Ideology as the Infrastructure of Desire: The Body without Organs in Consumer Society

Abstract

The article explores the transformation of ideology in the digital age, where traditional forms of symbolic influence are increasingly replaced by infrastructural and algorithmic mechanisms that shape desire. The primary aim of the study is to demonstrate how contemporary ideology operates beyond classical notions of persuasion, truth, or conscious belief, relying instead on technical, media-driven, and affective modes of engagement. The analysis traces the evolution of the concept of ideology–from classical Marxist and liberal approaches to post-structuralist (Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault) and psychoanalytic (Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek) interpretations that emphasize its unconscious and repetitive nature.

Special attention is given to the role of digital platforms, personalization algorithms, interface architectures, and the attention economy, which transform ideology into a distributed infrastructure for modulating affects and behavioral patterns. Algorithmic power, digital capitalism, and platformized media environments create conditions in which ideology operates not by convincing individuals but by engineering desire, reinforcing routines, repetition, and implicit normalization.

The findings of the study highlight how contemporary digital technologies produce a new form of ideological influence – one embedded in everyday practices, cultural frameworks, and modes of subjectivity. This ideological regime functions as an infrastructural force, structuring how individuals feel, choose, and act within the dynamics of the digital world.