"The problem of ideology, therefore, concerns the ways in which ideas of different kinds grip the minds of masses, and thereby become a ‘material force’." (Source)
In this sentence, taken totally out of context, ideology is about grip. It's about grabbing minds and holding them. It is about the grip of ideas. From now on I'm going to try to replace the word ideology with 'grip of ideas' and see if it makes the world more intelligible. I want to see how and when it grips. And what the nature of this grip is. One can look at ideas themselves and pull them apart and think about what it is within an idea that enables it to grip the mind. To grip minds. But what is the mechanism at work in itself ? What is the grip?
And how does that grip transform minds into an active material substance? Is this where the rubber hits the road for historians of ideas? Should we all become historians of the grip and the mass?
With answers to these questions we could possibly address the more pressing issue. How do we loosen the grip and dissolve the mass? How do we think without ideology?
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