The Unaddressed ‘I’ of Ideology Critique

Power and ideology, from different standpoints, claim and reject each other, with different – and sometimes new – constructions of power built upon the rubble of past ideologies. This article takes as its starting point Michael F.D. Young's Bringing Knowledge Back In to address the links between education and power as they are played out and played with in sociologies of knowledge and education. Power acts on subjects but so too does it call the subject into being. Hiding this quixotic other of ideology critique – that is, ‘I’ the critic – enables the concealment of power. It is not enough, then, to recognize the production and reproduction of power operating externally: the power within us, the ability to imagine resistance against ourselves and others, must be acknowledged.