The rhetoric of ideology: Confronting a critical dilemma

Abstract

This essay argues that ideology is a type of rhetoric that escapes rather than challeges contradiction through the joint use of false consciousness and rational discourse. The specific contradiction of the part and the whole, such as an advocacy of private interests in the name of public concern, becomes a problem for the critic since positions taken for or against an ideology are necessarily partisan themselves. Therefore, critics become trapped by the system within which they operate. By drawing from Kenneth Burke and Michael McGee, an attempt will be made to demonstrate this dilemma of criticism while offering a perspective for overcoming the perpetual tendency to advance self‐interest as “truth.”