..in the modern social universe where the mind is bound in its attempts to capture the absolute conceptual determination of matter, the very notion of human sovereignty becomes enmeshed or bound up in the epistemology of ‘absolute knowing’ which, when externalised socially, becomes a solid nucleus of power. Indeed, while I intend to discuss this more thoroughly in a following paper, my claim is that this epistemic element of power is an ideological method of control that is recognised by people for the benefit of their own (false) sense of ‘ultimate security’ in the world (existentially speaking). In other words, rather than dubbing the “fundamental dimension of ideology” as “a kind of realty which is possible only on condition that the individuals partaking in it are not aware of its proper logic” (Žižek 1989), which Žižek does in The Sublime Object of Ideology; we should look to a less abstract theory of ideology, one which is rooted in a conception of .../ the human project of domination and the existential need for a sense of ‘dominant certainty’ and ‘ultimate security’ (Smith, 2011). Besides, what is the power of capitalism if not in how as a total system it gives one a sense of ultimate security, of knowing where one stands in the world by way of its absolute relation to all things? Not only does capitalism represent the (global) system of absolute identity on behalf of the concept of ‘universal exchange’, it also represents a particular mode of subjectivity that is inherently dominating and totalitarian. Ideology, in this way, represents the unity of fibers in the structure which, once spawned from the shutters of human anxiety, determines thought as an appropriated system of (social) organisation and action according to the standards of economic domination. Indeed, in the spirit of capturing everything unknown, the concepts of sovereignty, democracy, and freedom over time become that of instrumentality, bureaucracy, technology (i.e., technicism) and commodification. Capitalism, as an ideologically developed system, delivers exactly what it was supposed to: a rationally administered world. heathwoodpress/ideology-existential-anxiety-dominating-social-systems-dialectic-enlightenment-revisited/
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 15:24:52 +0000
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