I.
IDEOLOGY: WHAT IT IS; WHERE AND HOW IT OPERATES; WHO’S INVOLVED AND HOW. They tell you things at work, about what’s generally true, about who you are, about what’s natural and what’s inescapable. They tell you at school, for a decade or more. They repeat certain things; certain things are taken for granted; they omit many things; the flag stands at the front of the room and in the gymnasium. They tell you on the news; they repeat certain things; they assume certain things; they omit many things; the advertisements are always returning. They tell you in your family, your church, your union, your sports club… Ideology is everywhere, but it is not neutral. It serves the present system. You don’t even have to listen–it enters you all the same. It tells you who you are. Its voice has never not been there. And yet it is possible to interrupt it. In fact it is essential to interrupt it, if we ever want to be free, if we ever want to enact change, if we want to act before it is too late. It takes work, and work on ourselves, but it is nevertheless possible to think for ourselves. The first step is to understand how they make us think for them.
1. WALMART CARMICHAEL GALEANO
Intro to Ideology audio lecture (MM)
Recommended Reading: Walmart, This We Believe, pp. 90-95. Dalmation Press, Atlanta GA, 2008; Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down, pp. 5-8. Picador USA, 1998; Edward Bernays, Propaganda, Liverright 1928, pp. 9-18.
Selected text/quotations from Walmart
Selected text/quotations from Galeano
Selected text/quotations from Bernays
2. CARMICHAEL: Who Gave You Your Values and Are They Good For You?
Recommended Reading: Stokely Carmichael, “At Morgan State,” from Stokely Speaks, pp. 61-76.
3. NIETZSCHE: What Values Activate, and Which Pacify?
Recommended Reading: Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, pp. 25-28, 36-48, Beyond Good and Evil, pp. 72-74, Thus Spake Zarathustra, pp. 225-228.