The Ideological Condition

The Ideological Condition: Selected Essays on History, Race and Gender brings together many of Himani Bannerji's English writings over a long period of teaching and research in Canada and India. Bannerji creates an interdisciplinary analytical method and extends the possibilities of historical materialism by predominantly drawing on Marx, Gramsci, and Dorothy Smith.

Essays here instantiate Marx's general proposition that while all ideology is a form of consciousness, all forms of consciousness are not ideological. Applying this insight to issues including patriarchy, race, class, nationalism, liberalism, and fascism, Bannerji breaks through East-West binaries, challenging mystifying approaches to the constitution of the social, and shows that a sustained struggle against ideological thinking is at the heart of socialist struggle.