Rethinking the Critique of Ideology

In this book, Joshua Miguel Makalintal offers a reconstructive reading of W.E.B. Du Bois’s ideology-critical sociology. Drawing on a selection of Du Bois’s works alongside contemporary scholarship emphasizing his Marxist and anti-imperialist thought and practice, the author sketches a Du Boisian approach to the subversion of modern social relations of domination—one that, in turn, further sharpens and extends the contours of critical theory and counterhegemonic theorizing by rearticulating the essence of social critique as a method of transformative praxis—aimed not only at unmasking but also at confronting and resisting the tenacious augmentation of the contradictions, crises, and catastrophes of our world. This work received the Austrian Sociological Society’s Early-Career Researcher Award for Outstanding Doctoral and Master’s Theses (Nachwuchspreis für herausragende Dissertationen und Masterarbeiten der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Soziologie) (2025).