What are your greatest hopes and desires? What are your dreams? What is most personal to you? Whatever your answer may be, Dan Roe thinks it's a bunch of hooey. What's really going on when you "do what you love" are the secret operations of ideology. For most of us, ideology is a dirty word, but its influence is today all the more powerful thanks to its relegated status in public discourse. We can't escape it and we should learn how to use it. Let's break the silence and talk about how ideology.
For many, ideology is perceived as merely a rhetorical stumbling block for progress, a collection of slogans and doctrines that stand in the way of a true discourse. However, I'd like to argue that ideology operates on a far more profound and unconscious level then the traditional understanding posits, that ideology is an essential element in historical change, and that the return of history requires a new understanding of how ideology operates in and on both individuals and societies.
Some background: In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously proposed that Western liberal democracy represented the definitive end point for history and, whether we knew it or not, the Western world fully embraced this notion on a deep cultural level. The 1990s was thought to be the site of history's culmination, the approaching of its ultimate horizon. We no longer had to worry about swearing allegiance to specific ideologies or our duty to any one nation, and could get on with the task of self-actualization and living life to the fullest.
Then, history came back in full force. For those of us in the West, this return was definitively marked on 11 September, 2001. Yet our national discourse is still entrenched in Fukuyama’s "end of history" mentality. We are in a state of confusion as to how to even talk about our place in history’s narrative, and we are steeped in a denial of the workings of ideology.
PRODUCER: Dan Roe
Dan Roe is a cartoonist, filmmaker, and educator. His cartoons appear in The New Yorker magazine and his short film Weenie premiered at the 2014 Hamptons International Film Festival. He is currently developing a K12 media studies curriculum for the Ross Institute, where he is also part of the media staff.