ABSTRACT
The book concludes by summarising the usefulness of the theory to ideological analysis and its potential as a tool of political opposition. It reiterates some of the key concepts in Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek which remain crucial to understanding ideology today, such as repressive desublimation, utopian mediation and disavowal, and emphasises the value of reframing them through a theory of conscious rationalisation. It then outlines an ‘ideology map’, or brief descriptions of the different ideological positions developed in the preceding chapters. This map is intended to aid understanding of what is being discussed when we talk about ideologies in neoliberal consumer capitalism, in terms of how different people may perceive the social situation and how they rationalise the ‘background’ of cultural norms. It also suggests a jumping off point for further reflection on how politics works today in terms of dominant social influences and the specific, contestable ideas that they engender.
