post-it note, 3/19/09

From what I understand ideology to be, it can be in one sense but not another when looked at from a different perspective. An example is the square and rectangle rule: a rectangle, by definition, can be a square, but a square can never be a rectangle. So it also goes that an ideology always is born from an idea, but an idea does not always become an ideology. It is the avant-guard nature of an idea that prevents it from becoming an ideology. As the public learns of the idea, it becomes an ideology as it becomes understood and questioned more. Out of these questions, an opposing ideology can be created.

De Saussure said that “the community is necessary if values that owe their existence solely to the usage and general acceptance are to be set up; by himself the individual is incapable of setting up a single value” (6). Without people to follow an idea, it cannot become an ideology. Lyotard also reinforces this idea in his quote “there is not reality unless testified by a consensus” (42). He is saying that the community places the value on something; that value is not inherent in an idea rather it is determined by the price that someone is willing to pay or adhere to it.

I see an ideology as someone’s perspective of the world. It is there enveloping concept of their environment. But this environment is not necessarily the environment of everyone’s experience. Lyotard also mentioned a concept such as this when he said “we have the idea of the world, but we do not have the capacity to show an example of it” (43). This is where ideologies clash, and become destructive. Just because someone’s truth is not another persons same experience, it should not devalue the experience and ideas of the first person.