Ideology

To indicate this variety of meaning, let me list more or less at random some definitions of ideology currently in circulation: (a)the process of production of meanings, signs and values on social life; (b)a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class; (c)ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power; (d)false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power; (e)sistematically distorted communication; (f)that which offers a position for a subject; (g)forms of thought motivated by social interests; (h)identity thinking; (i)socially necesary illusion; (j)the conjucture of discourse and power; (k)the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world; (l)action-oriented beliefs; (m)the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality; (n)semiotic closure; (o)the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure; (p)the process whereby social life is converted to a natural reality. (Ideology: an introduction, Terry Eagelton)