Arnold, Critic of Ideology

ity, and universality, for they now turn out to be mystifications that conceal motives of domination. We may experience Jameson's claim that a universal agreement exists as coercive and may wonder how ideology critique itself escapes being ideological if everything is ideology. And if it doesn't, we may ask what in the way of understanding is accomplished by the critique of ideology. But I doubt whether any of us have been unaffected by views such as Jameson's. We have all become to one degree or another suspicious of objectivist and universalist arguments. And Arnold, because of his centrality in the history of literary studies, continues to be a magnet for our suspicions. Arnold has in fact become the victim of a historical irony. Contemporary ideology critique has turned the tables on the cultural criticism practiced by Arnold. The idea of culture came into being in the nineteenth century as an optic through which the mechanical degradation of human life was seen and judged. In arrogating to itself the spiritual authority of failing religious dogma, culture claimed or aimed to be disinterested, free of the contaminations of the social and political practices it scrutinized. What has virtually disappeared in the current scene is the sense of culture or art as a force resistant to ideology. The task of the ideology critic is to demystify the ways in which cultural expressions conceal or deflect class, race, and gender interests. Arnold has his vulnerabilities and has been the target of a demystifying criticism, though often it seems to me on the basis of mystifications of his meaning by his critics

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• Beyond Machinery

  Oliver Bennett, Оливер Беннетт•History of Political Economy•2005

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