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.

Himani Bannerji is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at York University and the author of several books, including: Thinking Through: Essays in Feminism, Marxism, and Anti-Racism; Unsettling Relations: The University as a Site of Feminist Struggles; Mirror of Class: Essays on Bengali Theatre; Returning the Gaze: Essays on Racism, Feminism, and Politics; Coloured Pictures The Two Sisters; and The Writing on the Wall: Essays on Culture and Politics.

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