Coherent ideology

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Ian H

Guru
Do most people care, or even understand such things? Here's a snippet from a review of essays by Stuart Hall.

'We are all perplexed by the contradictory nature of Thatcherism,' Hall notes. The perplexity, however, arises only because of what he calls 'the illusion of the intellectual - that ideology must be coherent', whereas a really successful ideology works by binding all sorts of contradictory things together: 'It does not reflect, it constructs a "unity" out of difference.' It calls to hopes, fears, prejudice, ambitions, and gradually, more and more people hear something that seems to speak to them, and form a new, unified entity, 'the British people'. Thatcherism is 'addressed to our collective fantasies, to Britain as an imagined community, to the social imaginary.
 

albion

Veteran
An essay on tribalism and snippets?
One on listening to intellectuals?
......?
 

albion

Veteran
"And as for Labour, as Hall wrote once, ‘actually [it] has in front of it only the choice between becoming historically irrelevant or beginning to sketch out an entirely new form of civilisation' "
 
Do most people care, or even understand such things? Here's a snippet from a review of essays by Stuart Hall.

'We are all perplexed by the contradictory nature of Thatcherism,' Hall notes. The perplexity, however, arises only because of what he calls 'the illusion of the intellectual - that ideology must be coherent', whereas a really successful ideology works by binding all sorts of contradictory things together: 'It does not reflect, it constructs a "unity" out of difference.' It calls to hopes, fears, prejudice, ambitions, and gradually, more and more people hear something that seems to speak to them, and form a new, unified entity, 'the British people'. Thatcherism is 'addressed to our collective fantasies, to Britain as an imagined community, to the social imaginary.
Put me in the 'don't understand' group, please....

I met Stuart Hall once, before the scandal broke....
 
OP
OP
Ian H

Ian H

Guru
Put me in the 'don't understand' group, please....

I met Stuart Hall once, before the scandal broke....
The Stuart Hall
hall.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_(cultural_theorist)
 

Rusty Nails

Country Member
Trying to be serious for a few minutes, even though that passage is way above my pay scale, his description of Thatcherism could also be ascribed to any "ism", including Socialism, Marxism and Capitalism. They all need an "us" and "them".
I can see how he relates it to Thatcherism in that it weaponised differences in the hope of creating a new idea of onanistic Britishness (home-owning, share-holding capitalists, not part of a community) with the problem being that eventually people saw that the differences were still there and in many ways had been increased. I do not regard Thatcherism as a real ideology rather a collection of ideas around a theme..if you like an incoherent ideology that was successful for a while. If you define success as gaining power.
 

Unkraut

Master of the Inane Comment
Location
Germany
Was Thatcherism an ideology or a reaction to the mess the country was in for most of the 70's? If Labour had won in 1979 they would have had to introduce some sort of industrial relations legislation, the industrial anarchy could not have been allowed to continue.
 
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