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===== A Cartography of Resistance:
The British State and Derry Republicanism =====

Chapter 2

Discourse and Ideology

2.1 Introduction: A Fractured Set of Problematics

'In the English-speaking world, the social sciences—particularly sociology—have changed quite dramatically over the past ten years ... Up until something like the early 1970s ... the social sciences were dominated by the view that the objectives and logic of social science are more or less the same as those of natural science ... On the level of the practice of the social sciences—that is to say in the more heavily and determinedly empirical areas of research—the 'mainstream' view (sociology as 'logical empiricism') has still not been discarded, although its acceptance is very often implicit rather than explicit ... In other sectors of social science, however, particularly social theory, the orthodox model lies in ruins. Just as the 'received model' of natural science has been discarded by most philosophers so there is no longer anything which is clearly definable as 'mainstream' social science. What was something of a consensus, an acknowledged terrain over which intellectual and conceptual battles were fought out, now appears riddled with chasms across which the advocates of different perspectives find it difficult to stay in communication with one another' (Giddens, 1987: 52-55).

'Given culture / ideology / consciousness / discourse / signification, etc, the problem is how to situate oneself in an increasingly fractured set of problematics' (Johnson, 1979: 49).

This thesis has already made a number of important comments with regard to the problem of 'situating oneself' in an analysis of the 'Northern Ireland Problem'. It has also made a number of comments on the crisis of sociology and the centrality of particularly philosophy, literary theory and studies of language to this crisis, both in general terms and specifically in relation to an analysis of Northern Ireland. These developments in social theorising, upon which Giddens (1987) is merely one of the most recent, and perhaps persistent, sociological comentators, have crucial implications for developing an understanding of the discursive construction of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Problem. A theorisation of language-in-action, that is, as discourse, and its relation to ideological formations is crucial to the project of discussing lived-experience in its wider context of operation and existence; crucial to the development of what Burton terms a 'theory of mediation' capable of linking the various world-views of the parties in the struggle to 'the material reality of the Northern Ireland state' (Burton, 1978: 131). This chapter then, will not involve the development of a history of these concepts and the crisis, it is not concerned with merely filling in the bakckground to current debates. Rather, it should be seen as a cartography of the 'fractured set of problematics' Johnson refers to. To use cartography (Deleuze, 1977) implies the delineation of a terrain, a means of moving around and forward. Further, the cartography developed in this thesis will be crucially centred on an interdisciplinary version of social theory and sociological inquiry.

In order to move around and forward from the radical challenges to sociology, to move from its 'crisis', recent developments in psychoanalysis, philosophy, marxism, literary theory and semiotics will need to be engaged, for it is here, rather than as Giddens (1987) points out, within the discipline of sociology, that the relation between power and discourse has been most satisfactorily discussed. I say both around and foward, because this cartography will in some cases resolve traditional problems within social theory, more usually, however, it will reformulate them in order for new or different arguments to be developed.

It is important in this regard, to note something of the general nature of interdisciplinary work. Interdisciplinarity is not the simple accumulation of disciplinary knowledges. This would more properly be regarded as multi-disciplinarity. Rather, interdisciplinary work seeks to examine the conditions of possibility of disciplinary knowledges. It seeks to examine the points of intersection, condensation and contradiction between disciplinary knowledges and across disciplinary boundaries. (In the same way as Chapters 3 and 4 can be regarded as describing the relation of elements across these discourses—the discursive formation of Northern Ireland—this chapter can be understood as the relation between elements within and across disciplinary knowledges).

Interdisciplinarity signifies an 'outflanking' of traditinal notions of disciplinarity. What defines a discipline is its project, that is , its teleology as manifested in a history of constitution of the object of study which distinguishes it from other disciplines. This thesis is less interested in subjecting these histories to scrutiny, than in exploring the lateral relations that hold between and even within the different domains and which ultimately, serve to decentre these domains altogether. It is argued below, for example, that Foucault's rethinking of the central problems of power/knowledge and discourse radically and usefully reformulates traditional sociological dichotomies between micro and macro analysis. His analysis is aptly summarised as 'Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics' (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982). Although the analysis is not without its problems, ¹ Foucault follows,

neither the standard taxonomies and hierarchisations typical of structuralism and its 'objectivist' approach, nor the subjective epistemological relations commonly found in phenomenological and hermeneutic theories of knowledge ... In traditional terms, Foucault steers away from rather than between—the Scylla of (structural) realism and the Charybdis of (phenomenological) idealism (McHoul, undated [c.1984]: 2). ²

The analysis of language, particularly political language, is nothing new to social science, or indeed to literature and the arts. The problem of a reality mediated through human subjects, and thus language, has always been a central problem for philosophers and social scientists in their discussions of objectivity and value freedom. In the world of literature and literary criticism, novelists, satirists and critics had, and continue to have, the spoken and written word as their central medium for capturing and displaying the human condition. Linguistics has developed a science of understanding the technical features of language structure, semantics, morphology and phonology.

The range of ways in which the analysis of langauge have been developed, then, is great. What distinguishes much of the current concern with language, however, is its focus on language and the formation of subjectivities and following Saussure and Volosinov/Bakhtin, ³ language as a grammar of ideology. It is from this terrain that this thesis approaches the notion of discourse theory and anlaysis, and it is in this sense that the analysis will stress the materiality of discursive practice.

The theoretical confusion and epistemological conflict surrounding the concepts of discourse and ideology is so great that they require some lengthy discussion, both in their own terms and specifically in the way this thesis conceives their relation. Although there are many final destinations in the debate, and even more diversions en route, there are two unmistakeable influences in Britain on the discursive problematic, both of which owe a great debt to developments in post-Saussurean and post-Bakhtinian linguistics. The first is the emphasis within marxism on superstructural levels of the social formation, this itself a reaction to the 'economism' of the Second and Third Internationales and Stalinism. The problems of dealing with social democratic states and modern capitalism have spawned a whole series of superstructural analyses in Europe, which Perry Anderson (1976) has called 'Western Marxism'. These accounts are, of course, deeply indebted to and epitomised by the work of Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and post-Althusserian marxism. The other major influences arise largely from French structuralist and poststructuralist alternatives to the marxist project. Post-structuralism as an 'alternative' to marxism will itself require comment as many theorists working in the field of discourse analysis see the two problematics as compatible, if not complementary, while others assert that never the twain shall, or can, meet. Suffice to say for now that the ideas of the French structuralists and poststructuralists have gained fairly wide acceptance amongst sections of the left today largely as a result of what they see as the failure of the marxiat project, and particularly in Althusserian form, to successfully theorise superstructural efficacy and human agency. The poststructural-ists, perhaps an even more diverse group than the marxists, are most prominently represented in the work of Michel Foucault.

Alex Callinicos (1982) alerts us to the danger of boxing writers and theorists into neatly labelled schools. He talks of 'structuralists' and includes Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida and Lacan, amongst others, but notes that the authors themselves would not perhaps use the same labels for their work. If one were to consider the work of some contemporary discourse theorists, Hindess and Hirst (particularly 1977) who beginning with Althusserian marxism arrive at a position much closer to Foucauldean ideas on discursive autonomy, the classification problems become even more difficult. In Britain, many of the Foucauldean types of analysis originated from writers working within the marxist problematic notably in development and critique of the Althusserian position. This in itself has had important theoretical consequences. Most importantly, it has led to a concentration on and concern with the question of the autonomy of discourses, the denial or displacement of epistemology ⁴ and acknowledged problems with the theorisation of the non-discursive. Equally important and related to these concerns is the constitution of the subject within discourse. Callinicos, nevertheless, gives a summary of the common origins of the movement towards discourse, in what he terms the 'revolution in language'. He states that the traditional three 'H's, Hegel, Heidigger and Husserl, have now been abandoned for the three masters of suspicion, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche (Callincos, 1982). These two influences then, although they begin with similar questions and originate from similar positions, that is, the revolution in language associated with Saussure and Volosinvov/Bakhtin, come to very different conclusions. Before commenting on the nature of this revolution in language and its impact for discourse analysis, it is necessary to make some comments on the compatibility or otherwise of the two previously outlined influences, represented in the works of Foucault and Althusser and thus on the challenge of poststructuralism to marxism. Prior to this, however, two further clarifications will need to be made; firstly, there needs to be some discussion of the nature and scope of the possibility of a dialectical social theory, a theory which aims to discuss micro and macro relations. Secondly, a discussion of the concept of ideology within marxism, for much of the subsequent developments of discourse theory in this thesis are premised in these two starting positions.

2.2 Structure and Agency: the Conditions of Possibility of Sociology

In any discussion of sociology, marxist or otherwise, two separate but related problems must be dealt with: the relationship between social being and consciousness: and the efficacy of ideas in social change. I propose to begin with the former. If one were to allow Durkheim, Weber and Marx the distinction of being the founding-fellows of modern sociology, one could begin at a beginning: for it is precisely the way in which the work of these pioneers has been developed that has led to the current dichotomy between structural and action approaches ⁵. Many writers (Dawe, 1970; Giddens, 1979; Benton, 1977) have pointed to the polarisation of contemporary sociology between action orientated and structure-orientated approaches, best represented perhaps by phenomenological and hermeneutic theories ranging from Meadian symobolic interactionism and its spawnings, labelling theory and so forth, to ethnomethodology on the one hand, and structural functionalism on the other. The more perceptive amongst these critics (Benton, 1977; Giddens, 1979) have also noted a parallel development within marxist sociology, which, in Britain at least, could be seen in the conflict between the cultural marxists: such as Raymond Williams, and the history-from-below theorists, epitomised by E P Thompson, on the one hand and Althusserian and post-Althusserian structuralist marxists on the other. The 'marxism' of this latter approach being increasingly displaced by French structuralist and post-structuralist thinking. Reference will be made later to Smart (1982), following Foucault, who sees this dichotomous development as the essential 'conditions of possibility' of sociology, and thus 'insoluble'. ⁶

The problem for sociology was how to avoid the lack of an explanation of power and structure inherent in most 'action-sociology' but also to avoid the functionalism and lack of a theory of human agency involved in 'structure-orientated sociology'. The problem of these two schools may be rendered thus:

MODEL 1 MODEL 2 Society Society Individual Individual (The Weberian Stereotype (The Durkheiman Stereotype 'Voluntarism') Reification') (Bhaskar, 1979: 78)

In the former model social objects are seen as the result of (or as constituted by) intentional or meaningful human behaviour. In the latter model they are seen as possessing a life of their own, external to and coercing the individual. With very little distortion most schools of sociological thought can be put into one or other of these categories. This typification could almost equally well be applied to marxism. The problems presented by the structural functionalism of, for instance, Merton in the 1950s were 'alleviated' in sociology by the emphasis towards more phenomenologically informed inquiry, as also in Marxism the economic reductionism of Stalinism was combated by a plethora of work on 'ideology' and 'culture' and a return to the early works of Marx, witness the Frankfurt school. It is true that such dichotomies (action/structure, micro/macro) are still a feature of both sociology and to a lesser extent of marxism. Mainstream sociology is still largely a question of empiricist functionalism or uncritically documenting 'the meaning of the actors' as if these in themselves provide adequate explanations of social formations and social reality. Mead as theoretical 'answer' to Merton within sociology, Williams as an answer to Althusser, or indeed both these latter as an answer to Stalinist economism, leaves many of the same problems, importantly, the problem of agency versus structure, that is, a truly dialectical methodology.

The problem then was how to produce dialectical sociology, how to act as priest at the marriage of structure and agency. The phenomenologically orientated interpretive tradition (of my undergraduate years) whilst a great improvement upon the narrow determinism of positivism and structural functionalism did not, nor could not, provide an adequate answer. The nuptial imagery of my desire is well-chosen. 'Marriage' is a good analogy. As many feminist sociologists, particularly the marxist-feminists (Barrett, 1980) have noted, marriage is an event where two become one, but not with the mathematical equilbrium one would expect. The union of man and woman in the marriage contract prodcues not a siamese couple or a hermaphrodite, but a man, the 'one' is male, a man and his wife. ⁷ The marriage of structural and action-based sociology all too often suffers a similar fate. Marxist-feminists often produce marxism or feminism as opposed to marxist feminism (or indeed feminist marxism), the gender contradiction becoming more or less important than the basic tenet of class, the economic contradiction. So too with action based and structural sociology, either the structuralist premise dominates or human agency is prevalent.

The task then, to produce what Donzelot has called a sociology

... between the empty gesture of the voluntary and the inscrutable efficiency of the involuntary' (1980: 6)

is harder than it seems. Indeed many sociologists believe it to be impossible. Brown and Lyman in their discussion of symbolic realism state that in the search for,

... A theory that integrates both a sociology of consciousness and the sociology of structure, and also lends itself to humanising practice' ... 'Any such attempt will have to draw on totally opposing paradigms' and '... a major obstacle ... each one is based on very different criteria of validity ...'

'... Thus theorists are forced to choose between epistemological consistency and partial theory, or general theory and epistemological self-contradiction' (Brown and Lyman, 1978: 2).

This may well be the case if one wishes to synthesise social psychology and structural functionalism. Certainly Brown and Lyman (1978) are correct in assuming 'major obstacles' in synthesising the work of Durkheim and Weber adequately. Smart (1982) states that the structure/action dichotomy is the very basis of existence for sociology. It is perhaps useful to look briefly at attempts to devise structure/action models outside of either the culturalist or structuralist marxist schemas. Bhaskar (1979) correctly observes that it is tempting to try to devise an approach capable of synthesising the structure and action perspectives on the assumption of a dialectical inter-relationship between society and people. Berger and Luckman in The Social Construction of Reality (1967) provide what seems, superficially at least, a plausible variant of a structure/action model which may be diagramatically represented thus:

SOCIETY SOCIETY The dialectical conception) INDIVIDUAL

(Bhaskar, 1979: 39)

In this model society forms the individuals who create society. In this schema social structure is not characterisable as an entity able to stand on its own, apart from the human activity that produced it. '... But equally, once created, it is encountered by the individual (both) as an alien faticity (and) as a coercive instrumentality' (Bhaskar, 1979: 41). This appears to overcome the problems of doing justice to the subjective and intentional aspects of social life and to the externality and coercive power of social facts. Bhaskar argues that Berger and Luckmann, in trying to combine the best of the two approaches have merely combined the worst. Their model encourages,

... a voluntaristic idealism with respect to our understanding of people... people and society are not ... related dialectically. They do not constitute two movements of the same process. Rather they refer to radically different kinds of thing' (Bhaskar, 1979:42).

Bhaskar suggests that what he calls the 'Transformational' model will correct the weaknesses of the Berger and Luckmann model. The transformational model of the society/person connection SOCIETY SOCIALISATION REPRODUCTION/TRANSFORMATION

INDIVIDUALBhaskar, 1979: 79)

This transformational model of Bhaskar's has many similarities with the model of structuration propounded by Anthony Giddens (1979 and 1981). In Bhaskar's model it is not individuals who create society, since society always pre-exists and is a necessary condition for their activity. Society must be regarded as an,

... ensemble of structures, practices and conventions which individuals reproduce or transform, but which would not exist unless they did so. Society does not exist independently of human activity (the error of reification). But it is not the product of it (the error of voluntarism) ... the process whereby the stocks of skills, competences and habits appropriate to given social contexts and necessary for the reproduction and/or transformation of society, are acquired and maintained could be generically referred to as 'socialisation'. It is important to stress that the reproduction and/or transformation of society, though for the most part unconsciously achieved, is nevertheless still an achievement, a skilled accomplishment of active subjects not a mechanical consequent of antecedent conditions' (Bhaskar, 1979: 45-46).

Bhaskar talks of the dual character of both society and human praxis.

... Society is both the ever-present condition (material cause) and the continually reproduced outcome of human agency. And praxis is both work, that is conscious production, and (normally unconscious) reproduction of the conditions of production, that is society. One could refer to the former as the duality of structure, and the latter as the duality of praxis (emphasis in original, Bhaskar, 1979: 43).

Gidden's view of structuration appears similar. There is the same concern with human action and thus the human agent, but again with a desire to avoid subjectivism. Giddens, like Bhaskar, also deals with the unconscious aspect of social reproduction:

According to the theory of structuration, all social action consists of social practices situated in time-space, and orgainised in a skilled and knowledgeable fashion by human agents. But such knowledgeability is always 'bounded' by unacknowledged conditions of action on the one side, and unintended consequences of action on the other' (Giddens, 1981: 24).

The fundamental postulate of this model is the duality of structure. This refers to the 'fundamentally recursive nature of social practices' (Giddens, 1981: 26).0

The structured properties of social systems are simultaneously the medium and outcome of social acts' (Giddens, 1981: 19).

In elaborating his notion of 'structuration' Giddens is attempting to form a corrective to the hermeneutic tradition and the 'interpretive sociologies' and to functionalism and structuralism. His notion of temporality is important in this respect. His methodology is not only anti-functionalist, but anti-evolutionist. Giddens correctly points to the functionalist tendency of much contemporary marxism, particularly that arising from the first part of Althusser's (1971) essay on ideological state apparatuses. He states that his notion of the duality of structure is basic to any account of social reproduction and carries no functionalist overtones. Giddens and Bhaskar have produced accounts which attempt to connect social action and social structure. Both perspectives are compatible with his-torical materialism, but both are deficient in at least one respect—the notion of human agency involved. Smart (1982) remarks that the Giddens solution to the problem of human agency is plausible, except for the fact that the attempt is based upon the very notion of human agency that such theories are attempting to negate. Smart states that among other things, Giddens over-emphasises the purposive subject and generally neglects to consider, or account for, its origins as 'lived experience', all this because of his (Giddens') conception of 'structuralism's dissolution of human agency' (Smart, 1982: 136).

Bhaskar is no more helpful. The two dualisms of society/individuals and social reproduction/socialisation are useful if one wants to discuss the relationship between intended and unintended consequences, but what is the notion of human subjectivity involved? The need and scope for a tool occupying a theoretical space similar to Althusser's concept of interpel-lation is still present.

2.3 The (Relative) Autonomy of Ideology

Before a discussion of interpellation, Althusser's (1971) formulation of the relation between ideology and subjectivity, can take place, the concept of ideology needs to be developed. Ideology is a central concept in what I have been referring to in the previous section as the structure/agency debate. It is the nexus of a series of questions concerning inside and outside, subjectivity and social relations. Here, the possibility of a dialectical social theory would seem to be possible, the very problematic of dialectical materialism suggests not only the plausibility but the necessity of relating consciousness and social structure. Although not originating in marxism, ideology is a central concept within that problematic. ⁸ It is the key to dialectical analysis, it explicates the relationship between being and consciousness and the central marxist notion of praxis. Marx and Engels in their early writings were critical of both simple idealists and crude materialists. These two criticisms are the main content of the German Ideology. It is in this work that Marx suggests that finding 'primary causes' in 'ideas' was not simply an error but downright stupidity. 0

Once upon a time an honest fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this idea out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious idea, this would be sublime proofing against any danger from water' (Marx, 1970: 2).

In order to make clear that the dynamic of social change was linked with the economic substructure, Marx counterposed this idealist doctrine with one which stressed material conditions as being the prime causal factor in the production of ideas. This position is summed up in the famous quotation, 0

It is not the consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness' (Marx, 1970: 16).

The effort to stress the material determination of ideas sometimes appears to suggest that the relationship between the infrastructure and superstructure is mechanical and reductive, that knowledge and ideas can be read off in symmetrical fashion from the economic conditions prevailing at any moment, but this type of formulation is clearly inadequate, as it fails to allow for an account of change in the process of the production of knowledge, there is no room in the analysis for the challenging of old ideas and practices by new ones. It is essential for historical materialism to include some notion of praxis. A formulation which allows no relation between being and consciousness other than one of misrepresentation is therefore inadequate. To deny recognition on the part of ideological subjects of the real conditions of life, even if only in an indirect or confused fashion, removes the element of dialectical materialism as Marx was at pains to stress in the Theses on Feuerbach:

The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and education forgets that circumstances are changed by men (sic) and that the educator must himself be educated. This doctrine has therefore to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can only be grasped and rationally understood as revolutionary practice' (Marx, 1970: 534).

Further, it removes the capacity which provides the dynamic of creativity in people, as is suggested in the discussion of human labour in Capital,0

We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human ... what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his (sic) structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour process we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement' (Marx, 1974: 185-86).

These related strands go to suggest that ideology can have effectivity in history, and some measure of autonomy from the superstructure and also that a subjective awareness of objective conditions is possible, through the experience of contradictions produced by 'living' ideologies. But crucially this relationship between material conditions and ideology and between being and consciousness must be recognised as dialectical. Several distinct usages and variations in meaning can be detected from the various usages of ideology as a concept. Williams states that these are broadly:

1 a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular class or group.

2 a system of illusory beliefs—false ideas or falseconsciousness—which can be contrasted with true or scientific knowledge.

3 the general process of the production of meanings and ideas (Williams, 1977; 55).

One source of the many differing interpretations in marxist theories of ideology is probably the confusing use of metaphors in discussions relating to epistemological questions concerning the origin of ideology. The most obvious source of this problem is in the German Ideology itself, and the use of the metaphor of the 'camera obscura' which seems to stem from the search for some way to express the relationship of ideology to the material conditions of existence:

Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men (sic) in their actual life process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life process ... we set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms born in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises' (Marx, 1970: 15-16).

Mepham has analysed this usage, and outlines the problems and misinterpretations that follow from it. He identifies the most misleading as being the suggestion of a positivist link between ideology and material premises. This interpretation would be,

... that ideology arises from the tendency to be taken in by phantoms in such a way that the victim simply overlooks or is distracted from 'empirically verifiable facts' that would otherwise be obvious and clear'.

The metaphor further suggests that in the production of ideology,

... representations are in some sense 'mere illusions' (an epistemological thesis) and 'mere epiphenomena' or 'phantoms' (an ontological thesis) ...' (Mepham, 1979: 145).

This thesis seems to suggest that Marx had not succeeded in escaping from the formulations of crude materialism, as his ideological representations had no bearing in truth or in material effectivity—a position he would obviously wish to avoid and which has been the starting point for the many developments in theories of ideology. As Williams put it: 0

the emphasis on consciousness as inseparable from conscious existence, and then on conscious existence as inseparable from material social processes, is in effect lost in the use of this deliberately degrading vocabulary' (Williams, 1977: 59).

The German Ideology cannot be dealt with merely by rejecting the 'camera obscura' metaphor. Hall states, 0

the German Ideology is a much more complex text than is usually allowed. No theory of ideology can be elaborated without paying attention to the ideological effects of naturalisation, universalisation and the 'isolation effect' sketched there' (Hall, 1978).

Ideology may be viewed as having either a positive or negative meaning in its association with something like the 'world view' of a particular class or group. In this formulation, taken in the positive sense one finds, for instance, Lenin using the term rather simply without any of the connotations of mystification or false consciousness suggested by alternative usages, and suggesting a rather direct causal relationship between the content of an ideology and its material origins, the ideologies being representations of class interests. 0

Socialism in so far as it is the ideology of struggle of the proletarian class, undergoes the general conditions of birth, development and consolidation of any ideology, that is to say, it is founded on all the material of human knowledge, it presupposes a high level of science, scientific work, etc... in the class struggle of the proletariat which develops spontaneously, as an elemental force, on the basis of capitalist relations, socialism is introduced by the ideologists' (Lenin, 1963: 11).

This formulation also avoids the issue of the cognitive value of the ideas themselves, which appears as central when ideology is used in a negative, critical sense, suggesting that the 'ideas of the ruling class' are received and expressed as 'false consciousness', by some process of the misrepresentation of social reality. These 'illusionary' ideas can then be contrasted with 'true' or 'scientific' ideas. Cornforth makes an important point in connection with the science/ideology dichotomy. He states that Althusser,0

specialises in antithesis' ... further ... ' one of his chief antithesis concerns 'science and ideology" (Cornforth, 1973: 139).

Cornforth notes that Engels in his work on Feuerbach emphasises that once one has grasped the central point of dialectics, one no longer permits oneself to be imposed upon by antithesis. Althusser then, simply opposes one concept to the other without relating them. Dialectics is the science of interconnections, so one must not merely oppose but also connect. In this dialectical mode of analysis the usefulness of science/ideology distinctions becomes more fruitful. What is regarded as science, what ideology, and what is the relationship between the two? ⁹ It is the mechanical, reductionist formulation which has been the subject of strong criticism within recent marxist work on ideology. The rejection of the crude economism of the Second and Third Internationales brought with it a reworking of the base/superstructure metaphor and a new concern with the effectivity of the 'superstructural' elements, with a conception of ideology freed from the misleading connotations of 'false consciousness' and a focus on its origins, its nature and effects. The works of Althusser and Gramsci were obviously potent influences within these developments. As has been mentioned earlier, these developments were also connected with an interest in theorising human agency/subjectivity and developments within marxism were to a certain extent paralleled within sociology. In the economistic formulation, there is seen to be an unmediated, uncomplicated causal link between the material base, narrowly defined as being the economic, and the production of ideology, its content and its function. Ideology is thereby reduced to an effect determined elsewhere—an epiphenomenon which has no effectivity within the historical process. These assumptions serve to divert interest away from superstructural effects and towards the economic base which is presumed to be determinative in all instances. The nature and effects of ideology are rendered unproblematic, as once the origins are identified, then there is a necessary, symmetrical, one-way relationship between where and how ideologies are produced and the way in which they operate:

... On this view, there is no problem about how ideology comes to serve the interest of the ruling class (ie. to perpetuate existing conditions)—it would be purpose built to do so' (Collier, 1977).

Ideology thus works through a simple mystification at the mental level—'false consciousness' results. Its production becomes the result of something akin to a 'conspiracy theory', whereby the ruling class is seen as being able to actively deceive people almost at will, by manipulating a social reality untouched by contradictory social relations. This further suggests that the representations of ideology must be entirely erroneous, without basis in lived reality.

Mouffe (1979) has identified a further facet of economism, concerned with the actual nature of the superstructures whereby the ideology of a subject is reduced to an effect of her or his place in the relations of production. The work of Lukacs provides the primary example of this tendency. He makes the break with ephiphenomenalism and gives some measure of effectivity to the superstructure, but his position remains reductionist in that he links the nature of ideology with class consciousness, defining it as, 'the imputed consciousness of a social class' (Mouffe, 1979) which is determined by means of class reductionism. As Robert Eccleshall remarks,

'... Ordinary people are unlikely to be bewitched by fairy tales spun out of the fertile imaginations of capitalist hobgoblins' (Eccleshall, 1978: 2).

This indicates that ideology is anchored in everyday reality. It is shaped by and feeds upon everyday perceptions through which it becomes a coherent but partial perspective. Eccleshall illustrates the point by suggesting that,

'Religious conviction, for instance, is not to be explained by supposing that people have been brain-washed to accept the existence of imaginary deities. Rather, the felt need for the spiritual reflects the improverishment and injustices suffered in class society' (Eccleshall, 1978: 3).

Similarly, when discussing Conservatism, Eccleshall states that it,

'profers itself for popular consumption in the form of common sense by building upon and distorting the facts of social existence. Hence, instead of denying class differences, it rationalises them by rearranging them into a picture of a non-antagonistic, just and inevitable social order' (Eccleshall, 1978: 3).

The task of a ruling class ideology then is,

'to incorporate social practices into a perspective which obliterates the exploitative framework within which they operate. Far from pouring sheer lies into empty heads, therefore, the dominant ideological content is hidden under the guise of common sense ...' (Eccleshall, 1978: 3).

Mercer (1978) remarks that the issues of ideology and culture are often regarded as being concerned exclusively with ideas and not with the material. The objectification of ideology, present particularly in the work of Althusser, is proposed as an answer to this reductionist, economist critique. There has been a tendency to almost totally replace the theory which stresses the effectivity of individuals and classes in the production and receoption of ideology, with one which stresses that ideology is objective:

'ideology appears as a deception induced by reality itself: it is not the subject that distorts reality but reality itself which deceives the subject ... the objective view sees ideology as impregnating the basic structure of society' (Larrain, 1979: 14).

This suggests that it is not the dominant class as such which is the source of ideas which serve to secure the social relations of capitalism, but bourgeois society itself. The need for a 'conspiracy theory' has vanished. This is not to say that active deception and manipulation do not take place, but only that it is not necessary to explain the phenomenon solely from a subjectivist position which cites an individual or class agency as the prime causal factor. As Mepham states:

'it is not necessary to postulate that any basic role in the generation of ideological discourse is played by subjective and individual agencies such as the desire to deceive, or the deliberate intention to manipulate the beliefs of others in such a way as to protect ones interests. Nor is it necessary to postulate that ideology need be believed only by the aid of some process of self-deception or refusal, or bad faith. Such existentialist concepts are invoked in order to explain how it can come about that a person believes things which he (sic) is in a good position to know are false. but Marx's theory postulates that ideology arises from the fact that the situation might be such as to provide a person with reasons for thinking in terms of categories which necessarily generate falsehood and illusion ... It is the forms of social relations with which one is apparently directly acquainted in experience (value, wages, money, etc) that are deceptive' (Mepham, 1979: 167).

By stressing the materiality of ideology, Althusser and others sought to rectify the economism of the Second and Third Internationales. Althusser's (1971) formulation of ideology as 'lived experience', as a representation of the 'imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence', and his idea that 'an ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice or practices', has been fundamental in the development of the concept of ideology. In order to more fully explain the complex and dialectical relationship of base (infra or substructure) with the superstructure in Marx's original metaphor Althusser, following a strand of thought in Gramsci, elaborated a theory of the relative autonomy of the political and ideological levels.

Althusser attempts to escape economic determinism by positing the ideological as a relatively autonomous level of the social formation, articulated to the economy by 'determination in the last instance', a phrase borrowed from Lenin. Althusser also uses the concept of 'overdetermination', from Freud, via Lacan, to describe the nature of this relative autonomy. There are, of course, several problems with these notions. Althusser has been criticised on the grounds of empiricism, pluralism, functionalism and idealism.

The most serious difficulty with positing a relation of 'no necessary correspondence' between base and superstructure is the old one of determination, that is, the precise extent of the articulation between the base and superstructure. Recent structuralist, poststructuralist ideas and indeed the development of post-Althusserian 'marxism' itself, particularly as represented in the writings of such as Hindess and Hirst, have put forward serious challenges to the notion of relative autonomy. The feminist critique in the field of gender politics and work within race and ethnicity studies have been particularly important in developing these arguments. Hirst (1976, 1979) points to the 'fragile character' of the relatively autonomous thesis. Coward and Ellis reject the idea that economic practice is more important than political or ideological processes. As Barrett emphasises, Coward and Ellis in denying the primacy of the economic are rejecting,

'Not only the strong form (sic) of economic determinism (ideology as a reflection of the economic base) but also any determinate relationship between the economic and the ideological and hence, the Althusserian formulation of determination in the last instance' (Barrett, 1980: 32-33).

Barrett argues that this position is an argument for the absolute rather than the relative autonomy of ideology. This position of the necessity of non-correspondence (the absolute autonomy position) is often attributed to Hindess and Hirst (1975) in Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, and especially (1977) An Auto-Critique of Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. Hirst (1976, 1979) asks the rhetorical question 'Autonomy from what?' ... arguing that to phrase questions of causality is to assume a social totality in which particular instances are governed by their place in the whole. As Barrett remarks:

'This enlightenment induces a distaste for the concept of ideology itslf, and preference for that of discursive practice' (Barrett, 1980: 88).

Adlam (1978) explains that the concept of discursive practice is part of a theoretical position which,

'seeks from a materialist perspective, to forge the conceptual tools whch will allow the analysis of specific practices, their interrelations and their effectivities within contemporary social formations. The concept signals the importance of examining the relations which obtain between discourses and the practices in which they are always inscribed. It points to questions such as: what are the conditions of production of discourses within the social formation? What are their effectivities? How do discourses interrelate to produce specific systems of meaning and of practice? How are the contradictions produced through the intersections of different discourses articulated, minimised or extended?' (Adlam et al, 1978: 123-24).

Before discussing the displacement, or otherwise, of ideology by the notion of discursive practice some further comments on subjectivity need to be made.

2.4 Interpellation and Subjectivity

It is the confusion over what actually constitutes the category 'human agent' that is the source of many of the difficulties in theorising ideology for marxism. Laclau (1977) in discussing Poulanzas' (1973) criticisms of Milliband makes the point that the phrasing of the action/structure debate in these terms is a feature of bourgeois sociology and for epistemological reasons is undesirable. Quite simply, the problem examined and presented in this fashion belongs to a different problematic. Milliband, for instance, constantly gives the impression that social classes can be reduced to inter-personal relations or that the state is reducible to the inter-personal relations of the diverse 'groups' that constitute the state apparatus.

'According to this problematic, the agents of a social formation, 'men' (sic), are not considered the bearers of objective instances (as they are for Marx) but as the genetic principle of the level of the social whole. This is a problematic of social actors, of the individuals as the origin of social action: sociological research thus leads finally, not to the study of the objective co-ordinates that determine the distribution of agents into social classes and the contradictions between these classes, but to the search for finalist explanations founded in the motivations of conduct of the individual actors. This is notoriously one of the aspects of the problematic both of Weber and of contemporary functionalism. To transpose this problematic of the subject into marxism is in the end to admit the epistemological principles of the adversary and to risk vitiating one's own analysis' (Laclau, 1977: 52-53).

Hirst writes that,

'The 'subject' has become the object of a great deal of fashionable theorising in recent years ' (1981: 5).

He explains that the category 'subject' is one specific to Graeco-Christian civilisation and suggests that the modern western concept of the person is a construction based on certain specific human capacities and attributes,

'Antiquity developed the concept of persona from that of a particular status or role, to which attach certain moral obligations, into that of a person as an independent moral entity, a being whose conduct is self-governed. Christianity invested, this moral persona responsible for its conduct, with additional metaphysical attributes. It became both an agent and an immortal soul, the well-being of the soul being influenced by the conduct of the agent. Christianity produces a conception of the individual as a unity in its conduct, as a unique entity independent of particular social statuses, and of a transcendant value irreducible to considerations of social utility. It was not until after the Reformation that this form of individuation clearly linked identity with consciousness and made self-consciousness the ground of individual moral existence' (Hirst, 1981: 2-3).

The main concept of the person then tends to deny the constructed category making 'The 'person' an inherent, limitary, given and constituative reality' (Hirst, 1981: 5). This definitional problem with 'the persona' is at the heart of an important division within contemporary British marxism.

Richard Johnson (1979) draws a distinction between culturalist and structuralist marxists, identifying Thomson and Althusser as the main protagonists of the two groups. It is clear that a substantial part of the 'disagreement' between these two approaches is fought on moral grounds. Politics and the metaphysical status of the 'person' are closely entwined. Paul Hirst (1979) explains that what is challenged is not the social status of person, as free agent or subject of right, but rather the claimed ontological foundations of that status and the forms of explanation of social relations which follow from such a claim.

'The challenge consists first and foremost in demonstrating that 'person' is a metaphysical concept and not a simple reality. Challenged is the notion of the person as a given entity, the author of its acts and centred in a unitary, reflexive and directive consciousness. This challenge has provoked cries of outrage from traditionalists in a number of disciplines, the most recent and vociferous of whom is the historian Edward Thompson in his broadside against Althusser, The Poverty of Theory. This outrage was inevitable. 'Anti-humanist' philosophy entered the Anglo-Saxon intellectual arena at a time when personalist and existentialist ideas had become established as a main line of defence against the medthodological presuppositions of behaviouralism. it also appeared to challenge the defence of human rights and civil liberties on which large sections of their abilities in opposition to Nazi and Soviet authoritarianisms were dependant. The new challenge appeared to threaten a universal determinism, in which human conduct became a mere 'effect' and a consequent disregard for human dignity and freedom' (Hirst, 1979: 6—my emphasis).

Although, as Johnson (1979) points out, there are valid criticisms of culturalism from the structuralist perspective and vice versa, much of the debate revolves around the question of the anti-humanism of the structuralists or the humanism of the culturalists. It is left to Levine (1981) to clarify the confusion:

'Were it not for the enormous misunder-standings Althusser's anti-humanism has elicited ... it would not need to be said that the dispute between humanism and anti-humanism has nothing to do with a positive or negative attitude about human beings, but rather with the role the human subject is alleged to play in marxist theory' (Levine, 1981: 281—my emphasis).

Anderson (1976) says much the same thing in Chapter 2 of Considerations of Western Marxism when discussing the Althusser/Thompson debate. The quote from Levine and the virulence of what Johnson (1979: 55) refers to as the 'intellectual lumber-jacking'—referring to the Althusser/Thompson argument—surrounding the debate on the notion of the person reinforces Hirst's point about the deeply embedded nature of the concept of the 'person'. Hirst himself points out that,

'we find such unlikely bedfellows as Mrs Thatcher and E P Thompson firm believers in the human subject as an autonomous agent using a category as pervasive in our culture as that of witchcraft for the Azande' (1981: 9).

As Hall rightly points out,

'Marx constantly makes a quite specific argument, for example in the Grundrisse, in the 1857 Introduction and at many points in Capital, against the temptation to elaborate a set of theories, abstracted at the levels of mode of production and social formation, which take the 'individual' as their starting point' (1978: 114).

It is in the light of these comments from Marx himself then that one must consider Hirst's warning. There can be no place within dialectical materialism for such a conception of the human subject. It is in this light that Althusser is quite rightly anti-humanist and it is thus that the structuralist marxists have a valid critique of the 'culturalists'. The 'culturalists' do have a very special problem with their analyses, particularly the 'history-from-below' theorists such as Thompson and Genovese, but also the followers of Raymond Williams. Culturalist practices do suppress two important aspects of procedure central to marxism:

'... the process of systematic and self-conscious abstraction, and the notion that social relations are structural in particular ways and operate in part 'behind men's (sic) backs" (Hall, 1978: 54).

Hall states that many of the difficulties with the culturalist analyses arise from an overriding moral and political imperative with theoretical effects ...

'The main imperative is to respect the authenticity, rationality or validity of the experiences of culture that are addressed ... experiences are understood fundamentally as class experiences, second, there is a primary concern with the culture of subordinate or oppressed classes which are seen as having a particular authenticity and dignity and yet are in need of recovery within the historical record' (Hall, 1978: 60—my emphasis).

It is true to say then that the culturalists often rescue 'previously flattened stories' (Hall, 1978) but at what cost? A moral and political stance is often extended to a theoretical and epistemological principle. The epistemological difficulties with these kinds of formulations are common to most 'empiricisms'. In the search for a truly dialectical analysis the structuralists fair no better, for although they are capable of performing a valid critique on culturalism they can provide no adequate discussion of consciousness themselves. Although structuralism may dodge the pitfalls of economism it remains true that much Althusserian analysis slides into an unacceptable functionalism and also an undesirable level of generality and abstraction from which it is incapable of escaping.

Marx's writings, despite the inadequacies of both culturalism and structuralism, still represent the most significant single body of texts that can be drawn upon in seeking to illuminate the problems of agency and structure. Both culturalism and structuralism are materialist, opposed to idealism; both are concerned in some way with history and the historical; furthermore, both insist that ideology and culture although connected to, have some degree of autonomy from, the material.

Althusser's is perhaps the most serious attempt within marxism to theorise social agents as other than constituative subjects of consciousness. Althusser tried to produce a concept of social agent which does not explain its actions as originating in some pre-given 'subject', in free-will, or as being determined by external causes. Althusser attempted to theorise a socially constituted agent who is at the same time capable of being the 'bearer' of social relations, who is not a mere effect or cipher. Althusser suggests that ideology is an inevitable component of any society because a person's 'lived' relation to that society can never be an adequate account of the conditions and pre-conditions on which her/his social relations depend. The models that suggest people are self-conscious subjects and that 'society' is nothing but the results of their intersubjectivities are inadequate precisely because they ignore such conditions. Althusser argues that far from assenting to society in a constitutive act of will, people live in an imaginary relation to it, a relation which depends on conditions which are prior to and independent of their will.

The subject and its imaginary relation are constituted through the ideological mechanism of 'interpellation'. Hirst states:

'This mechanism involves what Althusser calls the 'dual-mirror' structure. This structure is composed of a master Subject (the other who 'hails' the subject) and the subject (who is hailed, 'interpellated'—literally inter-rupted by being spoken to). This structure constitutes concrete individuals as social subjects, assigned the attributes of a definite ideological formation. The subject is constituted through its recognition of an imaginary master Subject (God, conscience, etc.) which hails its recogniser. The Subject addresses the subject, recognising it, speaking to it as a Subject. In being inter-rupted by recognising this address, the subject recognises itself as subject, as spoken to as a subject. All ideology involves a form of master Subject as one pole of the dual-mirror relation. This structure of duality is called 'specularity', a reflection and counter-reflection of a single image ... There is no originary constitutive subject or Subject prior to this imaginary dual-mirror structure. Concrete individuals become social subjects of a definite form through this process ... The effect of interpellation is to constitute a subject which thinks of itself as free, which chooses to obey the commands directed at it by the Subject and which commits itself to patterned actions as the principles it itself has chosen' (Hirst, 1981: 13-14).

Althusser's use of the Lacanian concept of interpellation accepts the necessity of constituting agents; that the social agent is not given in the human individual, and at the same time that the result is an agent whose conduct, although patterned, is not determined. There are, however, a number of problems with this formulation. The most pressing problem is the conversion of the agent into a 'mere means of continuing the system, a socially obedient cipher' (Hirst, 1981: 15).

The stress on the ideological subject as 'constituted' rather than 'constituting' has produced a situation whereby agents are not the constitutive principle of their acts, but supports of the structures (Mouffe, 1979). Accepting then, that the subject is not the originating source of consciousness, but is the product of specific interpellative practice does not necessarily require a rejecting of some notion of practices as being contradictory and therefore being experienced as such by the constituted subject of ideology. While acknowledging the importance of the notion of the objective force of social relations, and their overriding of 'experiential categories', it does seem that a theory of ideology which cannot coherently allow for ideological struggle is severely inadequate. To see ideology as working only to produce a subject 'who freely accepts (its) subjection' (Althusser, 1971) is to see all ideology as dominant ideology, so excluding the theorising of counter-ideologies and practices. ¹⁰ As Laclau points out, in his essay on 'Fascism and Ideology' (1977), there is no reason to suppose that the mechanism of interpellation as constitutive of ideology does not operate in the same way in revolutionary classes as in dominated classes. This decisively brings class struggle into the field of ideology, and suggests that oppositional ideologies are themselves generated in similar objective fashion to dominant ideology (Laclau, 1977: 101).

Hirst rightly points out that the weakness in Althusserian theory derives from his attempt to link this particular concept of the subject to the question of how a mode of production as a totality reproduces itself. Hirst sees

'... social relations as aggregates of in-stitutions, forms of organisations, practices and agents, which do not answer to any single causal principle or logic of consistency, which can and do differ in form and which are not all essential to one another' (1981: 11-12).

Althusser tends to assume,

'... that the 'conscientisation' of conduct leads to social order. This is because he conceives such doctrines as deriving ultimately from a coherent social whole whose needs they serve, ... the systemisation of conduct by reference to a doctrine and its interpretation by 'conscience', are by no means conservative and preservative of social stability' (Hirst, 1981: 16).

One can then never reduce individuals to obedient social performers of required roles, in the same way they cannot be treated as 'free agents', rather than entities that operate 'as if' they were.

It is Gramsci's (1971) notion of hegemony and the drift towards the problematic of discourse that allows the development of this notion of struggle to be expanded within the analysis. The next section then, examines the intersection of marxism and poststructuralism, and the movement towards theorising language and discourse. This movement, ultimately allows the discussion of the conflict and struggle involved in the discursive formation of Northern Ireland.

2.5 Discourse, Ideology and Hegemony

It is to the 'intersection' of marxism and post-structuralism that this chapter must now turn, to the works of Foucault in particular.

Foucault's work, and the work of others developing his ideas, has displaced some of the traditional concerns of marxism. Foucault himself outlines the 'difficulties' in using the concept of ideology. He states,

'The notion of ideology appears to me difficult to use for three reasons. The first is that, whether one wants it to be or not, it is always in virtual opposition to something like truth. Now I believe that the problem is not to make the division between that which, in a discourse falls under scientificity and truth and that which falls under something else, but to see historically how truth effects are produced inside discourses which are not in themselves true or false. The second inconvenience is that it refers, necessarily I believe, to something like a subject. Thirdly, ideology is in a secondary position in relation to something which must function as the infra-structure or economic or material determinant for it. For these three reasons I believe that it is a notion that one cannot use without precautions' (Foucault, 1980: 36).

For Foucault the constitution or exclusion of discourses is not reduced to a movement of thought or ideas, but must be considered in the context of the material circumstances in which the movement occurs. The difference between this formulation and those taking 'ideology' as a central concept is the way in which discourse is theorised. Foucault in his later work favours genealogical analysis of the ways in which discourses are constituted and,

'examines a series of cultural shifts which take place at the point of articulation of discursive and non-discrusive practices ... Institutions can form the 'concrete opinion' of discourses, but discourse nevertheless retains its own autonomy. Nor can there be any question of 'deriving' the non-discursive from the discursive. The possibility of one is never transparently contained within the other' (Dews, 1979: 142).

Many of the problems with the analyses of Foucault are connected with the distinction between the discursive and the non-discursive. If discourses are to be seen as autonomous, how can one discuss the non-discursive and how can one reconcile this with the assertion that,

'Foucault had no wish to deny the role of what he later called 'non-discursive formations' in the production of thought. The reverse is the case ... all Foucault's work is concerned with this problem' (Sheridan, 1980).

The answer here lies in the unconscious mixing of marxist and Foucauldean problematics. Remembering the warnings of Hirst—Autonomy from what?—one must conclude that Foucault's 'autonomy of the discursive realm' has not been reconciled with marxism because the concept does not refer to an absolute autonomy position a la historical materialism. It is interesting to note how these ideas have been developed in Britain. Hindess and Hirst and others, Kristeva for example, beginning with a critique of Althusserian marxism have moved to a position which relies quite heavily on the writings and ideas of Foucault, a position many would say, is much nearer to poststructuralism than to marxism.

By the positing of the absolute autonomy of discursive practice, and the denial that ideology constitutes an epistemological category, that is, that it can be deemed neither true nor false, Hirst et al have taken the notion of the materiality of ideology quite seriously. Hirst argues,

'ideology is not illusory ... it is not falsity, because how can something which has effects be false? It would be like saying a black pudding or a steamroller is false' (1976: 38).

The argument develops further with regard to representation—that we can have no knowledge of any particular category prior to its representation in discourse. In this brand of discourse theory then, Althusser's insight that ideology exists in material practices has been extended, by the 'slide from one meaning to another' (Hall, 1978), into the notion that ideology, is itself material. This comment is echoed by Richard Johnson who states that the 'genuine insight' of the materiality of ideology, becomes a 'reckless hyperbole' that 'ideology has a material existence' (Johnson, 1979). Eagleton (1980) suggests that such a tenet removes any analytic usefulness from the term material.

'There is no possible sense in which meanings and values can be said to be material, other than in the most sloppy metaphorical use of the term ... If meanings are material, then the term 'materialism' naturally ceases to be intelligible. Since there is nothing which the concept excludes, it ceases to have value' (Eagleton, 1980).

Poststructuralist analyses, certainly of the Deleuzian variety, differ with Eagleton. It could be suggested, that theorising the materiality of ideology thus breaks down a philosophical dichotomy between matter and ideas and sees both in terms of effects. This notion is crucial, in fact, to an under-standing of discourse and discursive practice in Foucault's terms.

The notion of 'no necessary correspondence', or to go even further, the necessity of non-correspondence brings one to the territory charted by the poststructuralist thinkers, and particularly to the work of Foucault. It would also include others such as Derrida, Lacan and Deleuze. These developments within the field of ideological critique and the search for a problematic within which language can be discussed appears to have led in many cases to the displacement of marxism and the increasing adoption of the ideas and writings of, particularly, Foucault. The basic premise of historical materialism, the primacy of material determination, appears to have been seriously compromised and the privileging of marxist or indeed of any epistemology challenged. Burton and Carlen (1977) remark that discourse analysis has displaced epistemology. This belief is widely held amongst those who would describe themselves as discourse analysts, themselves a very diverse group. Brown remarks,

'If there is anything which holds together the notion of 'discourse' it is a common rejection of that bundle of philosophies known as epistemology' (Brown, 1979: 87).

The absolute autonomists are not rejecting ontological realism but epistemological realism, that is, not that reality does not exist, but that reality does not exist outside of discourse. Barrett (1980) suggests that to abandon the concept of ideology for discursive practice is not necessarily the tactical advantage it would seem. She points out, as does Callincos (1982) that the concept of 'discursive practice' owes much to previous attempts to discuss the autonomy and materiality of ideology, particularly in Britain.

'... To put this another way: they have shifted the discussion of ideology onto the terrain of the discourse and while in their terms this may be as real an advance as any other, to the critic of discursive imperialism it may seem a nominal rather than a conceptual gain' (Barrett, 1980: 88).

Stuart Hall explains that the position of 'no necessary correspondence' is not Hirst's (1976) standpoint.

'... No necessary correspondence is the terrain of articulation of 'relative autonomy', of the complex unity of practices which are 'unified' precisely through their differences, etc. What Hirst proposes is a necessary non-correspondence—leading, as he quite rightly understands, to the absolute autonomy of all practices, the impossibility of history and the abandoning of any concept of complex unity. There is indeed a very modern and powerful 'epistemology' supporting these propositions, but I cannot see how it can unproblematically be assigned as marxist -even if it continues to use marxist categories and concepts: it seems, in many respects, far closer to a neo-Kantian problematic, 'materialist' only by adjectival invocation. At any rate, it cannot simply be stated that 'this position does not deny the existence of a non-discursive order which, on the one hand, constrains the possibilities and effectivities of discursive practices' (Hirst, 1976: 46), for this is to pose once again the question of the articulation between, and even the relations of determinacy between, these two 'orders', which is precisely what is being defined by the position, as unborrowable' (Hall, 1978: 120).

Although the absolute autonomy position is unsatisfactory from a marxist (relative autonomy) position in so far as it is fundamentally idealist (Collier, 1979; Callincos, 1982) it nevertheless offers one route of escape from the functionalism which has been identified in Althusser's work, particularly with regard to ideology and the 'ideological state apparatuses' (Althusser, 1971). This is closely related to the lack of success in adequately theorising relative autonomy, and the inherent tendency to slip back into economism, aptly illustrated by Poulantzas' work on the state (Poultantzas, 1973) where it becomes almost a logical impossibility for capitalist states to function in a manner which is not complemetary to the dominant class. He does not show how the state apparatuses come to 'represent' particular classes or class fractions, the implication being that we must look to class agency for an answer—a solution which is incompatible with the Althusserian position he adopts. The whole question of how the state apparatuses are secured is highly problematic, stemming from seeing the whole ideological sphere and the way its subjects are produced as serving the single function of the reproduction of the conditions of existence of capitalist production. This argument is clearly inadequate to explain struggle and conflict, in its lack of emphasis on contradiction it stresses the reproduction of the system in such a way that it appears to be a 'continuously achieved outcome' rather than a 'condition or contingency' (Johnson, 1979: 69).

One can then, concede much of importance to the theorists of discourse, to the poststructuralists such as Foucault and the 'marxist avant garde' such as Hindess and Hirst (Sumner, 1979). From the perspective of historical materialism, at least traditional approaches, one must conclude that although the problematic of 'relative autonomy',

'remains in the long term, a descriptive solution only ... that this is the principle site of the marxist problematic' (Hall, 1978: 116-17).

The only alternatives to relative autonomy being reductionism, or the absolute autonomy of every pratice from every other. The latter position, Hall describes as,

'... one which renders Marx's problematic untenable" (Hall, 1978: 117).

It is at this point then, that one must concede at least two distinct forms of analysis—marxist and poststructuralist—which have, as yet, no completely satisfactory synthesis. There are some who would say that this is not possible Hall (1979: 119), for instance, believes so. There are other, however, who would suggest that one is the logical extension of the other, that is, that research within the field of ideological critique inevitably leads one to the field of discourse analysis. Now whilst it is true that anyone interested in ideological critique cannot ignore either language or discourse, it does not follow that an unproblematic synthesis of marxism and poststructuralism can occur. The concept of ideology, as has been indicated earlier, has a meaning quite specific to the marxist problematic. If ideology does have a place within a discursive problematic, it does not follow that it is a concept of similar stature to the concept when used within marxism. Whilst such a warning thus needs to be stressed, it is also true that there is a degree of convergence between at least the concerns, if not the methods, of Foucault and contemporary marxists. Both Althusser and Gramsci were concerned with langauge and can thus be associated with what Callicos (1982) calls the 'revolution of language'. Colin Mercer (1978) outlines the 'space' for a theory of discourse starting from a suture of the ideas of Gramsci and Althusser.

Mercer begins by pointing out the 'mis-appropriation' of Gramsci and particularly the concept of hegemony and in doing so explains the relationship between hegemony, ideology, culture and the discursive.

'it would seem that the concept of hegemony raises as a fundamental question the mode of relation between state, institutions (public and private), ideology and people. It is a question of 'middle ground' (to use a rather unsatisfactory terminology) which needs to be theorised. This 'middle ground' has much to do with the problems of the nature of our participation as subjects within the ideology and institutions of the state and with the negotiations of 'meaning' ... An understanding of the concept of hegemony involves—necessitates—the introduction of certain new categories and concepts if we are to avoid falling into the traps which lay in wait along the linear and logical paths of the base/substructure model. One such category, which resists any simple linear model of causality and determination, is that of the discursive' (Mercer, 1978: 20).

Mercer (1978) remarks that the concepts of discourse and the discursive are the subject of extensive debate at the minute, particuarly around the work of the Foucault. Mercer points out what his use of the concept suggests and resists. It suggests,

'that the analysis of the social formation and of its particular elements should always be conceived of in terms of being a connotative ensemble, that individual elements cannot be considered in isolation from their particular forms of condensation (ie the way in which they are articulated together) at any given moment ...' And resists, 'a linear and logical and deductive methodology which isolates elements and then reduces them to a single 'cause' or 'origin' ... here Althusser's concept, taken from Freud, of over-determination is important in that it suggests that any conjuncture should be understood not in a static and positivistic sense, but as a fusion of elements whose determination is not from one point or level (the economic) but multiple, involving political and ideological considerations as well ... Finally, and most importantly, discourse suggests language and shifts our attention to the articulation of the elements we are analysing at any given moment' (Mercer, 1978: 39).

Discourse, and the discursive problematic, does suggest language. Discourse cannot, however, be reduced to language, nor can the social formation be reduced to discourses,

'... The exercise of power is conditioned at one and the same time by determinate discourses and by the practices and institutions in which they are always invested' (Adlam, 1978: 125).

The concept of discursive practice does not, and should not indicate an overriding concern with words, although it is often mistaken as such or is used in this way. Perhaps the term discourse itself is partly to blame for this. Rather, the terms are tactical, they signal a theoretical stance.

'These concepts argue against other positions currently being used to theorise ideology. They argue for the importance of systems of signs in social practice and against theories which have disregarded this' (Adlam, 1978: 126).

They argue, in other words, for an understanding of ideology as a general process of meaning making, a semiotic definition, emphasising the discursive nature of the process. The Gramscian concepts of 'common sense', 'philosophy' (sometimes referred to as 'ideology') and 'hegemony' are relevant here (Gramsci, 1972). The first relates to the unreflected understanding of a social grouping, the second to an organised set of conceptions which entail the active transformation of culture, and the third to the way in which, within capitalist discourse, the relationship between the economy and the state is affected by the practices of civil society. The Gramscian notion of hegemony remember, is not a simple domination, a monolithic system of though imposed on a subordinate working class, it is a matter of tactics and struggle. The use of the term civil society to designate the prime area of this struggle is, despite the inconsistent use of the concept (CF Anderson, 1976/77), useful in maintaining a non-functionalist approach, which Althusser's conflation of state/civil society inevitable leads to. It is necessary to distinguish, within the discourse of any social grouping, between a relatively unformulated common sense and a relatively formulated 'philosophy' orientated around various bases of resistance. It is only by exploring a specific civil society and the associated discursive practices that the bases of struggle can be identified. Further, in consideration of the subject, one must examine the nature of the forms of interpellation within discursive contexts. One must recognise the importance of non-class forms of interpellation, race, gender and ethnicity for example. These are located within the various discursive features of popular democratic struggle. Civil society then, is seen as the social practices which lie outside of the state although subject to influence by the official discourse of the state,

'It is within civil society that groupings become constituted through the constitution of subjects. Such social groupings achieve both an unreflected common sense and a more organised philosophy within the process of constitution. Hegemony in turn, involves the transformation, restructuring and re-ordering of prevailing categories and occurs within the context of a struggle between the state and forces within civil society. This struggle constitutes the quest for salience between conflicting elements ... within the discursive formation ... it is here that we locate and identify the struggle over hegemony that is implicit in both ethnicity and minority nationalism' (Glyn Williams, 1981: 7).

Because Gramci's analysis is historically specific and conjunctural, it allows for examination of definite historical societies at definite times, taking account of the 'balance of forces' it can encompass the highly complex nature of the social formation. Thus the positing of any particular outcome must always refer to the balance in the 'relations of force' in any area of struggle, rather than the simple exercise of what Gramsci terms 'economistic superstition' (Gramsci, 1971: 164) that is, the congruity of ideology and politics with an 'essentialist' economic base. It is the key concept of hegemony which incorporates all these features; it is non-reductionist and non-economistic, but incorporates notions of subjectivity and struggle. It does not reduce consciousness to simply the outcome of the agency of the dominant class. Further, it locates hegemony not at the superstructural level, but as being concerned with the relation between the base and the superstructure. The subtleties of the concept are brought out in a definition by Raymond Williams,

'it sees the relations of domination and subordination, in their forms as practical consciousness, as in effect a saturation of the whole process of living—not only of political and economic activity, nor only of manifest social activity, but of the whole subsistence of lived identities and relationships, to such a depth that the pressures and limits of what can ultimately be seen as a specific economic, political and cultural system seem to most of us the pressures and limits of simple experience and common sense. Hegemony is then not only the articulate upper level of 'ideology', nor are its forms of control only those ordinarily seen as 'manipulation' or 'indoctrination'. It is a whole body of practices and expectations, over the whole of our living—our senses and assignments of energy, our shaping perceptions of ourselves and our world. It is a lived system of meanings and values—constitutive and constituting—which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society, a sense of absolute ... it is, that is to say, in the strongest sense a 'culture', but a culture which has also to be seen as the lived dominance and subordination of particular classes' (R Williams, 1977: 110).

As the hegemonic process must be seen as a constant struggle, one must be able to theorise contradictions present in social relations which mean that those relations are not always and necessarily lived in terms of the dominant ideology. Those disconfirming instances which show up the disparity between ideology and experience may perhaps be brought under Gramsci's conception of 'good sense' (Gramsci: 1971: 328). If this is to be seen as a possible generative source of oppositional ideologies then it must be stressed that it is not the spontaneous

'irruption of the individual consciousness into history' (but) 'the effect of the system of ideological relations into which the individual is inserted' (Mouffe, 1979: 186).

The notion that subjectivity is always the product of social practice is made clear by Gramsci's own definition of ideology as the

'terrain on which men (sic) move, acquire consciousness of their position, struggle' (Gramsci, 1971: 377).

Thereby rendering it impossible to see hegemony as simply the process of ideological domination working at the level of mental distortion or mystification by the active agency of a dominant class. The concept of discourse stresses not only language but,

'movement, process and, most important, articulation and takes us away from a model where, particularly in relation to an understanding of ideology, the human subject is seen as having the wool pulled over her/his eyes by the /false consciousness/ of ideology imposed from above' (Mercer, 1978: 21—my emphasis).

Such a point is worth stressing because much media/communications, social and cultural theory is still 'conspiratorial' in essence. A substantial amount of socio-linguistic theory has this similar failing. The Gramscian position then, necessitates a theory of articulation, one which cannot be simply class reductive. The current work of Hall is precisely in the area of signification, discourse, articulation and ideology (for example Hall, 1985: 91-114). This area of negotiation can be delimited as the terrain of culture and civil society. It forces one to question the 'common sense' and 'natural' links between mode of production and cultural practices. Gramsci's notion of culture expounded in 'Il Grido del Popolo' (29th January 1916) contains three main elements. Firstly, a critique of economism and, secondly, a recognition of the importance of cultural struggle and civil society in the formation of hegemony. Finally, Gramsci had a conception of culture as not specifically from class, or imposed from above but as,

'a critique, a site of negotiation, which is not reducible to a screen masking the contradictions of capitalism' (Mercer, 1978: 24).

Richard Johnson identifies an important methodological prescription inherent in this definition of culture. He insists on the need to retain the culture/ideology couplet, where culture is understood as the ground or result of the work on ideologies. In summarising his approach he outlines, implicitly, one important aspect of the discursive problematic already mentioned by Mercer, its concern with the specific. One cannot produce a discursive analysis of relations in general, one must look to historically specific discourses and their intersection with other historically specific discourses. Without rushing headlong into the unquestioning empiricism which unfortunately characterises much of the sociological tradition, such a 'specifity' and concern for 'lived ideology' and 'common sense' is not only welcome but vital. Johnson, although talking explicitly about 'cultural analysis', makes the point well:

'By culture we understand the 'way of life' of a particular class or group, or, more exactly, its 'lived ideologies' or 'common sense' considered as a complex located whole. Such a concept is firmly descriptive. To employ it, is to insist on the importance, as one moment in the study of ideology, of grasping patterns of belief as they are lived in combination by concrete social individuals. One of the problems with marxist theories of ideology and consciousness, old and new, is that they have often been un-informed by an actual knowledge of 'common sense'. They have been either highly normative, as in the central tradition around class and class consciousness, or have focused on ideology in general and the effects it is supposed to have on its subjects' (Johnson, 1979: 74).

This point is, of course, crucial to critical ethnography.

Language for Gramsci is both the history and the instrument of cultural hegemony. It is important to note then, that language cannot be studied in isolation, one must look at it in the context of discursive relations. It is the concepts of languagge and the discursive that provide a possible suture of Althusser and Gramsci. Whilst pointing to the 'residual functionalist' aspects of the notion of 'interpellation' Mercer (1978) suggests its centrality within discourse analysis. Whilst interpellation suggests, to some readings, a simple assignment of roles, it contains the important notion of the discursive.

'all of this operates within language(s) that is, within signifying systems which appear to human subjects (which is constituted by them) as 'neutral', 'spontaneous' and 'obvious' (Mercer, 1978: 31).

Gramsci then, attempts to explain both class struggle and individual and mass experience in a non-reductive way, without reducing all experience to a reflection of class interest, thus to avoid epiphenomenalism. The relationship can be summarised thus:

'... we have seen that it (ideology) is not 'false consciousness' or a 'world view' in the Lukacsian sense. Gramsci's conception of ideology leads us to an understanding of it as an ensemble of material practices in which we are involved, and which involve us, as subjects. And these material discursive practices are not 'expressive' of anything; they are not evidence of an 'essence' or of an 'origin' (class struggle), though their constitution and their relations with other sets of practices are overdetermined by class struggle. We have to avoid seeing ideology and hegemony simply as 'ideas' expressive of an essential base. Gramsci's attention to lanaguage ... (allows) ... space ... to ... introduce the concept of the discursive and to enable me to suggest some 'movement', some area of negotiation and of articulation: in short, to suggest some conception of the modes of inscription of hegemony' (Mercer, 1978: 33—my emphasis).

2.6 Summary: Heteroglossia and the Discursive Production of Northern Ireland

It would not be too much of an exaggeration to suggest that this thesis displaces the vertical drive of history in favour of lateral valency geography. This might be seen as a somewhat wilful or tendentious assertion given the prominence of the 'history' of events in Northern Ireland manifest in both the research literature and more generally in the public sphere. There is a highly developed mythology of the significance, perhaps the malevolence, of history in explanations of the 'Northern Ireland Problem'. This is the case whether one is examining the library shelves, the newspaper archives or having a conversation with one's friends and companions.

Different occasions, different speakers and different writers all have their own explanation of the nature of this history, but none challenge the importance of history per se. Much research literature on Ireland seems to conclude, for example, that Northern Ireland's 'Problem' is that the region, has two competing histories. In actual fact then, for such research, the region has one history, that of a continuous conflict. ¹¹ Internal histories of the north produce accounts of continuous oppression of the Irish nation, or a continuous history of rebellion and murder by the forces of Irish Republicanism. A further and quite prominent theme is a history of the division of the Irish working class by the forces of (British) imperalism. There are, of course, many other 'histories' of Northen Ireland and some of these are included elsewhere in the thesis. The thesis suggests that the question of the power-relations between different histories of the north needs to be considered.

In their methodological treatise on Roebuck Plains in the north of Western Australia, Muecke et al ¹² pose important questions of how to write history. About the construction of a research archive Muecke states,

'The misfortune of history is the responsibility it is forced to bear, the responsibility of telling us what happened in the past so that present and future actions will be guided with this knowledge' (Muecke, 1985: 125).

An onerous task indeed then, and one made much worse for a radical, critical analysis:

'And it has been the left which has asked so much of history, insisting that it go beyond the orthodox demand for a history which maintains a continuity with the values of the present, a history which would never contradict current conceptions of common sense. The most 'obvious' history to write is the one which celebrates the achievements of the powerful, using the language of the powerful' (Muecke, 1985: 125).

The points raised by Muecke above are crucial in a number of respects. The first thing to note is the prescriptive role of historical knowledge. That is, history is used for something it does not simply exist. History is never simply reified knowledge, it is always mobilised in relations of dominance and subordination. This is the point of Foucault's so called power-knowledge critique. Knowledge, one can conclude, is not innocent. The second important realisation is that history, as a form of disciplinary knowledge, is implicated in what Marcuse calls the 'unfreedom of things' (quoted in Giroux, 1983: 19). Thirdly and finally, one can note the suggested possibility of different, less 'obvious' histories. The notion of less-obvious or other histories has been quite influential in historiography and cultural studies particularly. The so-called 'cultural marxists' and history-from-below writers discussed earlier, labour, feminist and race histories have, for example, constituted a body of work characterised by McLennan as 'invisible histories'. Such work has been undertaken in Britain since the early seventies and is central to the journals History Workshop and Labour History. The 1960's feminist slogan 'The Personal is Political' and subsequent work engendered around this notion has been highly significant in such histories. The rise and development of cultural studies occurring in the early 1970s, paritularly that associated with the development of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham under the direction of Stuart Hall, should also be regarded as significant. The analysis of (spectacular) youth subcultures, initially a rather masulinist body of research (cf McRobbie's (1980) feminist critique of this work) was particularly important. Such work attempted to produce the 'hidden' or 'invisible' history of marginalised groups such as mods and rockers, skinheads, football supporters and so forth. There is much of value in these bodies of work. Indeed, feminist and cultural studies analyses have been crucial to the development of contemporary forms of discourse theory. ¹³ It is Michel Foucault, however, who begins to question whether history-from-below is enough for a critical analysis. There are, firstly, a number of quite developed and valid critiques of culturalist approaches. These are discussed above. Secondly, there are a number of problems with the reproduction of an 'authentic voice' in ethnographic approaches, these too are discussed above, but it is useful to note at this juncture Foucault's formulation of the problem. In a general commentary on the role of the intellectual he states that what is needed now is not another theory of madness or deviance (even another radical/critical one) but a freeing of the speech of the mad or the deviant. In other words, the task of the intellectual is not to speak for those marginalised by history but to investigate the discursive power-knowledge relations which deny their speech, which prevent them being heard.

there exists a system of power which blocks, prohibits and invalidates this discourse and this knowledge, a power not only found in the manifest authority of censorship, but one that profoundly and subtlely penetrates an entire social network. Intellectuals themselves are agents of this system of power—the idea of their responsibility for 'consciousness' and discourse forms part of the system. The intellectual's role is no longer to place himself (sic) 'somewhat ahead and to the side' in order to express the stifled truth of the collectivity, rather, it is to struggle against the forms of power that transform him into its object and instrument in the sphere of 'knowledge', 'truth', 'consciousness' and 'discourse' (Foucault, 1977: 207-08).

The above quotation from 'Intellectuals and Power' (a conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze) is significant in terms of its implications for an attempt at self-reflexivity (a pre-condition for critical analysis) and the role of intellectuals in power structures. What is important to note particularly at this juncture, however, is the new task for intellectuals. Foucault suggests it is not the revelation of some previously hidden history, at least not by the traditional academic system of things. Rather it is an examination of the dispersal of power-knowledge relations, significantly a geography of discursive power.

Foucault is interested in systems of dispersion. The use of categories such as terrorist, the division between terrorist/non-terrorist, the authority claims of the RUC, the army and so forth, the reception of these claims by others. An interest in systems of dispersion, in discursive formations is importantly an interest in language. It is not, however, so much an interest in linguistic form per se, but an interest in language in action. Following Bakhtin then, the analysis understands that meanings are made and heard as social voices, anticipating and answering one another.In other words, they are dialogic. This point is crucial to an understanding of the functioning of what this thesis will categorise as the official discourse and Catholic Republican discourse. The principle of dialogism reminds one that the texts analysed are constantly engaged in 'conversation' with themselves (their own position of enunciatation, like-minded positions) and others (different discursive positionings with which they are in conflict and over which a truth claim is being made).

Each text is a representation of a particular, distinct social ideological positioning engaged dynamically with other distinct social-ideological positionings. One might following Lemke (1987) understand each of the discursive positionings as heteroglossing practices. Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia which he describes as the conflict at the heart of language change is central to Lemke's notion of heteroglossing practice. Lemke's point is to describe the struggle for mastery, the will to truth, inscribed in all discursive practice. Heteroglossing practice can be seen as creating a theoretical space in which to discuss the struggle for hegemony in Northern Ireland. Gramsci's use and development of the concept of hegemony removes much of the earlier marxist functionalism and economism from the theorising of ideology, emphasising an immanent notion of power and the notion of struggle over meanings. Placing Bhakhtin's idea of heteroglossia within the Gramscian problematic of ideology foregrounds the discursive nature of this struggle. It was Volosinov (Bakhtin) who described the sign as the arena of struggle,

'The sign is by definition ideological and meaning is not the unproblematic functional reproduction of the world in language, but a struggle between different kinds of social accounting in discourse (what Bakhtin calls heteroglossia) ... the struggle in discourse consisted then precisely in the process of articulation and disarticulation identified by Gramsci and developed by Laclau (1977). What was important was the way in which different social interests or forces might conduct an ideological struggle so as to disarticulate a signifier from one preferred or dominant meaning system, and rearticulate it within another, different chain of connotations' (Eco, 1976 cited Lemke, 1987: 15).

The implications for social theory of the concept of heteroglossia need to be raised. There are three crucial points, each of which are interrelated. The point that is most clear from the work of Bakhtin, Lemke and others is that heteroglossia, the dialogic formation of discourse, is a theory based on a conflict approach. Understanding discourse as 'voiced', that is, as socially-ideologically positioned demands the formulation of a dynamic social theory in which social process and system change are more fundamental than social entities and system structure. Secondly and linked to the first point, understanding these 'voicings' as heteroglossing practices, as specific meanings, necessitates an analysis which investigates the dialectical relationship between what Lemke (1987) terms 'material/economic analysis and ideological/semiotic analysis.' Finally and equally important understanding the 'voicings' as texts embeded in a larger discursive formation provides a singificant reframing of traditional sociological distinctions between the micro and macro social world. If one takes the above three points to constitute the basis of a 'critical' sociology (critical in the sense employed in the section on critical ethnography) then the importance of Bakhtin's work is clear. Clear, particularly in the situation where social conflict is as manifest and open as in Northern Ireland.

Footnotes to Chapter 2

1 These problems are significantly, as Godzich argues (De Certeau, 1985), the lack of the development of the concept of resistance, and what Giddens (1987) is referring to when he bemoans its failure to develop what sociologists would term an adequate notion of 'agency'.

2 One of the features—or perhaps, more reasonably, one of the promises—of Foucault's approach is its concern with intedisciplinarity as a project for reconceptualising the academy and intellectual activity. Such a process is naturally no easy task, nor is it 'bloodless' as Roland Barthes reminds us,

'Interdisciplinary activity ... cannot be accomplished by simple confrontations between various specialised branches of knowledge. interdisciplinary work is not a peaceful operation: it begins effectively when the solidarity of the old discipline breaks down—a process made more violent, perhaps, by the jolts of fashion—to the benefit of a new object and a new language, neither of which is the domain of these branches of knowledge that one calmly sought to confront' (Barthes, 1986: 73).

It is important, first of all, to register the imagery that is being marshalled here. Barthes speaks of confrontations and conflict, of war and peace, of violence, interruption, disintegration; the 'old' and the 'new' caught up in the mythic dimensions of a struggle that is almost Darwinian. In this view, discourse works directly upon the body of the 'old disciplines', breaking up their ponderous materiality, their unity, disrespectful of their authority, dis-membering them—partly, presumably, by the seductive appeal of its fashionability, its effects upon the 'undisciplined' subjectivities of the young: their seduction and their corruption.

It is also important to note the specific site of these operations and effects. Interdisciplinarity in Barthes' quote is related to 'research': and the notion of 'specialised branches of knowledge'—formal mechanisms for the production and reproduction of knowledge, the proliferation and authorisation of knowledge-effects, the production of subjectivities. This includes not only subject-disciplines but also educational institutions generally. Interdisciplinarity is to be understood, that is, within the context of the academy; specifically, the University, and here it becomes useful to consider something of the ideological work and the social effectivity of the university, as a site both of 'research' and of 'teaching'. On the one hand, there is the generation of new knowledges and the critique (the re-writing) of old knowledges; on the other, there is the (re)production both of knowledges and subjectivities. The point which must be recognised. however, is the ambivalent, even ambiguous, and always intensely problematical status of the academy with regard to the existing social order, overdetermined as universities are by various systematic forms of oppression and exploitation, most notably what one might essentialise by naming as 'patriarchy' and 'capitalism'.

3 Raymond Williams notes the 'loss' of the work of Volisinov/Bakhtin for forty years. The use of his (their) work being fairly recent, post 1970, although initially published in the 1930s. I use the formulation Volosinov/Bakhtin as there is some dispute as to whether the work published under these two names is the work of one individual or two (NY Bakhtin Circle, 1987).

4 The displacement of epistemology has proved a particularly difficult problem in Britain, especially for writers reading Foucault et al 'via' marixism, particularly Althusserianism. The problems remain largely unresolved in this thesis.

5 Giddens (1971, 1987) calls these the 'classical three'. In Chapter 3 of Social Theory and Modern Sociology (1987) he develops an analysis which has much in common with this chapter, also Chapter 4 of his work reiterates many of the points raised in this thesis, particularly in the section on critical ethnography in its introduction.

6 The structure/agency debate exists much more widely than within sociology, it is possible to trace this dichotomy in almost all forms of social science endeavour—hence the power of Foucault's critique discussed below.

7 This state of affairs one could (perhaps)terms the 'sexual formation', in the same way that a language formation describes, not bilingualism but a situation of domination, a privileging of one language over another. The term derives then, from the marxist conception of social formation, a situation where one mode of production dominates over others.

8 Ideology was a term used by the 18th century French philosopher Destutt de Tracy. Originally it was a philosophical term that referred to the science of ideas.

9 Cornforth's comment then, is clearly anticipating the post-structural, critique of binarism present in most western thought. Note particularly Derrida's critique of logocentrism and the writing of French feminists (Kristeva and Irigaray for example) on difference and the 'inexorable logic of sameness' (Moi, 1985).

10 Barthes (1975) and others remind us of the dangers of conceiving dominant ideology in the singular, CF Abercrombie and Turner (1980).

11 This version of history is central to much British mythology about events in Ireland. A racist characterisation such as that documented by Liz Curtis in The Same Old Story) of Irish people is developed such that continuous infighting between 'the two communities' (tribes) is 'the way of things'. The 'Northern Ireland Problem' then is two warring communities who fight each other and always will. That then, is the nature (proven by history) of things in Ireland. This kind of explanation, as I shall discuss more fully later, has strong resonances in the official discourse on Northern Ireland. It provides an account which allows the British state (and therefore British troops) a neutral, mediating role on the streets of Belfast and Derry and the countryside of Armagh, Newry and Crossmaglen.

12 The work written by Steven Muecke, an academic interested in the work of the French post-structuralists (significantly Gilles Deleuze), Paddy Roe an aboriginal story-teller (and 'specific intellectual'), and Kim Benterack (a modernist painter) is an interesting example of a critical, multi-voiced ethnography.

13 Indeed, crucial to much of the theoretical apparatus of this thesis, the chapter on ideology and discourse would have been impossible to write without this work.

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 30 July, 2014 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/alanmansfield/ch2.html (it was last updated on 27 March, 2021), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.