For these readings, I tried to connect what the theorists were saying with what I remember learning from CMC 100. I was first introduced to the real depth of the meanings of ideology and hegemony during that course.
In the introduction to the readings, the book defines ideology, in the simplest terms, as the study of signs. "Every sign is ideological." What reflects in these signs today, are politics, domination, and issues of power. People think up these meanings behind the signs themselves and as Marx puts it, "It is not the consciousness of people that determines their being, but on the contrary their social being that determines their consciousness." Marx also states in the reading that the dominant idea within the classes is the one that is held as "eternal law," or the one that is believed to be the "right" meaning.
Shifting to the work of Althusser, I think an important thesis quotation to point out is: "Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence." I found that I understood concept a lot, especially when put in perspective to religion and the belief in God.
I attended Catholic school my whole life and took various courses focusing on religion that I can now relate to my study of ideology as a CMC major. There is a human need to connect with something larger than life, in this case God, who is held as the Creator who forgives and knows all. Although we as humans make mistakes, experience tragedy, and sin, but God is there to make sense of the real conditions in which we must go through in order to reach eternal rest in Heaven with Him. The reading also mentioned how priests can act as "authors of the great ideological mystification."
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