Abstract
This chapter presents a definition of ideology, positing ideological thought as possessing a specific epistemic structure analogous to violent epistemology. This chapter outlines how the violent epistemology inherent to ideological thought shapes social structures and promotes violent ways of relating with the phenomenal world, ourselves, and others. This includes dominating, controlling, and hierarchical social relationships, the maintenance of ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’, and socially legitimised violence. This chapter also addresses the complex issue of the relationship between structure (social circumstances) and individual agency in the cyclic perpetuation of violence. This involves a discussion of the role that violent epistemology and ‘non-conducive’ circumstances play in the de-formation of subjectivity and the role of subject de-formation in the cyclical perpetuation of non-conducive social circumstances.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that this book supports neither a purely constructivist and individualist, nor a purely social constructivist perspective, but rather recognises the contribution that both constructivism (e.g. Piaget) and social constructivism (e.g. Vygostky) make to our understanding of human learning, development, and epistemology.
- 2.
The term ‘non-conducive social circumstances’ is used in this book to mean circumstances that foster the thwarting of self-actualisation and the enactment of violent epistemology.
- 3.
See Horkheimer (1947, pp. 3–57) for a critique of subjectivist and relativist epistemology and its relation to the neutralisation of ideology.
- 4.
This is precisely why purely social constructivist and relativistic epistemologies do not protect against violence (and may even unwittingly support its manifestation).
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Titchiner, B.M. (2019). Conceptualising Violence in Relation to Social Circumstances and Subject Development. In: The Epistemology of Violence. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12911-8_4
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