Recognising Ideology at Work
How is it that images have such an effect upon us?
How is it that we are drawn to some and not to others?
What is it that fuels our self-recognition or desire in certain images?
Diana Fuss argues it is identification that produces our self-recognition in images, objects, words as “a detour through the other that defines the self”:
Identification is the psychical mechanism that produces self-recognition. Identification inhabits, organizes, instantiates identity. It operates as a mark of self-difference, opening up a space for the self to relate to itself as a self, a self that is perpetually other. Identification….as the play of difference and similitude in self-other relations, does not, strictly speaking, stand against identity but structurally aids and abets it.
Diana Fuss Identification Papers (Routledge, 1995)
Fuss does not argue that a person’s identity is stable or fixed because of one identification but that any sense of identity is fluid and subject to many identifications/disidentifications, endless reversals and disguises, partial recognitions and mis-recognitions. Identity does not have the status of an ontological given, it is an illusion that identity is immediate, secure and totalisable. It is in flux, moving and constantly being reshaped. The question of identification she pursues is both psychoanalytic and philosophical and rests on how a sense of “I” as a self, possessing subjectivity, is formed by engagements with what is “not-I”, or “other” to that sense of self.
As Eve Sedgwick speaking of the plurality of sexualities associated with any given identity, puts it, “to identify as must always include the multiple processes of identification with” (Eve Sedgwick Epistemology of the Closet (University of California Press, 1990), quoted in Fuss)
The theory of ideology (derived from Karl Marx/Louis Althusser) suggests that ideology works upon us in such a way that we do not recognise it at work in how we think, react or make choices and decisions. The “choices” just seem “natural”, presenting us with “obvious” preferences and encouraging us to undertake specific actions or develop particular habits, routines or tastes.
One definition of how ideology works (from Louis Althusser) is that it “calls” us and we respond without noticing what is happening. The example given is that someone (representing “ideology”) hails us from the other side of the street and we turn around and react because we know this message is directed at “us”.
Recognising how ideology works is part of the struggle to raise and change our consciousness about ourselves. Not only would this increase our awareness and consciousness of how images, ideas, beliefs and values work upon us, but it could enable us to start to think differently, perhaps recognise that other choices and decisions could be made about our lives and the lives of other people. Consciousness-raising is the first step in making any change happen…
Art historian, Griselda Pollock, has suggested that while Marxist work on ideology and representation should be embraced, there are elements of Marxist thinking which should be avoided:
among them: treating art as a reflection of the society that produced it or as an image of its class divisions; treating an artist as a representative of his/her class; economic reductionism, that is reducing all arguments about the forms and functions of cultural objects back to economic or material causes; and ideological generalisation, place a picture because of its manifest content in a category of ideas, beliefs or social theories of a given society or period.
Griselda Pollock ‘Women, Art and Ideology: Questions for Feminist Art Historians’ Women’s Art Journal, 4 (1) (1983) pp.203-21. Also included in Hilary Robinson Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology (2015)
This author’s rejection of “evaluative criticism”, was based on insisting on a revised historical assessment of women’s contribution to art and an engagement with how ideology and representation works to produce meaning. The same point that she makes about “class”/”society”, could equally be extended to reductive ways of treating individuals as representative of a race, an ethnic group, a particular form of sexuality…
This lesson finishes with a private exercise for you to undertake on your own. You are not expected to post to the forum or share the results of this exercise.
Do this exercise first with 4 images of women that you have a strong liking for/disliking for, according to the grid below.
The images do not have to be images of artworks, they could be photographs from magazines/newspapers, images from the internet, film stills of characters in films, movie stars/politicians.
Try repeating the exercise with 4 images of men.
Think about how the descriptive categories in the grid below work in relation to the images and as a means of grouping them or identifying why you like or dislike them.
You could note down a few sentences by trying to describe how they have an effect upon you.
“I identify with this image because….”;
“I don’t recognise this image as positive because…”
Use the grid produced below and try and answer how you feel about the images you have selected. Think about what effect looking at them has upon you.
Move on to Lesson 6
Professor Janet Halley delivers the 36th Annual Brainerd Currie Memorial Lecture at Duke University in 2002. She outlines very effectively a map of Queer and Feminist positions in relation to Regulation of sexuality in the debates within the USA from 1980s to 2000s from Mackinnon’s view of sexuality as a theory of sexual dominance of men over women in contrast to cultural feminism and anti-racist/class-based/post-colonial feminisms, as different forms of pro- or anti-sex feminists and different Queer theories, especially in relation to the visual appearance of women in terms of “sexy” dressing.
Scroll over headings with your mouse
Disidentification
Misrecognition
Recognition
Identification
negative, hateful
meaningful
"how other people see people like me negatively"
troubling
tasteful
ugly, horrific, shameful
ambivalent
ambivalent
limited, distorting
"a genre/type of image I am familiar with"
"how other people recognise people like me positively"
appealing
derivative, wrong, distorting
beautiful, appealing, exciting
distasteful
positive/affirmative to my sense of self
“how I would like to look”
"not what women or men should look like"
ideological
meaningless
a negative stereotype
pornographic, obscene
innovative, original, shocking, transgressive
sensuous, erotic in a positive way, life-affirming
This exercise sets up a spectrum of reactions to images to encourage you to explore how your personal preferences and taste are tied to your own subjective judgements. The selection of images you make will tell you a lot about your own personal tastes and preferences in terms of the ones you passionately identify with or dislike the most.
Subjectivity is not a bad thing. Having an opinion on what is positive or negative about an image as a spectator is often not limited by being subjective. Your opinion may be shared by others. Images themselves are very hard to classify into “absolutes” defining what is positive or negative for everyone. Becoming conscious of your taste and judgement may lead you to reform your ideas about what you like/dislike. It may make you more self-conscious of how your ideas are shared by others or not.
Public debate on any single image highlights the social value attributed to different kinds of images in terms of their visibility/invisibility, especially when any action banning or removing certain images from public gaze is concerned. This is not just because people’s ideas of what is ugly/beautiful, positive/negative, sensuous/pornographic are different. Nor is it just about whose individual judgement counts or what kind of visual regime we live in. How we react to images also affects our individual sense of self: it can define us.
Your judgement about these images are not just tied to your personal opinion, they are tied to who you are as a person with tastes, preferences, beliefs, ideas and subjectivity. Your positive/negative choices are also defined in and through your social and political ideas about what is appropriate for images of men/women to portray.
If you ask a friend to look at the same images you chose, they may offer a completely different understanding of the same images and classify them quite differently on this spectrum. Their tastes and preferences may be different as an individual, even if they share your social and political beliefs or outlook on life.
