Orientation

orientations involve different ways of registering the proximity of objects and others. Orientations shape not only how we inhabit space, but how we apprehend this world of shared inhabitance, as well as ‘who’ or ‘what’ we direct our energy and attention to. (Ahmed 2006)

(The entire introduction of Ahmed 2006 is an interesting meditation on the idea of orientation and well worth reading.)

Ideologies as tools for orientation and organisation

For Gramsci ideologies operate as “organizers”. They organize people and create the terrain people act upon.1 Ideology is therefore “not just a philosophical world view”, but must “entail orientations for action and must be socialized in the masses” (Larrain 1983, 87).

So, ideology is something practical, something that orients praxis.

See also

Sources

  • Larrain, J. (1983). Marxism and Ideology
  • Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks
  • Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology

  1. To the extent that ideologies are historically necessary they ‘organise’ human masses, and create the terrain on which men move, acquire consciousness of their position, struggle, etc. (Gramsci 1971, 377)

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