizing them. If a narrative manages to convince readers that its story world is a very similar representation of their own life/world, the ideology that structures its discourse is likely to be tacitly accepted as a valid and credible one. This is why narratives are often used, consciously or not, to sustain the ideologies of certain social groups, usually those that have more power, or at least the capacity to produce and propagate their discourses more effectively throughout society.${}^6$  At the same time, however, narratives are also used, again, consciously or not, by other groups with less power in society, as they attempt to resist dominant ideologies and express their own set of values and beliefs.

Prose fiction has been, and continues to be, an important vehicle for conveying or contesting ideology, whether explicitly or implicitly. In fact, there is no fiction narrative whose discourse does not express in one way or another at least one ideological position, just as there is no individual or collective opinion that is not ideological. There are four different ways in which ideology can be represented in the narrative discourse of short stories and novels:

Concealed: Prose fiction can embrace an ideology implicitly, without recognizing it as an ideological commitment. Yet, ideology often impregnates the representation of the story world (events, environments, characters) or narrative discourse (narration, language, theme). For example, in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale and other novels about the secret agent James Bond, everything denotes the masculine, imperialistic, and capitalistic worldview of British elites after the Second World War, from the sports cars Bond drives to the enemies he fights against, the women he seduces, or the language he speaks.

Committed: Prose fiction can also embrace an ideology explicitly, while trying to convince readers of the truthfulness of its tenets. Socialist realist novels, such as Maxim Gorky’s The Mother, openly advocate the ideals and values of socialism, by portraying the working class as a heroic agent of political, cultural, and economic transformation towards a better society, against the opposition of self-interested groups like the capitalists or the aristocracy.

Critical: Prose fiction is sometimes critical of dominant ideologies, without necessarily embracing or committing to an alternative ideology. George Orwell’s1984 (Fig. 7.4), for example, offers a bleak representation of a totalitarian society in a dystopian future, as a way to criticize both the capitalist and socialist ideologies that were struggling for world dominance at the time of the Cold War.

Ambiguous: Some prose fiction stories present a more ambivalent or ambiguous view of alternative ideological positions. For instance, ideologies can be advocated or symbolized by different characters, as in Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain, where the liberal, humanistic, religious, conservative, hedonistic, and nihilistic ideologies prevalent in Europe around the First World War are conveyed through the actions and opinions of various characters in the story. Ideologies can also be represented directly by the events, environments, and characters of an alternative story world, as in Ursula K. Le Guin’s science-fiction novel The Dispossessed, where two different planets, one based on hierarchical capitalism, the other one on authoritarian communism, cooperate and compete with each other in a fictional universe.

Fig. 7.4 Poster depicting Big Brother’s slogan from George Orwell’s dystopian novel1984. By Frederic Guimont, Free Art Licence,https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cropped-big-brother-is-watching-1984.png

References

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6 See Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London, UK: Verso, 1991).