The Ideology Debates:
From Ideological Closure to Discursive Openness
Dr. Manash
Pratim Borah
Central Institute of Himalayan Culture
Studies, Dahung
(CIHCS)
I
Introduction:
The
great artists were never those who embodied a wholly flawless and perfect
style, but those who used style as a way of hardening themselves against the
chaotic expression of suffering, as a negative truth.
(Adorno and
Horkheimer 37)
The history of the world over the
centuries have witnessed an enduring debate concerning hierarchical structures,
ideological dominance, consent and resistance with utmost fecundity of dynamic
knowledge and epistemic discourses within the ambit of the socio-cultural and
socio-political spheres of human existence. Our social thinkers have also
displayed same sorts of propensities over the centuries for explicating the
causes of creating inequality and the role of economic power in accomplishing
the consent of the power less for the sake of the powerful in the hierarchical
structure of civil society. The most fascinating part of this material history
is that all the way through the ages, it has formed an assorted numbers of
schools of critical theories and discourses engendering a prolific dialectical
terrain of decisive thoughts for knowledge consumers. These bodies of theories corresponding
to their efforts in understanding social inequalities, dominance and exploitation
of the dominant sides have stimulated new-fangled knowledge and culture within
the domains of the socio-cultural spheres of our existence. Specifically in
reading various processes of securing the consent of the powerless or the
dominated ones to the systematic social inequality, the social theorists are
themselves engaged in abundant debates regarding the ‘motivating factors’ of
that consent-- such as ‘ideology’, ‘ideological state apparatus’, ‘hegemony’
and ‘discourse’ in the crossroads of lived history.
The present paper is an epistemic exertion
in reading the ideology debates concerning social inequalities and the role of
dominant ideas within the socio-cultural and socio-political spheres in the
long run of our material history. In reading that enduring debate, I have basically
accentuated the paradigm shift of the notion of Marxian ideology to Foucauldian
discourse through Althusser’s ‘ideological State Apparatus’ and Gramscian
notion of ‘hegemony’ and how these notions in different crossroads of the
genealogy of history have interpreted the dichotomy of dominance and resistance
in socio-cultural arenas of civil society. The paper will also accentuate how
in the course of paradigmatic shift in these theories, the Frankfurt School of
critical theory in the lacuna of Marxist to Gramscian development has
problematised the sanguine agenda of ‘great refusal’ and leeway of revolutionary
changes in social structure and relation. With this framing at my disposal, I
will try to delve into the introspective levels of those “theoretical moments”
(Hall 98) which not only radicalized the legacies of previous theoretical
postulations but also interrupted with positive aim the course of dissention of
the theoretical regime with “theoretical noise” (ibid 99).
In reading these ideology debates
from Marxian ideology to Foucauldian discourse through the Frankfurt School’s
notion of “Culture Industry” (Adorno and Horkheimer 31), the Althusserian
‘Ideological State Apparatus’, and Gramscian ‘hegemony’, I circumspectly
perceive three specific courses of paradigmatic shifts marked with six different
‘theoretical moments’: firstly, this paradigmatic shift is a move from
ideological closure to discursive openness; secondly, from ideological
essentialism to multiple politicized subject positions; and thirdly, from the
notion of unified totalizing power structure to networks of power relations. In
every dichotomy, each particular ‘theoretical moment’ postulating an overt
theoretical position vis-à-vis socio-cultural quandaries and ideological
solutions explicates the specificities as well as limitations of theoretical
visions of creators of discursive practices in a dialectical way. In all these
dichotomies, mention should be made of a specific point that the first
theoretical or ideological positions as preparatory moments of the ideology
debates univocally signal to Marxist notion of ideology where the ideological
closure of base and superstructure model, essentialist notion of identity
depending on class structure and totalitarian model of power structure in
relation to the bourgeoisie domination have confined the entire model into a
sort of ideological rigidness and provocative paradigms. Here in all these
theoretical postulations and positions, the tension is apparent in not only the
reflective levels of these moments but also in the kind and type of causal
factors of stimulus of those positions. As critical review of those positions
and debates, the present paper initially needs to accentuate the basic facets
of those ‘theoretical moments’ for negotiating in-between all those conjectural
crossroads.
II
The camera obscura: Ideology as a Totalizing Force:
The basic problem in defining
ideology in concrete terms which can explicitly bring into fore the inherent elements
of stimulation and ascendancy is that the notion of ideology is itself an
abstract term that comprehensively incorporates variety of strategies and
dialectical relationships, assorted points of views and causal factors beyond
the reach of general human ken. Its obscurity is the obscurity of fecundity and
its inscrutability is the inscrutability of unconstructiveness. It’s both the
mentioned qualities are fused together in such an implicit way that often
restricts any straightforward definition of the notion as a politicized
dominative strategy. In reading the dialectical relationship between
colonialism and postcolonialism, Ania Loomba has engaged herself with this
ideology debate and has rigorously analyzed the notion of ideology in all
detail:
Ideology
does not . . . refer to political ideas alone. It includes all our ‘mental
frameworks’, our beliefs, concepts, and ways of experiencing our relationship
to the world. It is one of the most complex and elusive terms in social
thoughts and the object of continuing debates. Yet the central question at the
heart of these debates is fairly straightforward: how can we give an account of
how our social ideas arise. (26-27)
In Loomba’s reading of ideology, it is manifestly unequivocal
that the professed straightforwardness in the entire debate is only marked with
its consequential upshots, but is not directed by innate structures. After any
thorough discussion, there always remain some sorts of remnants engendering new
possibilities of squabbles and provocative inquisition. Even when Marx and
Engels through their historico-material perspective have sought to define it as
a false or distorted consciousness of the world misguiding or misleading
people’s relation with the real world, they simply vindicated its
repressive nature, not the structure (whereas ‘structure’ is the most vital
concept of Marxist philosophy). For them it is the material reality that
constitutes individual consciousness. Like Stanley Fish’s notion of
“Interpretive Community” where culture constitutes the boundary of thought and
ideas for a community’s participants, in the Marxian paradigm, material reality
as the product of human labour reflexively composes an ideological community
and ideological boundary beyond what people cannot able to reach the truth
(319). This reflexivity is the direct consequence of the demanding interest of
the dominant classes for whose sake ideologies speak and circulate.
Corresponding to its disguising
nature and obfuscation, Marx and Engels have used the metaphor of ‘camera obscura’:
“If in ideology men and their realizations appear upside down as in a camera
obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much as from their historical
life-process as the inversion of objects on their retina does from the physical
life-process” (Vil. 5 37, emphasis original). The lethal metaphor unequivocally
shows how both the philosophers have calculatingly accentuated the
inscrutability lying hidden in the notion of ideology as a consciousness controlling
force. The life of individual cannot be separated from the material context
within which it is embedded; and it is the material context which thoroughly
speaks on behalf of the profit of the dominant class. Hence both the
philosophers were unanimous in the view that ideology is not reality, but reality
is ideological. Within the ambit of such ideological nature of reality, both
the thinkers have remarked that it “is not consciousness that determines life,
but life that determines consciousness” (ibid 36). The falsifying nature of
reality merging with aggravated consciousness impels individuals to submit
his/her consent voluntarily to the dominant ideologies of the society without
the use of coercion. However within the paradigm of consciousness and
ideological determination, some questions still are emerged with exigency in
relation to their emotive and simulative factors. Inside the Marxian paradigm,
class consciousness is always apparent within the ambit of social existence of
individuals; but individuals seeks to politically stimulate or use that class
consciousness to obtain multiple subject positions corresponding to the need
and demands of the context and surrounding. Hence in the domain of material
reality determining the consciousness of individuals, the notion of static,
centralized identity is really a problematic one. On the other hand, in that
specific paradigm of ideology which constitutes the reality and thereby the
surrounding of living, it is the ideology which itself fuels up politicized
maneuvers, motivations and thought distraction. Within the realm of such
politicized maneuvers, the notions of passivity and voluntary consent as
propagated by the ideological nature of reality are needed to be addressed
critically with novel theoretical paradigm. It cannot be discarded that the
motivating power of ideology is inherited within its power of creating
knowledge and reasoning about one’s own state as a dominated one. That mode of
reasoning always exists in a state of perpetual tension with individual
intuitive power and art of existence. Within the socio-cultural sphere, that
tension is boosted up by counter hegemonic texts, discursive practices and
textual reality on the rampage.
III
Ideology, Culture Industry and the
Frankfurt School:
The
whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry . . . .
The culture industry as a whole has moulded men as a type unfailingly
reproduced in every product.
(Adorno and Horkheimer 35)
Now, after entering into the theoretical
zone of the Frankfurt school, the question that is raised is that is ideology an
independent deception standing outside the control of cognition? Does really
the proletariat have the logical insight for grilling the bourgeois ideology?
The ideology debates demand a discussion of that conjectural zone from where
all sorts of dominations are produced.
What we say as the critical theory
of the Frankfurt School is that critical insight of the theorists like Max
Horkheimeer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Herbert Mercuse where they
have thoroughly discussed the causes of failure of the proletariat in
converting the capitalist mode of productions through radical activities.
However in discussing the Marxist ideology, these theorists like the
postmodernists are not totally parochial or pessimistic; even they have not considered
that failure of the proletariat as the failure of grand-narrative. Unlike the
postmodernists, they marked a departure from the theoretical world of abstract
reasoning, and inquired the socio-cultural causation of such failures within
the ambit of the socio-cultural sphere itself. In doing so, they have opted the
traditional base-superstructure model but have more concentrated on the
ideological superstructure vis-à-vis popular cultural forms and psychoanalysis.
Andrew Bowie describes its endeavours in this way: “Critical Theory analyses
why that culture (modern culture) develops in that ways it does, tries to show
how it can negatively affect people’s ability to think critically about their
actions and evaluations, and suggests of thinking about positive alternatives
to the existing state of society” (189). The chief endeavour of the Critical
Theorists is to think critically about individuals’ inability to promote
individuality and true freedom by representing the real condition of existence.
Hence in our reading, I personally
consider the basic backdrop of critical inquiry of these theorists is that seductive
reality which is the consequence growing global capitalism in an industrial age.
Because of technological changes and capitalist mode of mass production, cultural
products like music, movies, books, newspaper, advertisement are so easily
accessible to all sorts of populations including the working class that ultimately enhance diverse forms of
seductive reality and outward democratization neutralizing the perpetuated
class distinction and individuality. In relation to this, Adorno and Horkheimer
remarks: “Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that
they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish
they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries . . . .” (32). The “culture
industry” circumspectly circulate the ideological products of global capitalism
in such a fashion that seeks to socialize the capitalist mode of production as
a neutral possible social system erroneously homogenizing class difference,
individual identity and taste (33). In consequence of misleading
democratization of taste and class structure, the working class as Marx’s
historical factor for social change itself losses its rebellious strategies and
willingly participates in the consumer society of capitalist mode of production.
In his revolutionary creation namely One-dimensional Man: Studies in the
Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1991), Herbert Marcuse considers
such deception as “democratic domination” in a ‘one-dimensional society’; it is
a type of society which is created by the false sense of cultural
democratization diminishing the possibility of ‘great refusal’ (65). In such
societies, the ideological function of ‘culture industry’ and technological
domination impels individuals to believe the perpetuated social structure as
unchangeable; if there is any alteration in the existing structure of the
society, it is not due to revolutionary will, but because of technological and
industrial control. Hence, what make the Frankfurt theorists separate from the
classical Marxists are their thorough review of the cultural and the scientific
realm as the sites of domination and exploitation instead of Marx’s economic
realm. It is through that cultural and scientific realm through which the
dominant class circulates their ideological domination and oppression for
economic profit.
IV
Cognition Vs ISAs: from Lukacs to Althusser:
In the midst of all such debates,
the Hungarian born critic Georg Lukacs has given a different view of ideology
corresponding to his notions of totality and cognition. For Lukacs human life
is a social process constituted through all those actions done by human beings;
and the whole process as a historical period constitutes the so called
totality. That totality is always marked with heterogeneity and multihued
actions. The bourgeois society is not aware of that multihuedness of that
totality as their lives are fixed on some specific points of action. And it is
the ideology that always hides that totality from consciousness. Hence he
believes ideology is not always a false consciousness as it reveals a
fractional cognition. The class condition or situation of the collective
subject, whose interest and views it represents, eventually determines the
legitimacy of that ideology. One can clasp the real nature of ideology whether
it is distorted or dominative by using the power of cognition. The proletariat
has the logical ability to be acquainted with the real nature of bourgeois
ideology which distorts the real nature of reality in order to own the
consent of the dominated. Hence, in comparison to the Frankfurt School, Lukacs
is considered as more optimistic and psychoanalytic regarding the proletariat’s
existence and situation in society.
Hence, it is true to say that the
ideology debates in the course of historical dissention were actually fueled up
by the rigid paradigm of ideology proliferated by the classical Marxism. The
structural Marxist Louis Althusser in his most celebrated essay “Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatus” contained in his book Lenin and Philosophy
(1971) sought to retrace all the facets of ideology as an enabling force of
disabling reality within the ambit of a society manifesting the dialectical
relationship between the dominant and dominated. In discussing the elusive
structure of and human’s relation with ideology, Althusser in that essay has
promulgated three different all-embracing perspectives related with his
structuralist notion of ideology: firstly, he discusses the nature and
structure of society; secondly, the nature of state power and state
apparatuses; and thirdly, the structure and nature of ideology with the help of
psychoanalysis from Freud to Lacan. However, in his reading all the three
subjects i.e. society, state and ideology are intimately connected with each
other through reflexivity and basic conditions of human existence. What makes
Althusser different from classical Marxism is his deviation from the rigid and
centralized notions of base and superstructure model and of ideology. Althusser
finds the root of ideology in the basic structure of society; discussing the
difference between the Marxist’s “conception of social whole” and “the Hegelian
totality”, he remarks (134):
Marx
conceived the structure of every society as constituted by ‘levels’ or
‘instances’ articulated by a specific determination: the infrastructure,
or economic base . . . and the superstructure, which itself contains two
‘levels’ or ‘instances’: the politico-legal (law and the State) and ideology
(the different ideologies, religious, ethical, legal, political etc. (ibid,
emphasis original)
Bringing the allusion of Marx’s topographical
metaphor of “edifice” (ibid) i.e. base and of the “upper floor” (135) i.e.
superstructure, Althusser questions the “relative autonomy” (ibid) of the
superstructure and accentuates the need to rethink the “existence and nature of
the superstructure on the basis of reproduction” of the condition of
production through its various effects or functions (136, emphasis original).
The cause is less important than its function as the state itself is an
apparatus or instrument of the ruling class in order to perpetuate their hold
over the powerless. The state as the base of creating superstructure is less
mobilized than the functions of the superstructures. Hence he distinguishes the
“State power” from “the State apparatuses” and discusses various types of State
apparatus in function. Differentiating the “Repressive State Apparatus” (RSA)
from “Ideological State Apparatus” (ISA) with respect to effect or function,
Althusser further discusses relatively eight different ISAs which “function
massively and predominantly by ideology” (145): such as the “religious
ISA”, the “educational ISA”, the “family ISA”, the “legal ISA”, the “political
ISA”, the “trade-union ISA”, the “communication ISA”, and the “cultural ISA”
(143). In achieving the same goal of “reproduction of the relations of production,
i.e. of capitalist relations of exploitation”, whereas RSA works through
“repression”, the ISA predominantly works through “ideology” (145). Whereas
Marx and Engels read the superstructure as a unidirectional effect of the base
manifesting the ideology of the dominant class, for Althusser, these ISAs are
“multiple, distinct, ‘relatively autonomous’ and capable of providing an
objective field to contradiction which express . . . the effects of the classes
between the capitalist class struggle and the proletariat class struggle”
(149). Hence, the class struggle is not only apparent in between the two
classes; rather it is an obvious factor within the same class consisting of
multiple subjectivities and standard. The base and superstructure cannot be separated
vis-à-vis their autonomy; rather there is always a reciprocal relation
in-between the two.
After theorizing the ‘State
Apparatus’ in detailed way, Althusser then through the perspective of Freudian
and Lacanian psychoanalysis highlights basically four theses of ideology as an
allusive force of domination. Firstly, differentiating ideology in general and
particular ideologies, he contends that “ideology has no history”; whereas the
later has definable histories. However, ideology in general cannot have any
specific history as like Freud’s conception of dream, it is a fictionalized
representation or “inverted reflection of real history” (160). It is like
Freud’s unconscious which is equally trans-historical and devoid of any
specific structure. After that thesis, secondly he remarks that ideology
“represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions
of existence” (162). In the “falsified representation of the world”, ideology
does not replicate the real condition of living but the relation of individual
with that real condition; it is basically the means not tools of exploitation
(163). It has a material existence having the power of “interpellation” (172).
As an apparatus, it practice is essentially material.
What makes Althusser different
from the classical Marxist paradigm is his understanding of ideology as more
subtle, omnipresent and multidimensional phenomenon evaporating the real from the real world. It is not a
centralized power-manifestation of the ruling class, but its function is to
centralize individuals within the unchanged anti-egalitarian philosophy of
domination. Its subversive nature incorporates all the details of human
relationships and conditions of living starting from the familial, cultural,
economic, and social to the political regimes. On the other hand, the
optimistic agenda of Marxist philosophy regarding the proletariat’s role in
social change is also apparently missing in Althusserian paradigm. If subjects
are entirely the creation of ideology through the process of ‘interpellation’,
then there remains nothing outside the control of ideology. The prevailing
discourse concerning scopes and power of individuals in social change is simply
a demoniac myth manifesting the falsifying dream of the Marxian project.
V
Common Sense Vs Common Men: Gramsci, Hegemony,
and Ideological Openness:
The apparent rigidness and the
pessimistic agenda in Althusserian ISAs along with in Frankfurt School’s
reading of the ‘culture industry’ are thoroughly resisted by Gramsci’s notion
of ‘hegemony’ where the prevailing firmness has moved towards the sanguine agenda
of ideological candidness. What is really fascinating in Gramsci is that he
does not consider class as a delineator of fixed unitary ideology; rather, for
him a single class can mark out conflicting ideologies. Even he questions the dominance
of the economic base over the ideological superstructure. The traditional
base-superstructure model fails to comprehend the commonplace activities of
common man in a reliable form. The economic base can simply generate precise
conditions for nourishing certain types of ideologies in society at large; not
those which are purposely functional in our routine activities.
What makes Gramsci different from
his preceding social theorists is his emphasis on the paradoxical nature of
ideological dominance. For him, if there are dominant ideologies speaking on
behalf of the interest of the dominant sides, there are too particular kinds of
ideologies which may afford scopes for resistance to the dominated ones.
Gramsci believes that if ideologies are means of perceiving social reality, the
same may provide realms for social resistance or struggle. According to
Gramsci, hegemony as a power of control and domination cannot be achieved
through the practice of coercive power. It too cannot be achieved through
physical punishment or holistic power structure. For him, it is a type of power
that specifically aims at voluntary capitulation of the target subjects through
consent. And in order to achieve this voluntary capitulation, hegemony aims at
manipulating the subjects by playing upon their “common sense” (Gramsci 333).
This ‘common sense’, for Gramsci is a body of beliefs and ideas which are historically
being formed and on which the practical consciousness of common people rests.
Hence, he believes that ideology is always crucial in constituting and creating
the subject and consent respectively. It is the reason why in Gramscian hegemony,
ideology is not simply the reflections of the material reality; rather,
ideologies reflect all the important cross-fertilization of enduring social
actions which replicate power in social spheres. In this way, hegemony itself
becomes a locus of contestation of the ruling elites and the subaltern groups.
As the traditional Marxians believe, ideology is not a totalitarian system of
domination; rather, within the realm of the same society, hegemony and counter
hegemony may survive in apprehension. Such tensions locating within the
socio-cultural terrain of a given society are the prolific and dynamic spaces
for the masses, especially the subaltern classes to resist and contest to the
power of the powerful.
VI
Foucault’s Subject, power-knowledge and
Discursive Openness:
Now, the basic hindrance in
critiquing that trajectory between dominance to resistance by assimilating both
the paradigms i.e. Marxian ideology or Gramscian hegemony and Foucault’s
notions of power and subject formation is itself Foucault’s rejection of the
notion of ideology within the ambit of all sorts of power relations and social
practices including colonialism and postcolonialism. For Foucault, ideas and
material existence cannot be clubbed together; rather, as he believes all sorts
of ideas and knowledge are structured by some “laws of a certain code and
knowledge” (The Order of, ix). There cannot be any predetermined truth
behind any knowledge or ideological formations as most of the Marxists consider
the material domain as the proprietor of ideologies. Even there is no
possibility of conceiving any predestined source of fabrication of any type of
power-relation (like elite and subaltern). Without power knowledge, we cannot
speak about ideology. In order to understand the persisting social relations or
power relations, we need to focus on all types of heterogeneous aspects of
power relations instead of the Marxian or Althusserian totalitarian ideological
structures.
Foucault believes that it is not
labour that determines the essence of individuals; rather, subjectivity is
constructed through our engagement with multitude of discourses. He also
discards the notion of power propagated by the Marxist so far as centralized
unidirectional bludgeon of the capitalist class; even, it is not a macro-social
phenomenon. For him power is generated and working through assortment of sites
in local level. It flows in numerous directions. Hence power is not entirely
repressive, but positive in the sense that it enables scopes for resistance and
transformations. Whereas traditional Marxism believes that ideology stands in
opposition to truth, Foucault believes that the notion of truth is itself
problematical. Truth is produced in social relations not in social structures.
It is produced out of social and political relations of power which are the
very domain of configuration of subject and knowledge. The use of discourse
will decide what kind of knowledge will be utilized in producing truth. This
knowledge is not separated from power; because power cannot be exercised or
worked unless knowledge is formed. Instead of such deterministic philosophies,
Foucault believes that every idea is ordered “through some material mediums”
and which imposes an explicit pattern on that idea (100). It is this pattern
which Foucault calls as discourse.
Even he also negates the idea of
subject as the sole source of meaning. He believes that fixed notion of
subjectivity is a coercive delusion created by the material process of
subjection. He believes that individual is a self-determining agent capable of
challenging and resisting the structures of dominion in modern society. An
individual is not a docile body, but an active agent. In the very process of
livelihood, an individual can have the reason for self-fashioning and identity
assertion. It is not an entity, but a form which is changed depending on sources
accessible to him/her. Within the ambit of the power-structure, subjects are
always in continuous struggle with technologies of power and they cannot live
beyond such struggles. And in such constant struggles, the cohesive subject is
lost and subjects are constantly transformed into subject positions. Within the
realm of those power relations, individuals have the “technologies of the self”
(“Technologies of the” 19) and “ethics of the self” as early discussed and
through which they can refashion their art of existence of daily practices
(“History of the” 342).
VII
Discursive Openness: Towards New Beginning…
The paradigmatic shifts thoughts
within the arena of the ideological debates primarily focus on three
distinctive phases of paradigm shifts: firstly, it is a movement from
ideological closure to discursive openness; secondly, it is a movement from
ideological essentialism to multiple political subject positions; and thirdly,
it a movement from unified totalizing power position to networks of power. However,
that network as fostered by Foucault is not the end of the ideological debates.
Rather, the discursive openness in Foucault’s discourse fostered a fangled of new
thoughts and philosophico-theoretical positions within the intellectual world. The
post-Marxian notions of hegemonic moments of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe,
the notion of T-discourse of Dorothy Smith, and Donna Haraway’s notion of
Cyborg Manifesto fostered innovative agendas in the ideology debates where
ruling and the unidirectional base superstructure models are thoroughly
resisted. The latter developments in the debates not only accentuate new hope
and scopes for the subalterns but also denies the economic base as the
foundation of ideological power structure and resistance. It is the reason why
in most of the post-Marxian theoretical positions like Gramsci’s ‘hegemony’ and
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s notions of “a variety of hegemonic nodal
points” (139) along with “radical democracy”, the monstrous finality of Marxian
ideology is thoroughly challenged and reanalyzed (176). Even in Laclau and
Mouffe’s model of post-Marxism, the ideas of class struggle and of class as the
only source of power blocs and identity are sought to be replaced by the notion
of equivalent participation of multiple subject positions for the sake of
creating counter-hegemonic discourses and moments against ‘hegemony’. Whereas
Gramsci, going against the confining rigidness and repression of Marxian
ideology, conceived ideology as the motivating power which can “organize human
masses, and create the terrain on which men move, acquire consciousness of the
position, struggle, etc,” the Laclau-Mouffe model has more highlighted the
nature of discursive formation of dominance and resistance within the ambit of
socio-cultural realm by conscious abolition of the essentialist elements in
Marxist ideology (324).
-----------------------
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