1. IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE 1
Running head: Willow Smith: Organizations and Classifications Ideological Critique
Organizations and Classifications Ideological Critique
Kristin Tencza
Multicultural Communication
October 18, 2016

2. IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE 2
Willow Smith’s album Ardipithecus, a term that was coined after the first hominid bones
found on Earth, encompasses topics such as ancient civilizations, mysticism, quantum physics,
metaphysics and dabbling amongst higher states of consciousness (Ratliff, 2015). Willow
strategically utilizes her album to critique the collective level of consciousness that exists within
our modernistic society and is thus embedded into the current framework of our culture. Willow
asserts that consciousness is multidimensional, and that it can be expanded through the
implementation of praxes that were cultivated in ancient civilizations such as meditation,
chanting mantras, praying to ascended masters, astral projection and the use of healing crystals,
all of which she mentions in her album.
Willow’s album is both an ideological critique, and a rhetorical tool which she
implements in hopes of initiating a return to spiritual, humanistic values. Willow believes that
capitalism largely contributes to the preservation of the social ideology of class and that classist
values propel suppression and oppression of non-dominant groups of persons in our society thus
further isolating them. Willow relays the stark dangers of capitalism and class in that the elitist
subculture grounded in the upper-most percentile of wealth is strategically positioned to receive
the surplus produced by the ails and toils of all other persons existing in our society. Willow’s
album Ardipithecus is not only a critique of our social ideologies and governmental systemic
approaches, but an outline of how these institutions have consecutively robbed humans of their
humanity. She uses her music to issue a rhetorical and ideological appeal that calls for an
increased, more acute sense of awareness that analyzes and initiates greater humanistic values
and principles in our governmental framework, through the return to ancient ideals of humanity,
spirituality, and unity.

3. IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE 3
Willow’s song Organization and Classification is a political statement, ideological
critique and rhetorical appeal that expresses the political and social implications of
capitalism and classism through the exemplification of ills that plague our culture as a
result of the continual perpetuation of tainted ideologies thus calling for a reformation of
the current governmental systemand its inherent politics as well as ideologies. Willow’s
song Organization and Classification specifically asserts that the socially devised systems of
class and race are immensely limiting and impose profoundly detrimental effects upon our
governmental infrastructure as well as condition the perceptions of America’s youth by
perpetuating harmful ideologies in regard to social status. This song is essentially a radical
critique of the social hierarchy and how it is systemically as well as strategically set up so that
certain people are always exploited. All the while the dominants, or those of greater hierarchical
status and thus class, which is solely comprised of wealth and race, are strategically positioned
with malice aforethought so as to benefit from the expenditures and the pitfalls of the non-
dominants. Willow sheds light on the dominant-submissive relationship that saturates the
governmental framework and is employed at large into our popular culture and mainstream
media.
Jannick Schou composed analyses of the ways in which Ernest Laclau defines ideology
and the act of critiquing it, specifically in regards to the socially devised systems of capitalism
and Marxism. Laclau defines and reconstructs the notion of ideology as a compilation of
“discursive forms through which a society tries to constitute itself as such on the basis of closure,
of the fixation of meaning, and of the non-recognition of the infinite play of differences” (Schou,
pg. 304 2016). For Laclau, Ideology is coupled with the inaptitude to distinguish and thus
diagnosticate a “particular discourse perceived as positive, neutral or self-sufficient” (Schou, pg.

4. IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE 4
304 2016). The way that Laclau establishes ideology as a systematically derived and strategically
crafted approach whereby the public perception is misconstrued and distorted into “viewing a
particular system as simply given, as something that cannot be otherwise; a desire for total
closure by political projects” is congruent with the way that Willow sets up her ideological
critique of the capitalist values imbuing our governmental framework (Schou, pg. 304 2016).
Ideology critique, then, for Laclau, is the act of “de-neutralizing or de-essentialising that which
appears as neutral”, this too, is consistent with the approach that Willow Smith employs in her
album as she dissects the ideology of the social processes of organization and classification
through the socially machinated systems known as class and race (Schou, pg. 304 2016). This act
of de-neutralizing is correlated to a concept that was initially coined by Husserl known as
reactivation (Schou, pg. 305 2016). Reactivation implies a coherent analysis of the current
ideological discourse and ensues a “re-sensitisation towards the necessary contingency” of that
particular discourse as well as “rediscovering, through the emergence of new antagonisms, the
contingent nature of so-called ‘objectivity’” (Schou, pg. 305 2016). Laclau believes that this
rediscovery “reactivates the historical understanding of the original act of institution” whereby
dormant forms that were once deemed “objectivity and taken for granted are now revealed as
contingent and project that contingency to the ‘origins’ themselves” (Schou, pg. 305 2016).
Laclau asserts that through the display of political essence our collective social reality is birthed
and validated, thus revealing the political essence ensues a “moment of original institution of the
social [that] is the point at which its contingency is revealed” (Schou, pg. 305 2016). This
revelation also showcases “the original violence, of the power relations through which that
instituting act took place” (Schou, pg. 305 2016). Another words, “it is a way of showing how
that which appears as simply given is in fact the outcome of particular historical systems and

5. IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE 5
political decisions” which is exactly the message that Willow Smith is delivering through her
song Organization and Classification (Schou, pg. 305 2016). So then, the aim of ideological
critique is to compose analyses of the necessary political and social conditions that activate as
well as perpetuate ideologies while offering more beneficial alternatives as a refutation (Schou,
pg. 305 2016). Ideological critique as a blending of the central ideas of Schou, Laclau, and
Husserl and in the usage of Willow Smith, is not just a criticism of all the social elements that are
inherent in our society and contributed to the birth of any given ideology rather it is also
necessarily “conceived with the context of an emancipatory rethinking of the social” (Schou, pg.
308 2016).
Willow seeks to protect the creative forces that lie behind intelligence and success, and
to nurture and foster the dying voices and bleeding hearts of American’s youth. Willow
analogizes being young to having a tourist-like state of mind where everything is fresh, new and
exciting. Willow largely encourages individualistic learning and self-education as opposed to
regurgitation of what institutions have conditioned people to believe in. She stresses the
importance of forming and projecting your own values in a society that spurns those who have
abstract ideals straying from normativity or conventionality.
The systemic approach of class that our governmental infrastructure implements limits,
molds, and conditions perception thus eradicating creativity in those who are willfully or
unconsciously receptive. Willow’s album Ardipithecus is a rhetorical strategy that she employs
so as to raise the collective consciousness of the masses and to hint at the underlying political
agenda stored in the framework of the governmental system. Willow begins her song by
blatantly stating that “classification and organization is ruining the minds of our generation.”
Willow also asserts that classification and organization is ruining the hearts and souls of our

6. IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE 6
generation as well. Willow believes that the way we see race and the way we impose class upon
persons limits their own perception of what they truly are.
Willow relays lyrically how millennials are constantly preoccupied and distracted by
their phones. She is critiquing the consumerist component of capitalism and the way that
consumerist propaganda manipulates and distorts perception. Willow relays how millennials are
ostracized and condemned for exercising free choice and that this act suppresses creative control.
Willow likens herself and the fellow members of her generation to inquisitive children by saying
we “sing the ancient song” and “sing it very well.” Willow is eluding to how great the child-like
capacity to learn is whereas adults have already formed and essentially crystalized their various
perspectives and prospects.
Willow expresses how she believes youthful minds in America are purposefully
corrupted and manipulated through strategically posed societal distractions and capitalistic
values such as technological devices, popular advertising and consumerism. Willow asserts that
these social constructs largely stifle creativity as they put the minds of our youth on over drive
and bombard their brains with an array of messages that aren’t necessarily encoded with
anything substantive. Willow places emphasis on the importance of creativity and being an
individual in your own right aside from letting society mold your values and ideals to be
consistent with what’s conventional. Willow’s ideological critique of organization and
classification is essentially a humanist approach and seeks to bring awareness to unity
consciousness through the act of promoting it. Willow largely believes that the ideologies of
organization and classification divide and separate the nation in a way that is grossly deleterious.
Willow exposes the dangerous implications that classist and racist systems pose not only to our
modern culture but to society and humanity at large.

7. IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE 7
References
Myers, O. (2015, December 11). Willow Smith Releases Surprise Debut Album Ardipithecus.
Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://www.thefader.com/2015/12/11/willow-smith-
releases-surprise-debut-album-iardipithecusi
Ratliff, B. (2015, December 16). Review: Willow Smith’s ‘Ardipithecus,’ Teen-Speak on Astral
Planes. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/arts/music/review-willow-smiths-ardipithecus-teen-
speak-on-astral-planes.html?_r=1
Schou, J. (2016). Ernesto Laclau and Critical Media Studies: Marxism, Capitalism, and Critique.
TripleC (Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation): Open Access Journal for a Global
Sustainable Information Society, 14(1), 292-311. doi:115858318
Winslow, L. (2010, August). Comforting the Comfortable: Extreme Makeover Home Edition’s
Ideological Conquest. Critical Studies in Media Communication,27(3), 267-290.
Zoladz, L. (2015, December 21). Willow Smith’s Ardipithecus Is Too Precocious for Its Own
Good. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://www.vulture.com/2015/12/willow-
smiths-ardipithecus-is-too-precocious.html