The attraction of ideology

A key question regarding ideology is how we might explain or understand its ability to attract and maintain support from human subjects -in other words what has been called the ‘grip’ of ideology. In the following, we aim to show that such a grip needs to be understood as operating in three different modes. While most contemporary theories of ideology conceive of these modes as symbolic systems and thus understand their grip as generated through the structural inertia of being ‘taken for granted’ as the very fabric of our social lives, other scholars have instead emphasized the imaginary dimension of ideology -its ability to offer utopian horizons -and have elaborated on another kind of grip which focuses on the emotional attachment subjects may experience towards a certain ideological vision of the ideal society. But beyond these two modes, we argue that it is also necessary to consider a third in which the grip of ideology is constituted neither by its structural inertia, nor by its utopian eschatology, but in and through the offering of intense momentary experiences, sometimes of a transgressive or excessive nature, such as celebrations, political rituals or demonstrations

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology

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