Ideology is a polemical category that has produced a lot of discussion and debate in the field of art and literature. Althusser in the sphere of politics and Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton in the field of marxian readings of literature have had a lot to say about ideology. In literature questions surrounding ideology are manifold.
What is the ideology of a text? This is associated with authorial intent and meaning.
How does the ideology that informs a text influences its content, style, genre etc? This is a question that interlinks the polemical and the literary category of a text.
How does a text get structured by the dominant ideology of the times? This relates to the conservative/radical nature of the text.
One can go on with such questions ad infinitum, but coming back to the definition of ideology, I think it is a polemical and deliberate category of meaning that emerges from a text in terms of form or content or performance.
Can there be a text without an ideology?
I would say, no, because, ideology is not just about taking political sides in terms of social realism, it might be of a different order al together. If Gorky's Mother is a classic example of an ideological text where political discourses are given a clear committed idelogical form, even Joyce's Finnegans Wake, despite not being a realist text of political representation at all, has its own ideology of unmaking and remaking the English language that might be seen to have its own polemics of a postcolonial breakdown or subversion of the English language.
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