Ideological Criticism

Rhetoric and Marxism

Literature reflects class struggle and materialism

According to Marxism, literature reflects the social institutions out of which it emerges and is itself a social institution with a particular ideological function.

e.g How often does the quest for wealth define characters?

Marxist Criticism Artifact

Artifact 1

http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70069628&trkid=200109583

Artifact 2

Deconstructionism- also known as poststructuralism

Cultural Studies

• Purpose: “to deconstruct the self-evidence of central concepts; to subject to critical analyses the basic structures and assumptions that govern texts and the development of knowledge” (Foss 212).

• Associated closely with postmodernism

"capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction"

Postmodern examples

Karl Marx

• "...interdisciplinary project focused around the idea that relations of power within a society are embedded in and reproduced through cultural creation" (Foss, 212)
• Culture consists of everyday discursive practices (embody and construct a culture's ideology)
• Pop culture artifacts

9/11 Memorial

Architecture:

Bayonne, New Jersey

New York, New York

• How it helps us do rhetorical criticism: helps to breakdown the fundamental thought of the rhetor into a deeper, ideological denotation.

After examining social organization scientifically, he perceived human history to have consisted of a series of struggles between social classes.

Bibliography

Postmodernism

The Twitter

The Instagram

The Facebook

• definition-“Postmodernism theories are based on the notion that our culture has moved into a new phase; one that follows the period of modernism, which championed reason as the source of progress in society and privileged the foundation of systematic knowledge” (Foss 212).

• Purpose: “provides information about the context for many contemporary artifacts and suggests the exigence to which many of these artifacts and their ideologies respond” (Foss 212).

• How it helps us do rhetorical criticism: it helps create a knowledgeable basis of contemporary artifacts which is used to further explain the reasoning behind them. This understanding helps us better incorporate and interpret them in our writing.

Class warfare= the ruling class maintains their dominance by generating in the working class a "false consciousness".

Klages, Mary. "Klages on C. Lévi-Strauss." Klages on C. Lévi-Strauss. University of Idaho, 1 Jan. 2001. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

Kaidantzis, Jeanne. "Karl Marx." : The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Library of Economics. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

Articulation as a theory and critical method

• off shoot of cultural studies

• In this context, means "establishment of a relationship among elements (i.e. beliefs, values, practices) so that their identity is transformed" (Foss, 213)

• Guides "critic's attention to specific connections between ideological elements" to identify "ideology's systemic and structural levels of operation" (Foss, 213)

• Critical focus: "to understand how meaning is ideologically constructed within the level of complex social formation"

Foss, Sonja. "Ideological Criticism." Rhetorical Criticism.

4th ed. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2009. Print.

Procedures

Feminism and Feminist Criticism

Marxism

2) Analyzing the artifact

Ideological Criticism is used to

"discover how the rhetorical construction of

identity markers-such as gender- are used as a justification for domination, how such domination is constructed as natural and how that naturalness can be challenged" (Foss, 213).

• Identifying the presented elements
• Identifying the suggested elements
• Formulating an ideology
• Identifying the funtions served by the ideology

1) Selecting an artifact

3) Formulating a research

question

4) Writing the essay

way of analyzing cultural products in terms of social and economic practices and institutions that produce them

• Can pertain to artifact

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIYqK30YP3E

Analyze w/ semiotic lens

Strauss' analysis of structuralism

1. Meaning is not isolated within specific fundamental parts of the myth, but rather within the composition of these parts.

2. Although myth and language are of similar category, language functions differently in myths.

3. Language in myth exhibits more complex functions then in any other linguistic expression.

Semiotics

Study and analysis of signs

Strauss concluded that:

Analyzing non-linguistic objects or behaviors to seek meaning as if they were a language.

Myths deal not with concepts, but structures, and that said structures correspond to the structures of the brain, beyond written or oral communications.

By analyzing the relationships of grammars within the artifact, structuralists gain insight into their ideologies

Ideological Criticism

Structuralism

"A series of projects in which linguistics is used as a model for attempts in developing the "grammars" of systems, such as, myths, novels, and genres."

Foss

Claude Levi Strauss

"Myth is Language"

Hegemony

-A dominant way of thinking-

"norms"

The "symbolic power to map or classify the world for others"(Foss, 210).

(Law, Education, Government, Media, etc.

What is an ideology?

Ideological Criticism believes that in any culture there are multiple ideologies with the potential to be used as an artifact

Hegemonic Ideology

"The privileging of the ideology of one group over that of other groups"(Foss, 210)

"An ideology is a pattern of beliefs that determines a groups interpretations of some aspect(s) of the world" (Foss, 209)

>Mental Framework

A concept made up by Evaluative beliefs- "beliefs which have possible alternative judgements"(209).

Ideological Criticism looks beyond the surface of an artifact in order to see the underlying beliefs and values it suggests.

(Christianity, Liberalism, Conservatism, Immigration, etc.)