Abstract

Old ideologies, defined as «grand narratives», seem to have faded away, but this is not a conclusive argument to state that ideology has, itself, disappeared. In fact, there are strong reasons to believe that it has not. In the first part, this article offers a synthetic survey of some of the most significant conceptions of «ideology» in order to avoid the confusion generated by uncritical uses of the term. The vantage point of the analysis is the fundamental conceptual opposition between «ideology» and «praxis» («truth», or «reality»). The second part of the article opens up some questions about how the new forms of ideology may thrive in the new spaces created by the communication technologies, and how this may constitute a risk for our democratic systems.