a reality that does not disintegrate the moment we subtract from it its ideological component? Therein resides one of the main reasons for progressive abandonment of the notion of ideology: this notion somehow grows 'too strong', it begins to embrace everything, inclusive of the very neutral, extra-ideological ground supposed to provide the standard by means of which one can measure ideological distortion. That is to say, is not the ultimate result of discourse analysis that the order of discourse as such is inherently 'ideological'?

Let us suppose that at some political meeting or academic conference, we are expected to pronounce some profound thoughts on the sad plight of the homeless in our big cities, yet we have absolutely no idea of their actual problems -- the way to save face is to produce the effect of 'depth' by means of a purely formal inversion: 'Today, one hears and reads a lot about the plight of the homeless in our cities, about their hardship and distress. Perhaps, however, this distress, deplorable as it may be, is ultimately just a sign of some far deeper distress -- of the fact that modern man no longer has a proper dwelling, that he is more and more a stranger in his own world. Even if we constructed enough new buildings to house all homeless people, the true distress would perhaps be even greater. The essence of homelessness is the homelessness of the essence itself; it resides in the fact that, in our world thrown out of joint by the frenetic search for empty pleasures, there is no home, no proper dwelling, for the truly essential dimension of man.'

This formal matrix can be applied to an infinite multitude of themes -- say, distance and proximity: 'Today, modern media can bring events from the farthest part of our earth, even from nearby planets, close to us in a split second. Does not this very all-pervasive proximity, however, remove us from the authentic dimension of human existence? Is not the essence of man more distant from us than ever today?' Or the recurrent motif of danger: 'Today, one hears and reads a lot about how the very survival of the human race is threatened by the prospect of ecological catastrophe (the disappearing ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, etc.). The true danger, however, lies elsewhere: what is ultimately threatened is the very essence of man. As we endeavour to prevent the impending ecological catastrophe with newer and newer technological solutions ('environment-friendly' aerosols, unleaded petrol, etc.), we are in fact simply adding fuel to the flames, and thus aggravating the threat to the spiritual essence of man, which cannot be reduced to a technological animal.'

The purely formal operation which, in all these cases, brings about the effect of depth is perhaps ideology at its purest, its 'elementary cell', whose link to the Lacanian concept of the Master-Signifier is not

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