On the Theory and History of Ideological Production

Malcolm K. Read, Ph.D. University of Wales, is Emeritus Professor of Hispanic Languages at the State University of New York. He has published monographs, translations, and many articles, including The Matrix Effect (2010) and Journeys through the Ideological Unconscious (2022).

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroduction1 In the Shadow of Althusser1 Negotiating the ‘Break’2 The Ideological Unconscious3 Althusser: the Unconsciousness of Ideology4 Feudal Substantialism5 Althusser: Ontology, Epistemology, and Methodology6 The Libidinal Unconscious7 Antonio Gramsci and the Case for Historicism8 The Eye/I That Sees the Thing9 Nicos Poulantzas: the Matrix Effect2 On the Radical Historicity of Literature: Roy Bhaskar1 Who Walked a Crooked Mile2 A Hegelian Turn3 Visions in Exile4 History without a Subject5 On the Radical Historicity of ‘Love’6 Ideology as ‘Productivity’7 The Historical Origins of the Free Subject8 The Closet Althusserian9 Methodology versus Epistemology10 Critical Realism and Althusserianism11 Conclusion3 Ideologies of the Transition: Noam Chomsky1 Chomsky and Huarte2 Ideologies of the Absolutist State3 Rodríguez and the Examination4 The Literal Gaze5 The Letter of the Law6 The Subsequent History of Animism7 Conclusion4 Explorations of the Political/Ideological Unconscious: Fredric Jameson1 From Marx to Althusser2 Science and Ideology3 Althusser Reconfigured: from Kant to Hegel4 Theorising the Ideological Unconscious5 The Political Unconscious6 From Substantialist to Animist Tears7 Postmodernism and the End of Ideology8 The Melodrama of Tears: Jorge Isaacs’s ‘María’9 Conclusion5 On Continuities and Discontinuities: Terry Eagleton1 Servants of the Lord2 The Legacy of Catholicism3 Radical Historicity: the Case of the Theatre4 The Individual and Society5 Transitional Ideologies6 Power versus Exploitation7 The ‘Break’ That Never Was8 Conclusion6 Discourse and Ideology: Michel Foucault1 Making the ‘Break’2 Theorising the Ideological Unconscious3 Theorising the Discursive Unconscious4 Mirrors and Souls5 A Borgesian Interlude: the Chinese Encyclopaedia6 Empowering Discursive Unconsciousness7 Staging the State Apparatus8 The Revenge of History7 Educating the Educators: The Critical Realists1 Althusserian Unconsciousness Re-Visited2 Extracting the Concept3 Causal Dynamics4 Reclaiming Reality5 Love, Money, and Marriage6 Deprocessualising History7 On Radical Historicity8 British Marxism at Its Limits9 Conclusion8 Paradoxes and Exploitation: Slavoj Žižek1 Towards a Philosophical Anthropology2 The Dog That Didn’t Bark3 Fetishism and Commodity Fetishism4 ‘Structural Causality’ and ‘Homologies’5 The ‘Look’ versus the ‘Gaze’6 The Paradoxes of Democracy7 The Private Eye: Traversing the Fantasy8 Conclusion9 The Rise of Podemos: Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe1 Ernesto Laclau: Goodbye to All That2 The State/Stage under Absolutism3 Chantal Mouffe: Reductionism Inverted4 The Eighteenth-Century Drama: from Public to Private5 From the Social to the Discursive Formation6 García Lorca: the Objectivity of the Text7 Podemos: Life in the Media8 Borges RevisitedConclusionBibliographyIndex