When it comes to Michael Mikhaĭlovich Bakhtin, ideology is the totality of experience, which reflects and refracts social life with associated exterior expressions. This clearly estimates the extended influence of hegemony in a bourgeois society. And he comments that the dialectical relationship between structure and superstructure cannot be defined effectively, unless it is mediated by proper communicating verbal or non-verbal signs. In the essays on speech genres, Bakhtin says that every text presupposes a system of signs and a language and if there is no language behind a text, it is not a text but a natural phenomenon. Though there is a prevailing language system, each utterance of a text is individual, un-repeatable, un-reproducible and therein lies its entire significance. With respect to this , everything repeatable and reproducible proves to be a material, a means to an end.
This aspect becomes the communicative entity with other texts and achieves a dialogic quality. This motivated Bakhtin to explore the relationship between language, ideology and consciousness. The constructs of inner speech and outer speech developed by Bakhtin forms integral part of his theory of discourse. Inner speech does not necessarily find expression in outward speech; even so, it is not so less material than the outward speech. In fact, verbal language is not just the expression of interaction and mutual comprehension in the interrelation between individuals. It is also identifiable with the consciousness, as without the language our inner speech will remain more cryptic and unconscious. And he continues to claim that psyche and language of consciousness are ideologically oriented. This can be explained if we derive their dialectical existence. And it generates a renewed interest in the matter of ideology. Thus the interactive systems of psyche, language and ideology are dialectical materials in nature.
In his book on Freud, Bakhtin redefines the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. He reformulates it as the variants of the same phenomenon ; both as the aspects of consciousness. Instead of positing the ontological difference between, Bakhtin perceives the difference as differing degrees of ideological sharing. He notates Freud’s unconsciousness as ‘unofficial conscious’.
Bakhtin treated realms of ideology in the terrains of material world. It is reflected in the seminal work of Voloshinov, who was a prominent member of Bakhtin circle -‘Marxism and the Philosophy of Language’. In the view of Bakhtin circle, ideological product is not a monolithic reality. It is a reality reflecting and refracting another reality outside itself. This compositional and hybrid nature can be due to the historical nature of ideology. This is a definitive quality of a ‘sign’. A materialist semiotics evolves in this analysis. It is reflected in the statement ‘Everything ideological has a meaning’. And he explicitly defines the materialist existence of ideology by the notation ‘ Without sign, there is no ideology’. An image and tool are having potentials of ideological formations. The artistic quality of an image and economic quality of a tool give rise to its ideological decorations. So we can see that the ideological formation is a materialistic convolution over the productive relationship in which, each material is used. In parallel to the material world of real objects a hyper material world of signs do exist. This world of signs is directed towards communication and external realization of inner meanings. This is due to the fact that signs have a semiotic value. This quantization unifies the otherwise multipolar world of signs. Hence we can see that signs are the spatial and temporal objects formed in the historical process of semiotics. And we can identify that ideology and sign are sharing the same domain.
Idealist philosophy locates ideology in the individual consciousness. And they treat signs as the external coating over it. Bakhtin’s views profoundly reverberated in the marxist circles elsewhere in the world. Raymond Williams adopted the approach of Bakhtin circle in his rebuttal of the post-structuralist analysis of Freudian psycho-analysis.
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