Ideology

When the readers first look at its table of contents of Ideology, perhaps this book seems immediately appearing to them the pure history of ideology, but actually, it's something more than that. Thus, Professor of English David Hawkes at Arizona State University, the book's author, has intended for his pages not only the historical dimension but also makes a strict critique of the ideology. Throughout six chapters corresponding to different periods, essential topics, and schools of thought, concepts of ideology had put themselves under investigation proceed by the author and it gradually revealed them as a false consciousness through diverse materials which are collected and not to be restricted within only major philosophers' thought but extending to works of literature, cinema, psychology, anthropology, etc. Dealing with such as those huge sources, Ideology is aimed for the exposure of the step-by-step enlargement of ideology to reach its highest form, also the highest level of power in the contemporary capitalist economy in connection with postmodern semiotic as its ideological thought. In terms of that, money is not merely a medium of exchange as it were in previous periods; in the contemporary capitalist economy characterized by consumption and exchange and propped by its ideological postmodern thought, money rather becomes a total autonomy "representation", a signifier without signified, separated from humans and turn against to dominate the whole human life; as the result could be pointed out from that situation: the struggle of ideology has transformed into a so much complex status than ever. In addition to the six-chapter as mentioned above, this second edition of Ideology published in 2003 has added chapter 7 to discuss Ideology after September 11.

Ideology by Professor Hawke is truly a work in deep insight on ideological problems, belong to ideological criticism and sociology of knowledge. This book could be helpful and worth reading for experts and students who concern about the matter. The readers can use this book for two purposes at once: to review the pure history of ideology (from Old Testament to Slavoj Zizek) at its remarkable points and to go further in the critical aspect of ideology. Besides that, we also learn the mode of presentation of the author in someway, gained from him to know how can bring the fragmentary pieces of materials together, analyze, set them in order, or to take some details as typical examples to illustrate for the matter.