The meanings of inversion: the critique of ideology in The German Ideology

Abstract

The proposed research project aims to understand the concept of ideology present in the critique of ideology in general and in Feuerbachian philosophy, found in the manuscripts referring to chapter "I. Feuerbach", as well as in the critique of Max Stirner's philosophy, found in chapter "III. St. Max", from Marx and Engels' The German Ideology. The aim is to understand the relationship between the real inversion generated by the division of labor and the ideological inversion, in view of the problem of ideology being characterized as the inversion of the reality of the relations of production at the same time that it is the expression of these same relations. It is in this context that the analysis of the darkroom metaphor is fundamental, since the camara obscura captures, in its physical process, the points of light that objects reflect, and has as its product an inverted image of these objects inside, a phenomenon similar to the ideological one. We believe that through the analysis of the concept of ideology it will be possible to reassess the importance of the unfinished manuscripts of "I. Feuerbach", considering that the most recent bibliography, based on the "philological turn" of the MEGA² project, attributes to the text an inconsistent and minor character compared to the chapter dedicated to Stirner. (AU)