False consciousness, hermeneutical injustice, and ideological power

Stahl, Titus | Journal article in Philosophy & Social Criticism, Dec 2024

Abstract

Theories of ideology explain the stability of unjust social institutions by reference to the ways in which social power undermines the epistemic agency of those subordinated by them. The historically dominant model of ideology understands it as ‘false consciousness’, that is, as a set of socially distorted beliefs. The false consciousness model of ideology is, however, unsatisfactory in various respects. I argue that this, in part, explains why theorists have more recently turned to a competing model that understands the epistemic constraints caused by relations of social power in terms of hermeneutical injustices. While Fricker’s theory of hermeneutical injustice avoids some implausible assumptions of false consciousness theories, it lacks, however, a plausible account of how social power can distort hermeneutical resources. I argue that there is a competing model of ideology in the Marxist tradition, according to which ideologies arise from distortions of concepts that are internal to social practices; this model takes up the insights from theories of hermeneutical injustices, and supplements them with a convincing ‘materialist’ explanation of how power, practices, and discourse are linked.