Ideologies are fragmentary and internally contradictory, not coherent systems

Evidence

The dilemmatic approach does not start with the assumption that there is an inner coherence to ideologies (Billig, 1991 , 1992 ). Ideologies are fragmentary; they contain contrary themes. The ordinary person does not passively accept the (ideological) themes of intellectual ideology. As Billig ( 1991 ) has shown the ordinary person is a ‘rhetorical being’ who engages, and argues, with dilemmatic aspects of ideology. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 499

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the distinction between ‘lived ideology’ (a society’s way of life) and ‘intellectual ideology’ (product of professional thinkers), and the ‘rhetorical being’ concept.
• XREF: Connects to rhetorical/discursive turn in social psychology and to Billig’s argumentation theory; parallels the concept that ordinary people are active arguers paralleling what the user covers on moral exclusion discourse. — connects to: Anything can be two contradictory things at once, including social systems — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 56

Related

• Ideology works by framing alternatives within a range rather than dictating thought. (similarity 0.82)
• The term ‘ideology’ conflates necessary superstructure with arbitrary individual fancies (similarity 0.80)
• The concept of ideology was born torn between historical relativism and universal truth. (similarity 0.80)
• Ideology is actively created by people, not passively received from above. (similarity 0.79)
• Ideologies that explain everything from a single premise are a recent phenomenon (similarity 0.79)
• Ideologies are judged by social effects, not by their truth value (similarity 0.79)
• Ideological forms are where people become conscious of material conflicts and fight them out. (similarity 0.78)
• Ideology can be reconceived as a terrain of struggle, drawing on Gramsci and Laclau. (similarity 0.78)
• Ideology is a material system of meaning, not merely false consciousness (similarity 0.78)