Against Ideology
(Comments on Abortion)
ZOE LARIS-DJOKOVIC
Before making any kind of statement on the matter of abortion as it sits solidly on the ballot seemingly for perpetuity, we must first try earnestly to separate from our symbolic ideological attachments and attempt to view, if not one element of the debate, quasi-objectively: the nature of ideology in the United States. It happens that viewing anything objectively is essentially impossible, and this is of course a core principle of the issue. In fact, in a political culture riddled by polarized ideology, objectivity does not exist, yet each ideological tribe is in some way influenced by an “objective” version of the truth. This is why, for reasons that will be explored in greater depth, it is ultimately condemning to fall somewhere in the middle. To make any sense of a deeply divisive issue in politics requires now that we follow a thread back through the lineage of ideology itself, and separate ourselves from whatever totalizing convictions we’re meant to believe—that is, if we’re planning to say anything that is at all interesting. Because in the end, the argument is not ultimately about abortion but the grander unraveling of ideology in the United States which guides the undercurrents of our personal and political lives.
—
A central tenet of Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution is the notion that the American Revolution was a technical success in contrast with the French Revolution’s ultimate failure, because the Founding Fathers’ conception of freedom extended beyond the pursuit of liberation from oppression and was eventually cemented as a new body politic, as a political space proper, as a Constitution. Freedom, as opposed to liberation, was conceived as a political way of life through the establishment of a polis, and “Not ‘life, liberty, and property’ as such, but their being inalienable rights of man.” The United States as a virtue is a positive one—that which unites all of us is outside of ourselves, and is perpetually enduring through time: there can be no union based only on personal beliefs or immutable characteristics, as those are transient or inconsequential, but in the fact that we are afforded the right to those personal beliefs, and a space where we are afforded the right to express them.
The French Revolution was rooted in the pursuit of liberation: that which united the revolting class was their immediate concerns with poverty and a joint stake in overthrowing a common oppressor. These “social questions” overpowered the incentive to form a new, free body politic, so inevitably after the revolution came the Reign of Terror: a logical result of a revolution focused mainly on ideological problems and the sensuality of a cause, as opposed to the establishment of a union whose essence extends beyond an identity based on a common enemy.
At the heart of our modern electoral cycle lies the bastard child of a French mother and a deadbeat American father: a disturbing conglomerate of ideology and democracy under the label “politics;” a personalization of the exterior, political realm which results in the destructive use of politics as a moral judgment.
Our conception of the polis has drastically changed since it was conceived. Much like in an ideological revolutionary era, today we unite mainly based on common enemies and measure moral uprightness according to levels of oppression, or levels of adherence to institutional order, all under the veneer of Democratic Politics, held in tact by the symbol of the Constitution. What Aristotle once defined as Πολιτικά (politika), from πόλις (polis), a collaborative, communal notion, has disintegrated into an ideological, moral battle. What was once “the political realm” is now a cage match of moral superiority. Nothing, anymore, is impersonal, every word is politically charged, and every politically charged word is a signifier of ideology.
Each political party runs on its own institutional claim to morality, to being “the good one,” to being the only party capable of granting you, the voter, with the unmistakably American virtue of freedom, which the other party has continually disgraced. Trump and the Right vow to free us from the tyranny of reason and rational order and the Left vows to free us from chaos and inequality, but, even if they were practical, none of these options are sustainable as they rely on the existence of an enemy––the ideology of the opposing party or whoever threatens our freedom––and on the pursuit of eviscerating it.
There is hardly anything today in politics that is outside of ourselves. Certainly, the idea of the American polis was based in large part on corporeal conceptions of the polis as a political and Christian virtue, which is to say on the biblical notion of Corinthians (“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body. Now if the ear should say ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body”). But today, virtue is measured mainly by which ideological signifiers one chooses to broadcast, and how far they are willing to go with them. Led down a winding ideological tunnel by a beckoning hand whose body is hidden in shadow, algorithmic yet purposive, we are told blatantly by our peers who are slightly ahead of us in the queue, “If you don’t believe this ideological argument you’re amoral. In fact, you have a personal responsibility to believe this ideological argument.” The ideology of our party and our identifiable politics reflects our personal ideologies, and therefore morality, in a way that is totalizing instead of complicated. It is essentially forbidden to draw from an argument of another party with which you do not wholly align. You cannot believe in such and such, if you do not believe in some other such and such.
And so we become increasingly fragmented, devoid of any commonality with anyone who has been led through different ideological tunnels. And Corinthians, corporeal unity, is bastardized: now, the Ear says to the Eye “I do not need you, for hearing is more important than seeing,” and the Eye says, “What? Can’t hear you—but it doesn’t matter because I, and all the other Eyes from all the other bodies, have formed a new body politic based only on sight.”
Embedded within us now are opposing ideas of who is wise or what is truthful and we hold to these ideas steadfast, as though they are as constant and as rational as God. The political individual is left with no choice but to identify as a member of an ideology, or, a part of the body—a practice that is entirely contradictory to freedom, as we stretch ourselves in order to defend its other implications, reduce ourselves to a label, betray our instincts, and lie to ourselves and others in order to prove ourselves consistent. That our ideologies materialize as politics means they cannot be malleable or subject to change or else not only will we be deemed hypocritical, but categorized under a different political label that lays claim to whatever ideology emerges from the subtext of our statements. Therefore, one should remain subservient to the ideologies they’ve chosen or have been assigned to minimize confusion and the risk of having the perceived caliber of one’s morality so quickly diminished.
In On Ideology, Louis Althusser says that the French Revolution’s objective was “not just to transfer state power from a feudal aristocracy to the merchant-capitalist bourgeoisie, to break part of the former repressive State apparatus and replace it with a new one… (but also) the creation of a new ideological State apparatus to replace the religious ideological State apparatus in its dominant role.” These ideological State apparatuses are the means and institutions through which bourgeois ideology is upheld in the state. Regardless of what the current, dominant ideological state apparatus is, Althusser asserts, it results in the same outcome: “The reproduction of the relations of production.”
Althusser’s conception of the Ideological State Apparatus additionally draws from the Marxist theory of false consciousness: the proletariat’s laborious commitment to institutional order while he continues to harbor the counterintuitive belief that it’s benefiting him, but he’s only reifying the bourgeois means of production. An ISA is reliant on the proletariat’s internalized ideological inferiority. In contrast with the Repressive State Apparatuses, which function by violence, the ISA’s “function by ideology,” meaning they’re less physically controlling but repurpose themselves through the ideological submissiveness of the lowest common denominator, as we see with the Church, the Media, the School, etc. Either way, as Althusser says, “the Dominant ISA is perpetuated and installed by the bourgeoisie.”
There’s a necessary distinction to be made between ideology as it was previously understood and the ideology that underlies an ISA. Althusser explains that “the expression ‘ideology’ was invented by Cobanis, Destutt de Tracy and their friends, who assigned to it as an object the (genetic) theory of ideas,” but when Marx applied ideology some fifty years later he gave it a new meaning of “the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group.” This is to say that in its purest state, before its objectification into a system of control, or without its implications as the basis for a system of control, ideology marks an entrance into symbolic order. As we develop some system of meanings, a relationship with language, we attach “ideas” to symbols.
The function of ideology today is not to be a lens through which one can view the world, but the creation of an entirely new one, tethered to the true world through symbolism. It is in this way that, at its heart, the issue of ideology in the United States is a class discrepancy. Those who have more imminent concerns with survival are more likely to seek refuge in escapist worlds which provide comfort by placing blame on the other for their condition (the forging of an enemy), providing hope for a better future (ex., Heaven), and staking into the shifting ground some marker of certainty by making everything knowable through nomenclature and symbolic attachment. That ideology alone can do this is demonstrative of the successful implementation of ISA’s.
Frustrated with bourgeois impositions of objective rationalism onto issues that are deeply personal, the more disenfranchised become tribal as a self-protective mechanism and recede into their ideological worlds. At the same time, that the lower classes remain focused on ideology is crucial for the existence of the class system, as that would make them “French” and therefore incapable of successful, long term revolution. Additionally, Arendt says “[a]ny nationalism held together by a common enemy is suspect,” which is to say that though ideologues may be more likely to believe in the American experiment, to express greater love of country and piety, to be more symbolically patriotic or conservative—or, alternatively, to be vehemently against symbols such as the police which evoke institutional order, or even to be more prejudiced against different identities—the nationalism is for naught, because it relies on an other.
The continual repurposing of symbols increasingly charges each symbol and object ideologically. This is to say that every object is then an ideological signifier, and that every image evokes within ourselves some association and subsequent reaction based on our ideology. This perpetual phenomenon has become more culturally and politically apparent with the recent surge in identity politics since, say, 2016, when Trump was first elected and many began publicly expressing offense based mainly on immutable characteristics.
So our appearances, our genders, our races, are ideological signifiers. Those immutable characteristics that in the American experiment (conceptually) were meant to have little to do with the notion of freedom, though they pertain to liberation, imply a moral casting and label enemies of freedom based on identity and the allegiances to those identities, much like in war times. And again, we’re French: freedom means freedom from as opposed to freedom to.
And thus, the nature of Freedom today. Instead of a positive body politic, or even the capacity to exercise Free Will, Freedom is objectified into a negative political and ideological tool, and even further diminished into symbols, into a word that triggers a knee-jerk reaction—for example, at the Rodeo in Cody, Wyoming when the announcer shouted through the loud-speaker “GOD BLESS AMERICA, THE FREEST COUNTRY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD,” and the crowd erupted into hoots and emphatic cries while an image of the rubble of the World Trade Center is projected on the jumbotron and everyone jeers at the death of bin Laden as though he were the man harboring the singular key to the iron shackles now released from their wrists. To others, perhaps, freedom might mean the symbolic flag is literally turned upside down and burned to ashes, as those fifty stars are not emblematic of us all, or even most of us, and perhaps those poor whites at the rodeo in Wyoming are an exercise in false consciousness, or, perhaps, they are included under the blanket of the fifty white stars because they, too, might ideologically contribute to the exclusion of those who don’t possess certain immutable qualities cohesive to institutional order.
That the state of Πολιτικά has devolved so deeply into ideology means the fabric of the United States is no longer threaded by any semblance of positive virtue. Ideology represents “ideas” of what is good; the repurposing of God from the conceptual creator into whoever one believes Good People is and then deferring to them in the same way one would scripture, and the repurposing of Satan into whoever their perceived enemies are meant to be, and casting them aside. Nearly religious levels of moral absolutism are applied to the realm of electoral politics, and each side unabashedly lays claim to Absolute Truth.
The example of abortion is an eminent demonstration of the contradictory nature of political moral absolutism as it pertains to ideology. Nearly any discussion dealing with abortion can show us how far we are willing to stretch ourselves to align with the ideology we are meant to align with. That abortion somehow continues to remain at the center of the polarized political debate between left and right is objectively extraordinarily absurd. Certainly, abortion is a nuanced issue and a rightly controversial practice—nuanced because there are plenty of reasons why a woman would get an abortion, and rightly controversial because of the trauma associated with the procedure, the physical toll, the multifaceted moral implications of terminating a pregnancy, and even when life begins—but it is a most futile debate, because the morally absolute sides have already been drawn and no political sides are changing, even if, occasionally, opinions may change. I say this mainly because the TradCath movement (and I genuinely hate to mention this as I know it’s passé and irrelevant in the grand scheme, though it’s something I must mention because I almost said people’s opinions are not changing. I’ve seen opinions change due to the recent surge in haphazard embraces of traditional Catholicism among young women and gay men, which, still, is an ideologically allegiant moral signifier: “valuing all life He has created” as a way of demonstrating sensitivity and purity, coated in an aesthetic layer of sexual deviance. This is a different topic, but either way it’s basically really annoying.) has resulted in a surge of pro-life rhetoric from young people, though it’s definitely not significant enough to have any electoral sway.
The moral questionability of abortion has been radically sensationalized. To argue that abortion as a procedure is called into question far more than plenty of well-accepted bi-partisan practices is not a statement in favor of abortion, but it is odd. It’s difficult to succinctly explicate how the concept of abortion is morally nuanced—not that it’s definitively murder but also not that it’s not the prevention of a potential life in—yes—a different way than condoms or IUDs are also preventions of potential life. That, sure, there may be religious implications, but not any that should logically result in a schizophrenic construction of mass graveyards for aborted fetuses. That abortion, like many other morally questionable practices that are legislatively above board, has implications in its legality that we would not want to extend beyond the issue as a singular, but we may find ourselves, in order to properly align with our side, fumbling around moral circles to defend its implications. Hearing women on the pro-choice side announce that abortion is nothing, that the fetus is nothing but a parasite feels like a betrayal. Hearing anyone on the pro-life side making statements about religious moral absolutism feels like a delusional political parody. The left reciprocates with their own moral absolutism: you hate women. The right: you murder babies. Someone says this is turning into The Handmaid's Tale. Someone says we used to be a God fearing nation. Both are, seemingly, longing for the past, as both believe that Things are Now, undisputedly, The Worst that They Have Ever Been.
And if I can now say, The Handmaid’s Tale was one of the worst things to happen to the liberal female victim complex since Hillary lost. Its mainstream interpretation essentially conflates abortion with the absolute freedom of women, and now the capacity to terminate a pregnancy is suddenly the pinnacle ideological issue, sensationally and literally. Additionally, that women’s reproductive rights and structural victimization has been reduced to useless dialogues surrounding abortion is entirely dismissive of the very real and tangible ways women are frequently and plainly victimized—for one, in the fact that procedures which deal with the womb, like abortion, hysteroscopies, even IUD insertions are dismissed as just like any other procedure, yet they are severely and life-threateningly underreaserched—that labor that takes place in the woman’s body, like sex work, like giving birth, are often dismissed as any other work.
That the brunt of women's rights are now tied up in a morally nuanced and unstable issue has caused us to miss our chance to unite over something more tangible, more stable, and more real as opposed to polarizing ourselves based on our pre-determined ideological sides.
The Handmaid’s Tale is quite simply premised on the rule of a totalitarian regime, and that it’s ultimately an allusion to the destruction of reproductive rights is an alarmist misfire. Totalitarianism, according to Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism, happens as a result of the dissolution of the collaborative nature of politics and increased atomization, and the moral absolutism of both sides of the reproductive rights debate are supreme examples of the process of political atomization. Women broadly are not going to suddenly be victims of the totalitarianism that emerges as a result of atomization—realistically, it has been, and will be, poor people. Poor women, of course, will feel the effects of abortion bans far more severely than rich women, and poor women have been feeling the effects of the failures of women’s health most severely as well. Mainstream narratives are totalizing; Women is a category, and this results in nothing except for increased polarization.
Making a statement about abortion that is not in some way a total alliance with one of the two sides is, too, generally considered morally questionable. Ambivalence is more than frowned upon in modern mainstream movements. The regularly cited Civil Rights Era notion of remaining neutral in times of injustice and therefore choosing the side of the oppressor was true then, and can often be true now, but it is overapplied. In many instances, it feels as though, for the sake of our “responsibilities,” we’re meant to shut our eyes and follow those who are more loudly voicing the proper opinion and say, “yes, I agree,” standing sheepishly behind a woman saying she would, in fact, WANT to get an abortion to own the pro-lifers, like a wife standing sheepishly behind her husband while he has an outburst at his coworker’s dinner party. But to do this would only be betraying ourselves: ultimately, our words in this debate do not matter. Where we stand does not matter. That these ideological sides have devolved so deeply into parody means there is no nuance to our allegiances and any one physical trait or even a single word can be a signifier for a whole set of beliefs. And so then, to demonstrate heightened levels of morality, both sides descend into ridiculous parodies of themselves by showing just how far they are willing to go to express how deeply entrenched in their ideological side they are.
And in watching the news, one can only have so many takeaways: Tim Walz loves women’s bodies because he doesn’t want to touch them. Trump loves women’s bodies because he likes to touch them. Mike Pence doesn’t want to touch women’s bodies because he is a sexually traumatized gay man, and God has already touched women’s bodies on his behalf. Kamala says ladies, isn’t it a bit WEIRD that a bunch of MEN are sitting around a room talking about the future of OUR bodies? And she’s right. But she doesn’t have to worry about her body, and she knows that. She’s rich. She has access. Access to abortion. Access to the best gynecologists in the entire world. What’s really “weird” is that anyone would want a bumper sticker that is in some way a quip in reference to terminating a pregnancy, from either side. And none of the politicians at all are affected, because if any of the Christians get their mistresses pregnant in the states where they outlawed abortion as a legislative moral signifier they’ll still find a way to take care of it. It’s inconsequential, to them. To them, it really does not matter at all. Really, abortion should have never been called into the question to such a severe degree, because abortion is not a political issue. It’s ideology masked as politics. And now it is no longer up for debate, even if on the stage they ping-pong rhetoric back and forth.
So, if everyone holds steadfast to what they believe already, and if we’re split into rigid ideological tribes, what is the new Ideological State Apparatus? People no longer believe the media. People no longer believe the Church. People do not believe in the education system, or, the education system has failed the people. Some might say the new ISA is “Woke,” or the commitment to being woke, but that would be using ISA as a pejorative term. Some might say the new ISA is “Trump,” or Trumpism, and that, too, would be an attack. The new ISA, in fact, is symbolic: it’s ideology itself. The dominant ISA is what you think when you see the image of the flag, what you see when you hear the acronym “USA,” when you hear the word Freedom. It’s what you feel when you hear the word abortion, or reproductive rights, or fetus. With no separation between “the ideology that at once marked the theory of ideas, and the institutions that were constructed outside of ourselves,” and “the ideology that has now been hopelessly internalized,” it’s not a battle of ideas, of institutions, of a dominant state apparatus, but a personal battle between people and tribes based on their visceral attachment to the political referendums listed on the back of the ballot. It’s a battle of absolute truth versus absolute truth.