Ideology

Ideology: A Body of ideas that influences a person, group, culture, or political party.

When one is first reading about ideology one does not see to grasp the whole concept until one reads many different interruptions of the theory of ideology. I think that the author Althusser seemed to sum the best way of thinking of Ideology by saying “Ideology does not have a history”. So if this theory of ideology does not have its own history or way of thinking: then why or when do we use it?

According to all of the authors we use ideology all of the time. This theory mechanism is all around us it is the why we shop, think, and live our daily lives. So the real question to ask is who decides what we should buy, think, and live? I think that Marx had the right idea that different people in different class groups have different ways of thinking and buying.

Now the way that ideology works in the history of art is that people in the past and present commissioned (buy) works of that relate to their taste and way of living. For instance many of the lower class could never buy a Michelangelo even during his own time. Now during the late nineteenth century, middle class or bourgeois could go out and but a Monet and Degas. True because the artwork appealed to the middle class. However, today many people cannot go out and buy a work of art they have to buy reproductions. Marx would make it sound like only the elite can own nice things, maybe that it true.

Now that I have understanding of ideology I look around and notice different things about people. Like the people who go to over price coffee houses, is it for the good coffee or for the status symbol?