Ernesto Laclau: Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory

“Men who, since childhood, have had their backs to the entrance of a cave, cannot see the outside world. On the wall inside the cave a re projected the shadows of other men, and by linking the voices of these men to their shadows, the inhabitants of the c ave conclude that the first derive from the second. One of the prisoners, however, manages to escape and perceives the true origin of the voices. Finally he merges from the cave and sees the light of day. At first the sun blinds him, but then he becomes accustomed to it and the vision he gains enables him to understand the falsehood in which he had been living.” (from the Introduction)

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Marxism and Literature (Raymond Williams)

“This book is written in a time of radical change. Its subject, Marxism and Literature. is part of this change. Even twenty years ago, and especially in the English·speaking countries, it would have been possible to assume, on the one hand. that Marxism is a settled body of theory or doctrine, and, on the other hand, that Literature is a settled body of work. or kinds of work, with known general Qualities and properties. A book of this kind might then reasonably have explored problems of the relations between them or, assuming a certain relationship, passed Quickly to specific applications. The situation is now very different. Marxism, in many fields. and perhaps especially in cultural theory has experienced at once a significant revival and a related openness and flexibility of theoretical development. Literature, meanwhile, for related reasons, has become problematic in quite new ways.” (from the introduction)

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Ideology: An Introduction (Terry Eagleton)

“Nobody has yet come up with a single adequate definition of ideology, and this book will be no exception. This is not because workers in the field are remarkable for their low intelligence, but because the term ‘ideology’ has a whole range of useful meanings. not all of which are compatible with each other. To try to compress this wealth of meaning into a single comprehensive definition would thus be unhelpful even if it were possible. The word ‘ideology’. one might say, is a text, woven of a whole tissue of different conceptual strands; it is traced through by divergent histories. and it is probably more important to assess what is valuable or can be discarded in each of these lineages than to merge them forcibly into some Grand Global Theory.” (from What is Ideology?)

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Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch-Box as Ideological State Apparatus (Anne Allison)

“Obentos are boxed lunches Japanese mothers make for their nursery school children. Following Japanese codes for food preparation multiple courses that are aesthetically arranged, these lunches have a cultural order and meaning. Using the obento as a school ritual and chore it must be consumed in its entirety in the company of all the children the nursery school also endows the obento with ideological meanings. The child must eat the obento; the mother must make an obento the child will eat. Both mother and child are being judged; the subjectivities of both are being guided by the nursery school as an institution. It is up to the mother to make the ideological operation entrusted to the obento by the state-linked institution of the nursery school, palatable and pleasant for her child, and appealing and pleasurable for her as a mother.” (abstract)

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