ABSTRACT
In what follows, I will not attempt a fresh approach to ideology, as if oth-- ers have simply fallen short in their attempts to describe it; nor, however, will I assume, with Deleuze and Guattari, that ideology is a mere phantasm. Rather, my focus will be on the unusually intimate, even constitutive rela-- tionship between ideology “itself” and the theory of ideology, the way in which each new theory brings into focus or even into being a new ideological
“thing.” If we can grasp the complex nature of the relationship between thing and theory, we may be able to understand why the inquiry into ideology has been on the one hand exceptionally dynamic and productive, and on the other hand stalled, even paralyzed. My overarching thesis is that those who have tried to think rigorously about ideology have encountered mysterious obstacles, and have, in their attempts to get a grip on the problem and to move the theory forward, turned first to economic and material explanations, and then, decisively, to language. These turns have created more than an illusion of progress; they have in fact constituted progress itself, the only kind of progress possible in the study of ideology.
