Category Archives: Humanities and Social Sciences

Ideology Now – part 2

This post was contributed by Nina Power, from the Department of Philosophy at Roehampton University.

What do we mean by “ideology” today? Is it possible to identify forms of contemporary ideology, or is the very discourse of ideology itself an ideological remnant of an earlier period? In the latter instance, we might talk about ideologies, plural, indicating perhaps a clash of grand narratives, communism v capitalism in the context of the Cold War perhaps being the most historically obvious: here “ideology” comes to stand in for something like a rigid set of beliefs about the way the world ought to work, which usually incorporates some kind of folded-in theory of human nature (capitalism’s idea that people are ‘naturally selfish’, for example, and that ‘markets’ are the best way of managing this ‘fact’). This understanding of ideology is frequently argued to be over, and we are imagined to now be living in an uncertain post-ideological period, where competing fragmentary ideas jostle amongst each other for perhaps temporary precedence.

Against this familiar story, we could return to the image Louis Althusser picks up from Pascal – the idea that belief is not something that pre-exists action, but something that follows from it: not believe and you will be a good Christian, but rather kneel in prayer enough times and then you will believe. Here ideology is conceived as a material practice, reinforced by repetition and a context in which that repetition has a framework to support it. Spinoza poses the problem in a slightly different way in his theory of knowledge: here ideology is something like a way of understanding the world that ‘works’ but is false – not an illusion exactly, which is sometimes where discussions of ideology end up, but a way of structuring what happens in such a way as to make it seem superficially plausible (thinking that the legal system is ‘fair’ for example, because you agree with its verdict most of the time, while not stopping to ask larger questions about who benefits, the plausibility and nature of the laws themselves, or the likely outcomes for those accused of ‘breaking’ them).

In my paper on the ideology of law and order I picked up a slightly different idea: that ideology is perhaps rather not thinking about something really, really hard, in such a way that it doesn’t come into vision at all, except for if and when it directly affects you. Here it seems to me that the law is precisely this kind of gigantic purloined letter, indirectly conditioning what we do (or really what we don’t do), but not being visible for the most part (the same of course goes for its agents, the police and its buildings, prisons). So while we might know on one level that the police are rarely, if ever, held accountable for the people who die in their custody, for example, the idea that this might be because of a combination of police violence and corruption, racism and legal unaccountability is pushed behind the idea of individuals – the rotten apple police officer, the hint of suspicion that the victim was most likely up to no good, and so on. Otherwise the whole edifice – state ‘protection’, ‘justice’ ‘equality before the law’ – starts to look shaky…it seems to me that the law and its enforcement is most definitely hidden in plain sight, and just as following the economic crash, all the mystified terms of economic skill were revealed to be little more than a pile of Ponzi schemes with some computers attached, the law, used ever-increasingly against those who are protesting against the effects of the austerity measures imposed as a result of the crash, and always used against those the police deem to be ‘pre-criminal’ in one way or another is a form of contemporary ideology we would do well to pay much closer attention to…

Ideology Now – part 1

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This post was contributed by Eliane Glaser, Honorary Research Fellow in Birkbecks Department of English and Humanities.

On Saturday 28 April a diverse group of academics, journalists, commentators and students gathered in Gordon Square to explore the role of ideology today. The premise of the conference was the strange death of ideology within political discourse. When politicians use the word ‘ideology’ now, it’s invariably an insult. Politics is supposed to be pragmatic, consensus-building, about doing ‘what works’.

But is the narrative of the death of ideology itself an ideological move? Are ideologies and agendas still in operation, just under cover? Is ideology today primarily a covert force, creating a topsy-turvy world in which appearance is the very opposite of reality? In my book Get Real I lament the fact that Conservatives boast that they are the party of the poor, BP petrol stations are coloured an environmentally-friendly shade of green, and our TV screens are filled with celebrity chefs baking sourdough as sales of ready meals soar.

Is it time to revive ideology critique, both inside and outside the academy? And is it time to restore overt ideologies to our political culture? Since the financial crash, the Occupy movement has revitalised citizen activism. But would that movement be more effective if it embraced overt objectives and ideals?

These are some of the questions I set out in my introductory remarks, before handing over to Esther Leslie, professor in political aesthetics at Birkbeck. Esther gave a wonderfully rich and provocative talk in which she simultaneously illustrated the workings of ideology in culture today and also critiqued the very notion of ideology, arguing for a version of the term that is more rooted in social being and action. Matthew Beaumont, who teaches English at UCL, then did a fascinating reading of disaster films such as Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, arguing that at a time in which capitalism is in crisis, these films enact Fredric Jameson’s observation that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Two former heads of policy at Number 10 reflected on ideology in political culture. Ferdinand Mount, author of the newly published The New Few, was head of policy under Margaret Thatcher, and he argued for a post-ideological liberal democracy which allows for a diversity of positions. Nick Pearce, director of the IPPR and head of policy under Gordon Brown, made the case for a single ideology: social democracy.

After lunch, author and Guardian columnist Steven Poole exposed the financial metaphors that pervade everyday speech – with philosophy lecturer and activist Nina Power pointing out during questions that, conversely, capitalism is often clothed in humanising language. Author Dan Hind described how the ‘end of ideology’ thesis has obscured the rise of a single ideology, market capitalism, and pointed to new, non-hierarchical forms of public discussion and protest as the way forward.

We had two highly stimulating papers on ideology in architecture and theatre by writer Owen Hatherley and lecturer in theatre and performance at Birkbeck Louise Owen. While Owen Hatherley identified the ideologies embedded in a whole range of architectural styles, Louise Owen detected ideologies lurking beneath what passes as theatrical realism today.

In the final session, a lively and politically-engaged talk by Nina Power linked Althusser’s theory of interpolation to the current behaviour of the police and judiciary in ‘public order’ cases, and argued that protesters attempting to defend the public good are being penalised in the name of an imaginary ‘good’ public. And Renata Salecl, professor of law at Ljubljana University ended the conference with a brilliant and entertaining puncturing of contemporary assumptions about reality and wellbeing.

What I loved about the conference was the way in which the papers linked theoretical analysis with urgent issues in today’s politics and culture. The perspectives were unusually broad for an academic conference, and the discussions over coffee, lunch, drinks and dinner were engaged and convivial. I was left with the positive sense that there is a great deal more to say on this subject; that in the contemporary world, reports of ideology’s demise are both symptomatic and premature.

All the papers are available to listen to online via the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Music and Class, a talk by Susan Alexander-Max

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This post was contributed by Dr Nathalie Wourm, a lecturer in French Studies in Birkbeck’s Department of European Cultures and Languages and co-director of Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community (BRAKC)

Susan Alexander-Max is not only a PhD student here in the Department of European Cultures and Languages at Birkbeck, she is also a renowned musician, a fortepianist and clavichordist. Susan is also the founder and director of The Music Collection, a gathering of world famous musicians dedicated to the performance with authentic instruments, of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and their contemporaries, around the fortepiano. It was a pleasure to welcome her for a talk on music and class, as part of the seminar series organised by Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community.

Susan’s PhD in French studies focuses on writer Marcel Proust, and his relationship to music. Here, she combined her interests, to provide examples of the discussion of class taking place in music, from Molière to Beaumarchais, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Proust, and film director Alain Resnais. But the premise of her argument centred around two famous works, ‘Summertime’ by George Gershwin, and John Cage’s 4′33″. Susan started by “performing” 4′33″ in front of a silent keyboard and empty sheet music. The sounds heard by the audience at 43 Gordon Square were numerous, from the loud tick tock of the room’s clock, to the buzzing noises of the projector and computer, to the outside sound of ambulance sirens and students chatting on the pavement. The point was made; the deconstruction of preconceived views of what constitutes music is at the source of Susan’s argument that music is classless, but that defining it is what creates boundaries and social divisions. Other examples of the deconstruction of music were taken from Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and Michael Haneke’s film Caché and were convincing in showing how blurry the limit between spoken language and song can be, or between everyday noises and the playing of instruments. In that sense, Susan argued, defining what is and what is not music is an artificial exercise. The bourgoisie use their definition of music as a tool to isolate themselves from the rest of society. Susan’s talk was topical, as it is only a week ago that, in The Guardian, Daniel Barenboim was criticising ‘the traditional training of musicians in conservatoires around the world, accusing them of isolating young performers from the realities of politics, ideas and history.’ Barenboim claimed that he wanted to be ‘a terrorist for music education’ (The Guardian, 25 April 2012).

The Representation of Brazil in the 1920s through Silvino Santos’ Camera

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This post was contributed by André Reyes Novaes, Visiting Fellow in the Department of Geography, University of Nottingham and Lecturer in the Department of Geography, State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).

Cinema and national pride have been articulated in very different contexts. As a kind of national allegory, films can become a monument and participate in the construction of identities by highlighting national virtues. These ideas were the starting point for the analysis of the representation of Brazil in 1920s cinema by Professor Eduardo Morettin, presented in the seminar series organized by the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies at Birkbeck.

Eduardo Morettin is a Professor of Audiovisual History in the School of Arts and Communication (ECA) at the University of São Paulo. His paper focused on three specific films: 1922: a Exposição da Independência (1970, Arno Konder and Roberto Kahané), No país das Amazonas (1922, Silvino Santos and Agesilau Araújo) and No Rastro do Eldorado (1925, Silvino Santos). Each film was analyzed taking into account their historical context and their functions. Morettin’s talk provoked active participation of the audience chaired by the discussant, Dr Luciana Martins, who has also published on Silvino Santos’ films.

Documenting the Brazilian Centennial Exhibition

The first film discussed by Morettin was 1922: a Exposição da Independência, which was made during the Brazilian Independence Centennial World Fair (1922-1923), the first international exhibition that took place in Rio de Janeiro after the World War. The filmmaker Silvino Santos, who was at the exhibition for the screening of his film No país das Amazonas, took the opportunity to film the event, which was intended to celebrate Brazilian independence (1822). Santos was a photographer and cameraman of Portuguese origins who lived most of his life in the Amazon region in Brazil. His films represent an important record of the transformation of many Brazilian landscapes.

1922: a Exposição da Independência displayed a newly transformed area of Rio de Janeiro that was opened up by the leveling of the Castelo hill at the heart of the city. Outdoor and indoor scenes of the temporary pavilions and permanent buildings provide a picture of the city that celebrated Brazilian modernity. The visitors of the exhibition – mostly white and well dressed – promenaded on the exhibition’s boulevards, while in the interior of the pavilions Santos’ camera showed several products and scientific innovations.

Amazon and Modernity in the Early Twentieth Century

Screened at the Amazonas State pavilion, No país das Amazonas was very successful in terms of public and critics, as Morettin argued. The film was produced by the commercial company of J. G. Araújo, which had business in the city of Manaus, the capital of Amazonia State, and across the Amazon region. No país das Amazonas thus worked as a visual catalogue of local products and their productive processes. According to Morettin, the film was an invitation for foreign investments in the region.

By comparing the representation of the film with earlier paintings, such as the painting by Felix Emile Taunay (Mata Reduzida a Carvão, 1830), Morettin suggested that the film reproduced a familiar visual trope in the context of the Brazilian nation’s iconography, ‘the submission of our exuberant nature to the purpose of civilization’. The beginning of the film, with urban landscapes from Manaus and the emphasis on industrial activities, demonstrates the intention to construct this dichotomic image between the forest and the modern activities. In an important scene of the film, Santos evoked the famous scene of the Lumière brothers, showing workers leaving the factory.

Scientific Exploration and Indigenous Representation

Although the main goal of J. G.Araújo was to show a modern and developed state in the Amazon region, Santos’ camera focused repeatedly on people working: fishermen, rubber tappers, Brazil nut peelers in the factory, and many other characters were highlighted, showing different elements of Brazilian modernity. In contrast to this emphasis on activities related to the commercial and industrial context in the Amazon, the last movie shown by Morettin displayed a more typical vision of the region, that of the jungle. In No Rastro do Eldorado, the film by Santos on the expedition of the American physician and geographer Alexander Hamilton Rice to the interior of the Amazon Basin, the emphasis was on indigenous people.

Invited to make the record of a modern expedition, which used new technologies such as a hydroplane and radio, Santos produced a film that showed the exuberance and the beauty of the Amazon forest. According to Morettin, in addition to focusing on the scientific activities and the potential of the region, No Rastro do Eldorado also showed the explorer’s routine, observing the native Indians with empathy. Santos’ film provided a more complete picture of the Amazon region, which went beyond the rational and economic discourse present in Alexander Hamilton Rice’s writings.

By analyzing these pioneering Brazilian films, Morettin explored different aspects of the representation of the country during the 1920s. In a period characterized by the absence of documents and records, the films by Santos are an inestimable register of Brazil and deserve the attention of researchers from many different areas. This seminar offered to the audience a glimpse on the tensions and contradictions of Brazilian modernity during the 1920s.