Conflating means with base reduces ideology to its material substrate absurdly
Evidence
If one starts from this baroque way of thinking a whole series of baroque questions are thrown up. For example, are libraries structure or superstructure? Or the specialised laboratories of scientists? If it can be maintained that an art or a science is developed through the developments of its technical instruments, why could one not maintain quite the contrary or argue that certain instrumental forms are structure and superstructure at the same time? Thus it could be said that certain superstructures have a particular structure of their own while remaining superstructures. The art of typography would be the material structure of a whole series of ideologies, indeed of all ideologies, and the existence of the printing industry would be sufficient to provide a materialistic justification of the whole of history. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1636
Categorization
- DEFINE: Illuminates the structure/superstructure distinction by reductio: if technical instruments are the base, then printing = material basis of all ideology, an absurdity Gramsci uses to police the concept’s scope.
- XREF: The structure/superstructure distinction and the danger of mechanical readings carry into how Islamophobia scholarship must avoid treating discourse or state apparatus alone as the ‘base’ of anti-Muslim ideology. — connects to: The base-superstructure formula weakened Marxism by reducing ideas to mere reflections — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1693; Ideology ends by being flattened into inert material signifiers in media. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 360; Reducing all ideology to immediate structural causes is primitive infantilism (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Reducing all ideology to immediate structural causes is primitive infantilism
#corroborates(0.82) - The base-superstructure formula weakened Marxism by reducing ideas to mere reflections
#corroborates(0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1693 - Ideology is a material system of meaning, not merely false consciousness
#contradicts(0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 628 - Ideology ends by being flattened into inert material signifiers in media.
#exemplifies(0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 360