Response Papers: Week 2. Ideology as social power

Please post here discussion questions, queries, relevant imagery, your favourite quotes, notes from your readings, things you would like to see discussed in our upcoming conference.

• The primary reason for bringing up ideology at the beginning of our discussions this semester is that ideology is a concept that is so frequently misunderstood, misused and abused concept, particularly in looking at the ancient states and forms of social power. I hope that we can open this up further in class on Thursday, but, more directly, ideology is persistently and frustratingly associated with a set of oppressive political agendas of the ruling elite, formulated single-handedly by the ones in power and forced down the throats of the subject peoples who "blunder around in some fog of false consciousness" (Eagleton 11). While Eagleton points out this problem as a broader issue in social sciences and humanities, I would like to specifically pinpoint the preponderance of this abuse of ideology in Near Eastern studies, as an extension of the Orientalist/colonialist discourse that delightfully imagines a despotic East. In order for us to move away from such murky waters, we need to be equipped with a critical understanding of what ideology is. Please try to go through the readings with this in mind.

Eugène Delacroix's vision of the Oriental despot: The death of Sardanapalus (1827-28), oil on canvas; 392 x 496 cm; Musée du Louvre, Paris

• The following is an excerpt from a royal inscription of the 9th century Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, inscribed on a throne base in the king's ekal masarti in Kalhu (modern Nimrud) and dated to 846 BC. Let's use this paradigm in relation to Eagleton and Althusser's discussions of the irrelevance of epistemic falsehood and false consciousness in ideological discourse. This issue concerns us, those who have to deal with ancient texts, especially royal inscriptions, quite a bit. What do we make of such a text? How does one deal with its ideological tone, its relationship to historical reality, its in-your-face construction of a particular version of history/social memory?

• I was also thinking that a similar kind of discussion of epistemic falsehood surrounded the discussions around the concept "myth" in the last few decades. Myth is another interesting concept, perhaps comparable ideology in the sense that it also has a deragoraty sense in everyday use as denoting something entirely false. Is this the case for the ancient world?. If Hittites believed that such and such mountain is a god (therefore making the divine status of the mountain a 'social reality'), what would be the use of suggesting today in scholarly debate that those mountains are actually not gods but just geological formations?

(Source: A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858-745 BC). Toronto 1996: 103. Text A.0.102.28, lines 18-28.)

• At one point (p. 19) Eagleton suggests that ideology is rather "performative" rather than being "constative" (i.e. directed towards the achievement of certain effects). What do we mean when we point towards the performativity of ideological discourse ( a speech act?)? I found this point rather striking and a good way to move away from discussions of truth and falsehood.