The Reign of Ideology is a trenchant critique of the fixation on ideology in current literary and cultural study. At a time when scholars believe that ideology is everywhere, cultural studies have become an exercise in demystification: the work of scholars is often to elicit concealed motives of "domination" in texts and institutions. The casualities are disinterestedness, aesthetic value and claims to universality and transcendence.

Eugene Goodheart offers fresh and persuasive arguments for preserving these once cherished ideas as necessary to the vitality of our cultural life.