Subordinated ideologies remain internally contradictory, mixing old and new elements

Evidence

Gramsci’s whole approach to the question of the formation and transformation of the ideological field of popular consciousness, and its processes of formation, decisively undercuts this problem. He shows that subordinated ideologies are necessarily and inevitably contradictory: “Stone Age elements and principles of a more advanced science, prejudices from all past phases of history … and intuitions of a future philosophy.” He shows how the so-called “self” which underpins these ideological formations is not a unified but a contradictory subject and a social construction. He thus helps us to understand one of the most common, least explained features of “racism”: the “subjection” of the victims of racism to the mystifications of the very racist ideologies which imprison and define them. He shows how different, often contradictory elements can be woven into and integrated within different ideological discourses but, also, the nature and value of ideological struggle which seeks to transform popular ideas and the “common sense” of the masses. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 143

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Gramscian mechanism by which victims internalize the very racist ideologies that oppress them, via a contradictory, socially constructed self.
• XREF: This is ‘common sense’ terrain that later Islamophobia readings will assume; connects to hegemony and ideological struggle frameworks.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that victims are ‘subjected’ to the mystifications of the ideologies that imprison them — the contradictory, non-unified self — is a dense, paradigm-level claim about how oppression reproduces itself through the oppressed.