The uses and utility of ideology

Abstract

A Commentary MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN Quelque grands que soient les avantages des signes, il faut convenir qu'ils ont des inconveniens; et si nous leur devons presque tous les progres de notre intelligence, je les crois aussi la cause de presque tous ses ecarts. A. Destutt de Tracy [1801] 1827:267 Without wishing to commit the etymological fallacy in the understanding of a word's meaning, I would like first to comment on the traditions of usage of the term ideology, a theme elegantly announced in Woolard's introductory discussion of "issues and approaches." From Ideologues to Us via Ideologues It was Antoine Louis Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836), who invented the term ideologic in that naturalizing move of the French Enlightenment rendition of Locke (or, to be sure, of Condillocke [see Aarsleff 1982:146-224, especially 216-17]) that sought to understand human "nature." Ideology was proposed as that special branch of zoology that recognizes the distinctive condition of humans , we animals who have ideas as the content of what we should call our minds. Central here is the fact that any ideas more developed than physiological sensations are dependent on such ideas' being clothed in signs; and the organization of signs by some systematic grammar enables the discursive expression of a logical faculty of mind. Hence, for Destutt de Tracy, there is the general scientific field of ideology proper, the science of ideas; the subfield of grammar studies the signifying externalizations of ideation, as it were, in structured systems of articulated signs, 123 6