Revoke Ideology

In these crooked times of chaotic and contradictory discourses in every social sphere, from politics to food production, "ideology" has become the buzzword to represent some solid structure on which to cling or under which to recoil, in an effort to understand reality. But how this structure is built and what it ultimately upholds – this is a primary focus of the Human Sciences. In this book, the author argues that in the Human Sciences, from its founders to contemporaries, a common premise is apparent: the fundamental property of all human-social reality is its character as something constructed. Through a vast set of analyses and reflections of his own, and by philosophers, psychologists, psychoanalysts, sociologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists and linguists, the author shows how this premise, applied, which he coins as critical constructionist theory, constitutes the fundamental theory of the Human Sciences. The book also traces how the main development of this theory gave rise to critical deconstructionism – philosophical, sociological, and anthropological – as an analytical procedure in contemporary studies and research, valid in discussions on culture, ethics, human rights, gender, sexuality and ethnicities. Understanding the role ideology plays in this construction, then, is key to liberation from oppressive conceptual structures of reality. This book exposes that role.

Alipio De Sousa is a Tenured Professor of Social Theory and Political Philosophy in the Undergraduate and Graduate Programs in Philosophy (Ethics and Political Philosophy) at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Natal/Brazil. He is a CNPq researcher and the current Diretor of Humanitas – Institute of Integral Studies at UFRN. De Sousa received his doctorate in Sociology from the University of Paris – Sorbonne (2000). He is the founder and editor of the journal, Bagoas: estudos gays (Bagoas: gay studies) and the coordinator of the Nucleus of Critical Studies in Contemporary Subjectivities and Human Rights.