Reality on Trial: Notes on Ideology, Education, and Utopia

Abstract

The concept of utopia has been described as a distortion of reality in the positive direction. On the other hand, its dialectical counterpart, ideology, has been described as a distortion of reality in the negative direction. Each concept has been defined in exclusive terms from the other, but as discourses they have become dependent on each other, albeit in a negative relationship. First, this article analyzes the four moments of Althusser's theory that ideology is unscientific, humanist, like-the-unconscious, and finally as having material effects. Althusser's theory provides a compendium for the recent ruminations on the concept of ideology and is representative of the propensity to define it in pejorative terms. Second, the article surveys More, Saint-Simon, and Fourier's thoughts on utopia. At its minimum, utopia has been useful in imagining a reality that is better than its current form. At its best, utopia shatters the current reality. Third, the article concludes by building an incipient theory of ideology as utopia, or the utopian moment of ideology critique. The article argues that ideology critique often projects an alternative reality, a utopia, and that utopian thinking is inherently a form of ideology critique.