Ideology is the death of thinking. One of the great ironies is that one of the most ideological philosophies is Marxism - which, of course, is based on materialism. In fact, more often than not, I find most of the ideological critiques to be based on a sort of crank-turning nihilism that is always moving-towards-death.
This is basically in response to Coffeen's post about the manner in which someone should critique. Being in academia is an existence that fluctuates between utter boredom and sublime enthrallment. I love when I hear critiques that make something old look new - something familiar look weird. What I hate, despise is critiques that squash difference. "Hey look how this is about my theory too." Now, to be fair, I've done this too. For quite a number of years, everything I saw was proof that Heidegger was correct. But I think, I hope, I've grown out of that.
Perhaps the problem is that academia thinks it's job is about changing something - fixing the evil capitalist, racist, sexist ideologies that exist. Now - to be fair - we have helped that, a little, maybe, I think. But what we should be about is making texts exciting - making people want to read these texts that make us think and rethink. There's no reason to tell a person what a text must mean - but there is nothing more beautiful than showing someone how a text can mean - how it can go and hopefully how it can go in many different ways simultaneously.
As a Marxist I object to this. First, ideology is necessary for thinking to occur at all. Secondly, there is nothing wrong with crank turning nihilism that is always moving toward death because that's what life is. Life is the turning and repetition around the problem of death.
ReplyDeleteAlso, on the last point, I find that there is nothing more exciting that discovering a new meaning, so if you want exciting texts make them clearly meaningful.