Jun 25 -

- How we read…
- Cold war
- Living in its shadow still
- Seeing these concepts from this binary lens is still with us
- Someone from different country who didn't experience cold war as we did
would understand this very differently
- Our discipline has a lens
- Media studies focus
- Layers and layer of pop culture that has shaped society
- Look at marx in a piece meal
- Only looks to specific concepts
- Economistic view, very crude - have been moved past,
foundational in media studies
- Shapes how we look at many institutions
- The authors
- Karl marx
- Fredrich Engels
- George Lukacs
- Into to marx
- Interventions in
- German philosophy
- Hard to understand unless specialized
- His main field
- French socialist theory
- He made significant intervention and socialist theory
- Brought democracy and socialism together
- Wasn't the first socialist
- Post capitalist society brought in by an envisionary (MARX)
- Plans of reforms to create a utopian society
- Socialism could not be created by someone or a group from
outside, had to be produced by masses of people themselves
who'd become transformed in the process of creation
- British political economy
- Critique of david ricardo, adam smith
- Intervention in political economy
- 19th century philosophy
- Idealism and materialism
- Two very broad currents of philosophical though
- Idealism and materialism
- Idealism - understanding the world of ideas as primeism
- like a religious view
- Ex. plato
- Mind over matter
 - Materialism - world of ideas as real, material world is the only real
one
- ideas arise because of neurons
- Everything has a physical explanation
- Applied in marxist time to number of philosophers
- Both approaches are lacking so he created
- Historical materialism
- Marx created
- Critique of the marketplace of ideas
- Market place of ideas
- Best ideas are right
- Main problem with the root of problems we have is that we arent thinking
clearly, then we could
- No mistaken/inadequate ideas but ideas don't arise in peoples heads
rather from how people have lived
- Change doesn't come from new ideas
- Changes in circumstances are what truly cause change
- Ruling class and ruling ideas
- We are actors who've been brought into a play thats been going on since
beginning of time
- Most ruling ideas they used were created far away
- Yes there were also local ideas
- They have the privilege and the power to give the ideas shape
- There are ruling ideas in every epoch and they tend to be from a specific
character and specific type
- Ideology is a type of knowledge that have gone through the practice of these
three steps
- Ideology is the practice that produces a certain knowledge
- The practice of occluding social relations
- 3 steps
- 1. Separate ideas from their source
- Appear floating
- Ideas are then reconnected in a new way where they are
decontextualized and put in a conversation together to create a
new connection
- This connection is then articulated as a group of thinkers in
conversation with one another
- Ex. Philosophers reading one anothers works and building
new ideas off each others ideas
- Way of decontextualizing knowledge
- Gives a different sense of the world
- Way of producing knowledge
- Way of thinking about the world
- Creating knowledge in a different way forming ideology
- What is ideology
- Study of ideas
- (look to the three steps above)
- When social relations are decontextualized, they are given a new
context
- Understanding of the world that isnt rooted in the world we actually
live in (fantasy like)
- Ideas are apart of the world
- Not reflections of the world not something separate
- Rigid view of the world
- A perspective on the world
- A practice that occludes social relations
- What is alienation
- The experience of alienation/estrangement rooted in reality
- Feeling of alienation
- Theres an experience that we've all had
- Ex. you wake up at night and feel all alone and you think the rest of the
world is strange, you feel away from home
- Not a natural feeling
- These concepts change historically
- Attributed to something happening in the mind
- Produced by inadequate thoughts
- You could work through to not feel that way
- Alienation is not a head problem, there is no incorrect perspective rather
its the things themselves that have created this incorrect perspective
- Caused by the actual world (tip of the iceberg)
- Might become oblivious to its existence yet theres a reality
beyond what we know that could explain this feeling
- The natural world influences the people living in it so they
cant think outside of it - Fardin
- Alienation is not rooted in an incorrect way of thinking rather brought
about by the way people are living
- Way to overcome is through practice
- There are no thinking problems
- Four aspects of alienation
- From the product of labour
- We do and create things
- When we work we don't get to keep what we create rather a wage
- People become separated from a product of labor
- From the act of production
- From each other
- People looking for work are in competition
- Competition creates alienation from one another
- Classism
 - From ourselves (species being)
- As we grow we see ourselves differently
- We stunt our own capacities
- Mental experiences are a product of the real world
- Feeling of alienation is an appropriate response to reality
- Addressed by looking at actual reality
- Alienation is rooted in the alienation you see in the social system itself
- Where people are alienated from their needs of production
- Consequences
- “All relations of servitude are but modifications and consequences of this relation”
- The way were organized
- Human beings have the capacity to act consciously
- Capacities are stunted by society and we are trained to act and separate
actions from thoughts
- As a result we become alienated
- These issues tend to be social and their solutions are normally social
- Not just problems of fairness but they reshape our world
- What is reification
- Lukacs (1885-1971)
- Minister of culture
- Arrested and deported
- History and class consciousness
FINISH NEXT WEEK
1. Marx, K. and F. Engels, ‘Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas,’ The German Ideology, pp.
64-66.
2. Marx, K. ‘Estranged Labour, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, pp.
106-119.
3. Lukacs, G. “The Phenomenon of Reification,” History and Class Consciousness, pp.
83-109.