Supplementing Worldview with Ideology Critique:

A Sketch

by

Nick Jacinto Tejeda

B.A., City College of the City University of New York,

2006

Submitted to the faculty

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
at Alliance Theological Seminary

New York, New York

December 2014
 What are we dealing with when we speak of worldview? There is yet no agreed

upon definition. (Hiebert, 2008, p.13) However, according to Paul Hiebert, even its

ambiguity as a concept has been of value to philosophy, history, anthropology and

Christian thought. Furthermore, in simply tracing its history and attempting to define it, it

"helps us understand the nature of our mission as Christians in the world." Therefore, a

concept does not need to be universally accepted, or even begin in Scripture, for it to be

of value for Christian living.

Worldview can be detected in the stories that are transcendent and explain the

cosmic order. These stories (myths) reveal the true worldview of a culture because they

are beyond rationality and thus reveal the values hidden beneath the surface. While,

"truth is always about something", the worldview is, ultimately, what the something the

truth is about, is about. Worldview is so deeply embedded that a supposed worldview that

does not lead to a way of life cannot be said to be a worldview at all. (Hiebert, 2008,

p.28) A worldview is a map of reality providing coherence and meaning for living. As

such, it validates and integrates cultural norms. Worldviews are the worlds we actually

inhabit in our day-to-day lives not what we would like our worldview to be or may think

it is. Beyond foundational ideas and feelings, worldviews are "worlds" we inhabit.

(Hiebert, 2008) To be sure, there is a strange paradox. If worldviews provide

psychological reassurance the world is how we see it, providing a sense of being at home

in the world we live, how is that one comes to be the sort of being that can hold a

worldview in the first place? How is it that we are "worldview ready", as it were? Again,

what makes reality "world-able"? Even more succinctly, how can we account for the

seemingly anthropic relationship of the person, or culture, to reality?

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 To put it another way, we can understand certain behaviors on bio-chemical

grounds like hunger, for example. Or as in the example Hiebert uses, boiling water to

cast out the evil spirits rather than germs, which amount to the same in terms of health

but not in terms of worldview. Accounting for this difference, germs vs. evils spirits puts

both worlds into question while ignoring the fundamental conflict of human

understanding and its correspondence to reality. Do we have worldviews in spite of

reality or because reality is such that a worldview is inevitable? Because the concept of

worldview doesnt readily provide answers for these questions, it may be an ideology

rather than the general anthropological theory it purports to be. When one encounters a

different worldview one is faced with a certain dilemma. If there are different forms of

equally valid rationalities - germs or evil spirits - what ultimately explains this difference

and to what worldview do I recourse? How do I live this difference? It seems that the

fundamental insight of the concept of worldview is parity - But how does one account for

this anthropic parity? Or, as is often the case, upon experiencing a different worldview

one may sense that ones own worldview is less appealing. Although difficult to admit,

one may not necessarily feel that ones worldview is actually ones own. (Black Skin,

White Masks) The cross-cultural moment may force us to admit that our sense of at

home-ness in our on world was misperceived.

The fact that there are these types of differences at all signals a constitutive gap

between the human and the "world" it inhabits - we are the same species and inhabit the

same planet but create different "worlds". While, simultaneously, a seemingly inevitable

maneuver to bridge this gap persists - we all, nonetheless, continue to create these

"worlds". By gap I mean to define a space where one can ask are worldviews arbitrary or

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teleological, somehow? In other words, are they best understood at the epistemological or

ontological level? They seem to have both features. Worldviews are shaped by a whole

host of contingent and random events, where one is born, for example, yet we are told

that they actually serve a purpose. Worldviews serve an end providing meaning,

coherence and detecting change etc. Can one then conclude that to deny ultimate

meaning is to deny a fundamental aspect of being human? Or even the exact opposite, it

is this incessant need for meaning that leads for a whole host of non-sense, like Richard

Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss and the New Atheists argue. As one can see, there is much at

stake here.

Lastly, this gap is imperceptible except through the experience of difference.

These three levels can be understood with in the following theological genres: The Fall as

the constitutive gap, the Imago Dei as anthropic parity and Creation as the explanatory

framework for the value and significance of difference. To experience the gap and the

parity one must experience the cross-cultural moment. The gap is more readily attested

to, human knowledge doesnt always get ontology right. However, parity is a bit more

difficult because of what Louise Althusser calls "Interpellation".

Creation, of course, is the field of universality and the absolute, how God sees it.

Keeping our focus on this dimension, the theological, will help us detect the shift from

the universal trans-cultural anchoring" of the religious "space of otherness" to any other

and their re-anchoring, in the wake of the intellectual revolution of Darwinism, in the

now secular, but to no less extra-human "space of otherness" realm of bio-evolutionary

Natural Selection. The shift from God to Western "Man".(Wynter, 2003) This may seem

like semantic world play, pun intended, but there is a lot at stake here for Christian

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thought in its claims of total and absolute knowledge concerning the nature of God and

Salvation. By extension, the nature of God and its absolute difference with creation (or

not) puts a very high premium on the nature of difference it self, which may entail

differences in the very concept of worldview its self.

As Paul Hiebert puts it, "It is important to differentiate between divine revelation

and the human understanding of that revelation." (Hiebert, 2008, p. 272) But it is

disingenuous to call divine revelation "God's view of reality" (Hiebert, 2008) This is not

to say that it is factually incorrect, of course its true but Scripture its self does not allow

for "God's view" to be put on parity with other "views". In addition, how can one say,

with a straight face to non-believers, Jesus is the way the truth and the light - but thats

only how God sees it. Divine revelation entails non-parity among views now that God

has revealed Himself. How else are we to understand idolatry?

There is even a strange shift made in the explanation of the "biblical worldview"

(p. 265). We are told that the label "Biblical Worldview" as such is to locate us in a more

humble position as to the relationship between revelation and theology. We cannot

pretend to know revelation perfectly in light of the findings of anthropology as,

analogously; even particle physicists have humbled the scientific claims of absolute

knowledge of the universe. This is a strange shift because it reverses the use of

worldview thus far in the text. When Hiebert referred to the "American worldview" or the

"Hindu worldview" it purported to be an objective analysis of, as in, a worldview "out

there" (what Americans believe, what Hindus believe) and now worldview is used

subjectively to mean "in our humble opinion" (what we believe about God). The subject,

worldview is qualified with an adjective, American. But how is "American" like

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"biblical"? "American" is a lived experience detectable by scrutiny. In contrast, the

"biblical" is experienced by us the reader, not the people of the land of "biblical".

Therefore, Biblical can connote two things, the composite worldview of the people of

which the bible tells us, a natural reading or the worldview which insists that there is such

a thing as a composite worldview held by the people the bible is about, the ideological

reading. For Kraft this does not seem to be the case. For him, to interpret Scripture

faithfully requires that we learn as much as possible about the [worldview] assumptions

underlying the statements and allusions made by the various authors. (Kraft, 2013, p.

448) This shift in method is particularly telling of the tenuous relationship that

anthropology's concept of worldview has with Christian universality. (Discussed below)

Hiebert does not question the Lordship of Christ, far from it. The final revelation,

Hiebert tells us, was given to us by God Himself, in His Son Jesus Christ. (Hiebert, 2008,

p. 275) Furthermore, "We are never to equate our human knowledge with revelation

itself." and, he continues, it is Scripture, not human knowledge, which is the foundation

of knowledge. The intent so far, is only to say that even in regards to the limitations

inherent to human knowledge, we must depend on Scripture - and not anthropology.

Unless we are willing to contradict ourselves by saying that in regards to human

knowledge we are perfectly capable of knowing how we are unable to know.

This is perfectly consistent with his critical realism, which holds, "We can and do

speak of truth but recognize that our understanding of it is partial and finite". (p. 275) We

can take one step further than this. Even our understanding of how it is that our partiality

and finitude is to be understood is also at the mercy of divine revelation. This may be

implicit in Hieberts view since there is simply so much room for error, "A worldview is

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the configuration by which we seek to interpret ...cultural parts." With this much room for

error it is no surprise that Hiebert reminds us that the critical realist approach is

multidimensional including the hermeneutical community in which all members

participate using, various theological understandings, experts in different areas, elders of

the church and most importantly seriously seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit. (p.

275) The concept of worldview is indispensible but insufficient. The concept also

challenges the absolute and universal claims of Jesus Christ.

Worldview and Ideology

A major trend in the modern world to be reckoned with, in Hiebert's view, is that

of post-modernitys attack on modernist epistemology. Objective and value-free

knowledge is considered impossible. Knowledge is constructed and self-serving. So far,

the concept of worldview is not too far from the general critique of modernity. The

concept of worldview holds that there are many types of valid rationales and in this sense,

it relativizes truth. It also holds that knowledge is socially constructed and in a sense is

self-serving. However, because knowledge is relative, socially constructed and self-

serving it is inherently a power struggle as well. Therefore, claims to objectivity are a

disguised agenda driven project. The idea that science is the only way to be intellectually

rigorous, for example, can be said to be ideological and not just a materialist worldview

in certain situations.

Traditionally, ideology exposes the epistemological failure of not knowing a

house is being built on a fault line. Althusser, puts ideology on the level of knowledge,

the subject simply doesnt know. There are false beliefs about reality that are echoed

within and by dominate institutions, which serve to hide conflicts with in a society. These

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institutions are called the "Ideological State Apparatus". He's ultimately interested in how

societies reproduce themselves in a Capitalist society, which, to a Marxist, works for the

capitalist against the wage laborer. For the sake of space, Althusser's argument is that

institutions interpellate by a "hail" or "call", passing on the values that work in the service

of the institutions to the individual, as opposed to using force to inflict value. If

interpellation is successful, the individual comes to regard those values as his own.

Althusser's theory is heavily indebted to Lacan.

Herein lies the role of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ideology critique. It is

misleading to label Marx as a post-modernist, as Hiebert does, in an epistemological

sense because his critique was universal. Ideology critique assumes a universal truth

(profit is the theft of labor value), which is being obscured by a false belief i.e. the

concept of profit. In the case of Marx's critique of Christianity, religion was serving to

numb the working class to the reality, in the modernist sense, that they were being

exploited by the capitalist class. Furthermore, the meta-narrative of Christianity, an

entire worldview, was bringing meaning and coherence to the bourgeoisie for the

exploitation of the proletariat in favor of the capitalist class. Christianity became the

ideology of the Capitalist worldview. The concept of ideology arises within the

relationship of worldview creation to the means of production. It is this relationship of

"worlding" and the materiality of labor and circulating capital during a globalizing

moment, with its diametrically opposed interests between land, labor and the Capitalist

that ideology brings our attention to. We may live in the house myth built but ideology

critique tells us its built on a fault line.

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 The work of Slavoj Zizek has taken the concept of ideology a bit further. Zizek

thinks Althusser doesnt go far enough in his analysis of ideology. However, Althusser

and Zizek are concerned with how ideology maintains its grip. For Zizek the possibility

of ideology reveals more than the false belief. Reality itself is susceptible to being

constructed ideologically. There is a "structuring fantasy" that presents the world before

us as 'real' and herein is the grip of ideology - it appears as natural, more precisely, as a

worldview: that is, simply how the world is. This specific relationship is what is said to

be potentially ideological. An inner necessity renders the contingent as immediate and

does not seem arbitrary at all. Ideology is what hides and converts this movement of the

contingent into the logic of inner necessity wherein the necessary is a decipherable and

particular necessity.

There is a reversal in Zizek's view. "In this precise sense, ideology is the exact

opposite of internalization of the external contingency: it resides in externalization of the

result of an inner necessity, and the task of the critique of ideology here is precisely to

discern the hidden necessity in what appears as a mere contingency." (Abercrombie,

Adorno, Althusser, & Barrett, 2012, p.2) To be clear, Althusser comes very close to this

formulation. Elsewhere he notes that, "Ideology does not just misrepresent the real nature

of capitalist society - the relation of individuals to the realities is necessarily "imaginary

distortion".(A Reading Guide to Althusser on Ideology, n.d.) Zizek is going to say what

it is that is distorting the imaginary, namely, desire. Therefore, ideology critique must go

to the very ontological root and structure of subjectivity - not simply an epistemology

problem. Ideological critique is the process of uncovering the externalization of desire

relative to the position of enunciation, regardless if the content is true or false. And thus,

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goes to the nature of being, ontology. Because of Zizek's approach, it would be of interest

to refine the Doctrine of Sin with his work in mind.

Zizek continues, "An ideology is thus not necessarily 'false': as to its positive

content, it can be 'true', quite accurate, since what really matters is not the asserted

content as such but the way this content is related to the subjective position implied by its

own process of enunciation." (p. 8) For example, how does one account for the

disproportionate crime rate among African-Americans? Does one explain it in terms of

personal responsibility where "the attribution of personal responsibility and guilt relieves

us of the task of probing into the concrete circumstances of the act in question (p.5) or opt

for an explanation in terms of 'social conditions'.? Even though "... an externalization of

the cause into 'social conditions' is no less false, in so far as it enables the subject to avoid

confronting the real of his or her desire. By means of this externalization of the Cause,

the subject is no longer engaged in what is happening to him; he entertains towards the

trauma a simple external relationship: far from stirring up the unacknowledged kernel of

his desire, the traumatic event disturbs his balance from outside.", in other words, the

devil made me do it. It is interesting to note how these positions demarcate the usual

divide between the Right (personal responsibility) and the Left (Social conditioning) and

their respective solutions. Both are equally ideological and neither can be said to be

empirically false. Therefore, " An ideology is thus not necessarily 'false': as to its positive

content, it can be 'true', quite accurate, since what really matters is not the asserted

content as such but the way this content is related to the subjective position implied by its

own process of enunciation." (p.8) Worldview may see but is ideology speaks.

Zizek's Ideology critique does not negate the world sense but claims that there is a

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mis-perceived at home-ness within ones natural worldview. Furthermore, this at home-

ness is what hides ones own desire from one's self. The coding of our own desire using

the materials at hand lets us avoid confronting the kernel of desire its self. In this way

world-sense is teleological. Ones inner necessity is the ends to which ideology is the

means. This is what the cross-cultural experience reveals. As he puts it "The speculative

moment that the Understanding cannot grasp is the transition of the concept of pure self-

determination into the immediacy of being and so into the realm of nature. Here politics

joins ontology: while the Understanding can well grasp the universal mediation of a

living totality, what it cannot grasp is that this totality, in order to actualize itself, has to

acquire actual existence in the guise of an immediate contingent natural singularity.

The idea of a thoroughly rational totality with no need for such a contingent suturing

point is one of the supreme examples of abstract Understanding. This is why, for Hegel,

the function of the monarch, while purely symbolic, is definitely not pointless: it is, on

the contrary, the point itself, the immediate/contingent element needed to suture or

totalize a rational totality. The core of the dialectic of contingency and necessity lies in

revealing not a deeper notional necessity expressing itself through contingent empirical

reality, but the contingency at the very heart of necessitynot only the necessity of

contingency, but the contingency of necessity itself." (Zizek, 2014)

Conclusion

These remarks are to sketch a possible trajectory through the work of Slavoj

Zizek and Jacque Lacan in order to sharpen Evangelical Doctrine. J. Kameron Carter's

work, Race: A Theological Account, has done something like what is in mind here. The

concept of Worldview is already being reconfigured by Sylvia Wynter, a Caribbean

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philosopher, to account for the qualitative shift alluded to here produced by the Iberian

project. In vulgar terms, it is perfectly clear that different people groups have different

modes of being and thinking but one must not be naive about the

Modern/Colonial/White-Supremacist/World-System that informs our world-sense being

equivalent to the Aztec, or even the white American, worldview. Or, rather, and a much

more lamentable situation, it is exactly the same. The same world sense that can produce

the Mayan calendar can produce the Holocaust and American pop culture. However,

worldview, as Hiebert presents it, can't evaluate the nature and quality, the difference

between the Aztec, urban hip-hop and Techno-Cynicism of post modernity like ideology

can.

Ideology is, therefore, a transitional excavation on the way to a sharper

presentation of the Doctrine of Sin that is immediately relevant to the groups mentioned

above. The globalization and the circulation of Capital is an objectification, a staging of

the already existing alienation of creation from God. Ideology critique is a premier

opportunity to appreciate the Doctrine of Sin anew. The spiritual integrity assumed by the

Doctrine of Creation, the language of the blood of Christ, and the rest of the notions of

continuity with Adam, Abraham, David etc. are being made materially manifest in and

challenged by the political economy. How can the doctrine of Sin speak to the circulation

of capital and the worldview of the internet age, this new global civilization, without

sounding so far detached and dogmatically certain, and thus so easily ignored? The

detour through ideology, keeping worldview in mind, affords us this opportunity.

Delving into popular culture and colonial history not for kitschy relevance but for

spiritual insight as to the varied forms of spiritual displacement the modern wound has

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wrought. The hegemony of Capital mirrors the structure of Christ in whom we move and

have our being. Capital thus presents not only a representational system of exchange but

also the material possibility for the destruction of creation its self. For the first time we

can see de-creation writ large. "The ethical implication of such a stance is that we should

recognize our entanglement within larger assemblages: we should become more sensitive

to the demands of these publics and the reformulated sense of self-interest that calls upon

us to respond to their plight." (Zizek, 2014)

NOTE:

Because of lack of space I couldn't do three things:

1) Place worldview in conversation with Race and Colonialism via the work of Sylvia

Wynter, Aime Cesaire, J. Kameron Carter and Willie James Jennings (The Cesaire

School) and Enrique Dussel.

2) Practice Zizek's method of ideology critique with two responses to the Michael Brown

case. He is part of the Slovenian School of Psychoanalysis, which is interpreting Hegel

through Lacan. Their method is especially useful because both Hegel and Lacan use

philosophy to secularize Christian Doctrine. I want to "reverse engineer" their method to

advance the insights of the "Cesarie school" avoiding the Radical Orthodoxy school.

3) Practice a constructive reading of a passage of Scripture via Zizek's concept of

ideology critique.

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WORKS CITED

Abercrombie, N., Adorno, T., Althusser, L., & Barrett, M. (2012). Mapping Ideology. (S.

Zizek, Ed.) (1 edition.). Verso.

A Reading Guide to Althusser on Ideology. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11, 2014, from
http://www.arasite.org/nalt2.htm
Hiebert, P. G. (2008). Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of
How People Change. Baker Academic.
Kraft, C. H. (2013). Anthropology for Christian Witness. ORBIS.
Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards
the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument. CR: The New
Centennial Review, 3(3), 257337. doi:10.1353/ncr.2004.0015
Zizek, S. (2014). Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical
Materialism. London; New York: Verso.

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