Abstract
Since the advent of a post-structuralist ethos, the assertion of a notion of truth, conceived as an infallible point d’appui from which a given social order could be evaluated as ideological or non-ideological, seems no longer possible. As Rorty has pointed out ‘[we can now] see ourselves as never encountering reality except under a chosen description as…making worlds rather than finding them’. However, we could still legitimately ask whether or not an inevitable condition of the ‘post-modern world’, that is, a world deprived of a manifest intrinsic meaning, is the renouncement of the assumption of a certain notion of an objective truth for a critique of ideology. I will suggest in this essay that a way to respond to this question is by revisiting Habermas's theory of communicative action, viewed through the lens of the theory of ideology formulated by Slavok Žižek. Furthermore, the main thesis of this work is that by using the notion of the Real or ‘primordial repressed’ taken from a Žižekian reading of Lacan, it would allow the production of a critique of ideology in which the truth — the unmasking of the extra-ideological place — becomes possible as a hypothetical objective category.
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Notes
The first formulation of this distinction was made by Habermas in the V Gauss Lecture at Princeton University in 1971 when he distinguished between intelligibility, truth, normative rightness and sincerity (Habermas, 2001, 88). Then it was introduced in the form presented in this text (Habermas, 2004, Vol. 1, 305–306).
As Habermas has put it, in order to be accepted as valid a speech act must be ‘in agreement with our world of existing states of affairs, or with the speaker's own world of subjective experiences’ (Habermas, 2004, Vol. I, 308).
For a critical analysis of the distinction between Gültigkeit and Soziale Geltung, see Callinicos (2006, 26–29).
For a historical review of the negative conception of ideology, see the classic book of Larraín (1979, 28–34).
In relation to the epistemic principles, the Frankfurt school was divided into two sharp positions: on the one hand, Adorno's contextualist view and on the other Habermas’ transcendental thesis. While the former affirms that epistemic principles vary historically, the latter argues that every human being has the innate capacity to construct those basic principles (the ideal speech situation) (Geuss, 1981, 63 ff).
For an early development of Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action based on the analysis of speech acts, see Habermas (1976, 1–68). For a critique of Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, see Thompson (1982, 116–133). For a Habermas’ answer to his critics, see Habermas (1982, 219–283).
I am assuming a ‘thicker’ notion of rationality than Habermas’ one. See next subsection on this point.
It was in fact Adorno who more explicitly affirmed that a statement or belief could be both true and false. For a critique of this thesis, see Geuss (1975).
Žižek, who is here following Pascal, argues that this ‘belief before belief’ is what distinguishes ‘Pascalian custom’ from the behaviourist thesis that assumes only a direct (non-dialectic) relationship in which the content of a belief is conditioned by factual behaviour (Žižek, 1989, 40).
For instance, Porter (2006) has developed a Deleuzian critique of Habermas’ view of the orientation of reaching understanding as the original mode of language use (Porter, 2006, 122–128).
A different angle from which to observe these problems in the works of Žižek and Eagleton, based on a sort of ‘Aesthetic Turn’, can be found in Sharpe (2006, 95–120).
However, from 1964 the concept of Das Thing was replaced by the notion of object petit a that comes to represent the lack of the Big Other, which is ultimately not a specific object but a lack thereof (Homer, 2005, 85–87).
Žižek is here referring to the notion of ‘social antagonism’ developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985).
In a more recent book, Žižek asserts a notion of a parallax Real moving away from a Lacanian (standard) notion of the Real (Žižek, 2006, 26). See also Porter (2006, 65–71) and Kay (2003).
Žižek refers here to the Lacanian thesis according to which the truth has the structure of a fiction (Žižek, 1994, 7).
An idea becomes contradictorily coherent for Derrida when it is assumed that it structures the structure while itself escaping the process of structuration (Derrida, 1978, 279).
I am following a similar notion to that of ‘fictional genealogy’ used by Williams (2002, 32).
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Brito, R. The Critique of Ideology Revisited: A Žižekian Appraisal of Habermas's Communicative Rationality. Contemp Polit Theory 7, 53–71 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300326
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300326