Abstract

The article further elaborates on a project of phenomenological critique of ideology and reveals its potential for the discourse of literature. Since the paradigm of studying ideology as a ‘false consciousness’ set in classical Marxism run into several problems connected with the transition from being in ideology to performing its critique, a genuine way out of it became impossible due to the totality of a discursive structure common to them. The articulation of this paradox in Karl Mannheim, Louis Althusser, Paul Ricœur, Michel Pecheux, and Mikel Dufrenne changed the way of statement of the question, shifting the emphasis from the content of ideology and its characteristic features to the status of a critic who is inevitably hypostatizing his thinking. The change of perspective, in turn, entailed a transformation of the method: while the previous tradition focused on finding a connection between the distorted representation of reality in ideological consciousness and the social position of its bearer, structuralist and phenomenological approaches tend to consider the contingent content of consciousness as an inevitable consequence of its structuring always-already-given horizon of meaning. Working with the latter, Mark Richir introduces the concept of a symbolic institution—the domain of meaning, which determines the human habitus, providing it with linguistic and cultural practices that have lost their phenomenological origin. In this framework, the criticism of ideology is understood as an exit from a symbolic institution, albeit temporary. Mark Richir thematizes this exit as an encounter between symbolic and phenomenological registers, i. e. a phenomenological challenge that assumes the agent of the reduction. Nevertheless, gaining a foothold 'outside' the symbolic institution is impossible: the overcome symbolic order undergoes recoding over time. Therefore, the phenomenological criticism of ideology cannot offer a normative program of a presumed non-ideological field to which the previous tradition aspired. The work hypothesizes that such critique is given as a trace of a once-perfect exit from a symbolic institution and is subject to interpretation as evidence. The development of this hypothesis is presented in the final, practical part of the work.