The social function of science vis-à-vis ideologies is first to understand them – what they are, how they work, what gives rise to them – and second to criticize them, to force them to come to terms with (but not necessarily surrender to) reality. This chapter attempts to show that the social sciences have not yet developed a genuinely nonevaluative conception of ideology; that this failure stems less from methodological indiscipline than from theoretical clumsiness; that this clumsiness manifests itself mainly in the dealing of ideology as an entity in itself; and that the escape from Mannheim’s Paradox lies in the perfection of a conceptual apparatus capable of dealing more adroitly with meaning. Bluntly, we need a more exact apprehension of our object of study, les we find ourselves in the position of the Javanese folktale figure, “Stupid Boy,” who having been counseled by his mother to seek a quiet wife, returned with a corpse.
