The myth of post-ideology

Critical reflection is one of the most loosely-used phrases in politics and development today. In politics, we generally use the term ‘critical reflection’ as a statement of defiance to what politicians say about state and society. Though it is about non-conformity to an established narrative of truth, it does not necessarily lead to a counter-narrative of the truth.

Likewise, in the development sector the term is reduced to defiance of an established social policy narrative – without necessarily providing a counter-narrative to challenge the ideological domain of civil society. Thus, ‘critical reflection’ has become synonymous with a different interpretation of a political statement or a given policy narrative.

Even with this popular view of critical reflection, it must be founded on the fundamental principle of looking beyond the obvious world around us to understand it. This is simply because what appears to us in this age of open media is not a true reflection of the world and so one must explore the reality that lies beneath the surface. However, the critical substance which forms our discourse of politics and development today falls much short of this fundamental principle.

The lack of conviction to an ideological debate of politics and development stems from the worldviews articulated through the corporate media. Frequently used but little understood and complex terms like ‘post-ideology’, ‘post-truth’, ‘postmodernism’ and many other such ‘posts’ have been juxtaposed with the ideological narratives of modernity.

We are told that ‘post’ is not a refutation of modernity but that it only means the end of ideology and its ‘meta narratives’. However, negation of ideology is not only the negation of grand narratives but is also about denying the possibilities of freedom. It is about fragmenting worldviews and diffusion of human power of reason and the will to freedom. It is about consumerism where ideas are packaged like products with no inner meanings beyond the description on the wrapper.

In the supermarket of ideas there is nothing authentic beyond the choice of a buyer. The buyers are told that choice matters more than the idea itself. This means that we can only buy ideas but we cannot produce them. This alienation of human intellect from the processes of creativity, art and knowledge production is what we have today as post-ideology and post-truth.

In a nutshell, critical reflection has become reduced to looking different by making different choices rather than viewing the world differently. For a buyer it does not take much introspection, contemplation or knowledge beyond the received information to choose a product that is not of his/her own making. This increasing deficit of knowledge in the age of information is what makes ideology more relevant today than before for harnessing the creative potential of transformation. In the context of post-ideology, anyone with some tendency to say things differently is deemed as one with the ability to make informed choices or have critical reflection.

Some people are regarded as ‘intellectuals’ just for speaking differently – no matter what they say. Some people are also regarded high on intellect just for making simple things complicated. Such people become the epitome of wisdom and intellect because they are believed to have said deeper things. Whatever they say becomes kosher – not for the meaning it contains but for its inherent complexity. This means that the more complex and vague an idea, becomes the more it is seen as a product of some critical reflection.

The irony is that what is plain and can easily be understood is discarded as a rubbish idea. If intellect is all about complexity, absurdity and vagueness, then the world we live in today can never be understood. And that is how ideological hegemony works in our contemporary world.

Our media continues to create thought brands and icons of wisdom out of people with complex and fragmented ideas. All linear narratives which explain the simple facts of politics and economy are treated as too broad and misleading, with no practical application. In reality, the politics of transformation, which is always interwoven in an ideological framework, is the only possibility to supplant our political society of suppression and uniformity. Contrary to the collective expression of ideology, we are told that the modern world offers us choices and possibilities to excel as an individual. We are given examples of a few rich people whose lives as individuals were transformed because they had the guts to make appropriate choices.

In modern politics, which we generally term postmodern politics to say the same thing differently and unintelligibility for a common reader, reality is lost to images and impressions. This does not mean that the real world has ceased to exist; it only means that reality has been made so complicated that it becomes an illusion of madness. Anyone who dares to look beyond the obvious is trapped as a celebrity intellectual and his/her ideas are then sold as a commodity for sensational buyers who happen to be in the majority in our modern society. We have many such characters who make simple things complicated just to build an image of being intellectuals.

We have writers, media-propelled intellectual celebrities and political leaders whose only fame is to make simple things complicated to build their image of being men and women of high intellectual calibre. Thus the meaning is lost in maintaining the art of speaking differently and unintelligibly.

The so-called notion of post-ideology is a perfect example of the castration of mind and wit. It has killed the appetite of the human mind to assert itself by diluting its rigor of transformative spirit into some vague ideals. These vague ideals like post-ideology have become synonymous with some universal principle to live through a volatile, ambiguous and chaotic world with multiple realities.

Post-ideology is the confession that the mind is too small to encompass the wide range of complex realities, and the only way for human survival is to cope with the world as it shapes our lives. There is fragmentation and those who still insist on a unified and linear political narrative are either discredited as idealists or tagged as advocates of some defunct ideology of the 19th century.

Post-ideology is about two things – blunting the sword of critical thinking, and making complexity out of linear narrative to obfuscate reality and truth. It is about blurring images and impressions more than ideas and their critical reflection. The biggest fallacy of post-ideology is the empowerment of the individual. In reality, it makes human agency subservient to structures. Post-ideology in this sense is brute structuralism with intellectual bankruptcy.

The writer is a social development and policyadviser, and a freelancecolumnist based in Islamabad.

Email: ahnihal@yahoo.com

Twitter: @AmirHussain76