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One of the extreme disadvantages of posting a response so late in the game is that it leaves open the possibility that other members of the class are thinking along the same lines. It seems that Brad and I were on largely the same page concerning the necessity to talk about ideology not as something that exists a priori or as a static entity, but something that develops by means of complex and multivariate interactions. I hope that I am able to make further observations along this similar vein. Further, not having had the benefit of being in class for the discussion on the readings pertaining to ideology (happy Rosh Hashanah to me), I hope that the following comments are applicable and pertinent to the conversation.

In trying to unpack what ideology is, how it operates, and how it can be investigated (archaeologically or otherwise), I was struck by a singular commonality in the disparate positions taken by these authors; namely, much of the discourse on ideology presupposes its existence as something existing a priori, and that from its inception is expressed “complete” (or is it just that it is at this point of cohesive expression that we can identify archaeologically?). By way of (perhaps at this point slightly overused) example, DeMarrais et. al. (1996) address the use of ideology by the elites of the Inca empire through the ‘materialization’ (manifestation?) of the state beliefs. Specifically, ruling elites were able to reify Imperial power through royal festivals that increased the power of the emperor by means of association with the sun god, and the appropriation of local Andean cult objects.

DeMarrais et. al. describe these ‘materializations’ without examining how or why these particular methods were effective in this specific context (in addition to the overwhelmingly top-down, elite-centered, evolutionary perspective). They describe these processes as inherent and self-explanatory and do not address the complex social environment in which these rituals and symbols take their meaning; and therefore by extension, in which their meanings can be renegotiated to express new power relationships.

Loosely analogous to the discourse on the state (here, I am specifically referencing Routledge’s criticism of scholarship on the state that presupposes it’s “thingness” as a meaningful category without attempting to tease out the “policies, institutions, and discourses that give agency to a name with no body” (2004, p.2) ) ideology, writ large, becomes a problematic category when trying to apply overarching frameworks to it; frameworks which generally presuppose ideology’s “thingness”. Perhaps Eagleton is on to something when he suggests that ideology should be considered discourse rather than language (p. 9), and that it is ‘performative’- that it gets something done (p.19).