Eagleton - Ideology

IDEOLOGY

LONGMAN CRITICAL READERS

General Editor:

STAN SMITH, Professor of English, University of Dundee

Published titles:

K.M. NEWTON, George Eliot

MARY EAGLETON, Feminist Literary Criticism

GARY WALLER, Shakespeares Comedies

JOHN DRAKAKIS, Shakespearean Tragedy

RICHARD WILSON AND RICHARD DUTTON, New Historicism and Renaissance Drama

PETER BROOKER, Modernism/Postmodernism

PETER WIDDOWSON, D. H. Lawrence

RACHEL BOWLBY, Virginia Woolf

FRANCIS MULHERN, Contemporary Marxist Literary Criticism

ANNABEL PATTERSON, John Milton

CYNTHIA CHASE, Romanticism

MICHAEL ONEILL, Shelley

STEPHANIE TRIGG, Medieval English Poetry

ANTONY EASTHOPE, Contemporary Film Theory

TERRY EAGLETON, Ideology

IDEOLOGY

Edited and Introduced by

TERRY EAGLETON

First published 1994 by Pearson Education Limited

Third impression 1999

Published 2013 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1994, Taylor & Francis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-23716-2 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ideology / edited and introduced by Terry Eagleton.

p. cm. (Longman critical readers)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-582-23715-7. ISBN 0-582-23716-5 (pbk.)

1. Ideology. I. Eagleton, Terry, 1943- II. Series.

B823.3.I346

The outlines of contemporary critical theory are now often taught as a standard feature of a degree in literary studies. The development of particular theories has seen a thorough transformation of literary criticism. For example, Marxist and Foucauldian theories have revolutionised Shakespeare studies, and deconstruction has led to a complete reassessment of Romantic poetry. Feminist criticism has left scarcely any period of literature unaffected by its searching critiques. Teachers of literary studies can no longer fall back on a standardised, received, methodology.

Lecturers and teachers are now urgently looking for guidance in a rapidly changing critical environment. They need help in understanding the latest revisions in literary theory, and especially in grasping the practical effects of the new theories in the form of theoretically sensitised new readings. A number of volumes in the series anthologise important essays on particular theories. However, in order to grasp the full implications and possible uses of particular theories it is essential to see them put to work. This series provides substantial volumes of new readings, presented in an accessible form and with a significant amount of editorial guidance.

Each volume includes a substantial introduction which explores the theoretical issues and conflicts embodied in the essays selected and locates areas of disagreement between positions. The pluralism of theories has to be put on the agenda of literary studies. We can no longer pretend that we all tacitly accept the same practices in literary studies. Neither is a laissez-faire attitude any longer tenable. Literature departments need to go beyond the mere toleration of theoretical differences: it is not enough merely to agree to differ; they need actually to stage the differences openly. The volumes in this series all attempt to dramatise the differences, not necessarily with a view to resolving them but in order to foreground the choices presented by different theories or to argue for a particular route through the impasses the differences present.

The theory revolution has had real effects. It has loosened the grip of traditional empiricist and romantic assumptions about language and literature. It is not always clear what is being proposed as the new agenda for literary studies, and indeed the very notion of literature is questioned by the post-structuralist strain in theory. However, the uncertainties and obscurities of contemporary theories appear much less worrying when we see what the best critics have been able to do with them in practice. This series aims to disseminate the best of recent criticism and to show that it is possible to re-read the canonical texts of literature in new and challenging ways.

RAMAN SELDEN AND STAN SMITH

The Publishers and fellow Series Editor regret to record that Raman Selden died after a short illness in May 1991 at the age of fifty-three. Ray Selden was a fine scholar and a lovely man. All those he has worked with will remember him with much affection and respect.

We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

Basil Blackwell Ltd for Ideology by Jurgen Habermas from Interpretations of Marx edited by Tom Bottomore (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) pp. 299309, Marxism & Literary History by Professor John Frow from Marxism and Literary History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) pp. 627, Belief, Bias and Ideology by Jon Elster from Rationality and Relativism edited by Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (Oxford: Bail Blackwell, 1982) pp. 123148; Cambridge University Press and the author for Ideology by Raymond Cuess from The Idea of a Critical Theory pp. 422; Janet Walker Gouldner for Ideological Discourse as Rationality and False Consciousness from The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology by the late Alvin Gouldner (London: Macmillan, 1976); Harper Collins Ltd for Fontana and the editor, Professor David E. Apter for Ideology as a Cultural System by Clifford Geertz from both The Interpretation of Cultures (Fontana) pp. 208233 and Ideology and Discontent edited by D. Apter (Copyright 1964 by The Free Press of Glencoe a division of Macmillan & Co) pp. 4756; The Macmillan Press Ltd for Problems and Advances in the Theory of Ideology from On Law and Ideology by Paul Hirst (London: Macmillan, 1979) pp. 2939; the author, John Mepham and the editor of