I

Although akin to nailing jelly to a wall, attempted explications of the protean term "ideology" have come both thick and fast throughout its relatively brief history. Any attempt to grapple with the multifarious meanings of ideology must, therefore, begin with McLELLAN's concise introduction to the subject. From its late 18th-century origins to the more recent declaration of its demise, McLellan charts the vagaries - Marxist, historist, structuralist, postmodernist - of ideology. He demonstrates how debates about ideology have been subsumed within struggles to define the nature of knowledge, truth and human society.