Best known for his theories of ideology and its impact on politics and culture, Louis Althusser was a member of the French Communist Party, he revolutionized Marxist theory. Through this work, we’ll know how Althusser interpreted and developed Marx’s work and the ideology and its significance for culture and criticism

From of all, Althusser mentioned the necessity of the reproduction of the material conditions of production and the reproduction of labour power which is ensured by the quantity of value (wages). All the “know-how” and “rules” provided at school as techniques and skills are useful to the future production, Althusser argued the reproduction of labour power should submit to the ruling ideology for the agents of exploitation and repression, and he thought we should post questions about the essential of the existence and nature of superstructure from the point of view of reproduction. Then Althusser analyzed the State and Ideology and he explained the conception of “descriptive theory”—a beginning of the theory but requires a development of the theory which goes beyond the form of “description”—to help understand further the mechanisms of the State in its functioning as State power. Then he described the distinction between State power and State apparatus.

About the infrastructure and superstructure, Althusser insisted Marx’s theory, the economic base is the basement of the politico-legal and ideology, and the superstructure has a “reciprocal action” on the base.

Althusser listed a large number of ideological State apparatuses in capitalist social formations: the educational apparatus, the religious apparatus, the family apparatus, the political apparatus, the “cultural” apparatus, etc. Althusser clarifies the distinction between the Repressive State Apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatuses and emphasized their double “functioning” by repression and by ideology. “no class can hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatus ”(page 20), Althusser said the Ideological State Apparatus is secured by the ruling ideology—the ideology of “the ruling class” which holds State power.

The ideologies are realized in institutions, in their rituals and their practices, in the Ideological State Apparatus. The ideological hegemony is the result of political and ideological struggles and it contributes to the reproduction of capitalist relations of production—the relation of exploited to exploiters and exploiters to exploited. These mechanisms functioning for the capitalist regime are always concealed by the ideology of the School—one of the essential forms of the ruling bourgeois ideology, which has replaced the Church—the old dominant Ideological State Apparatus.

Then, there started the discussion of “ideology”, Marx defined “ideology” as “the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group.” Althusser cited the opinion of Marx and The German Ideology, he expressed: ideology has no history. It is conceived as a pure illusion, all its reality is external to it. But Althusser thought ideology has a history of its own, and adopted Freud’s expressions—ideology is eternal, exactly like the unconscious.

To approach the central thesis on the structure and functioning of ideology, Althusser presented two theses to state the imaginary from and the materiality of ideology. First, we take ideology as illusion or allusion, it is “interpreted” to discover the reality behind the imaginary representation of the reality, this is a method used by cynical men to control others minds or it could respond to the alienation in the imaginary of the representation of men’s conditions of existence. The ideological State apparatuses and their practices are the realizations of ideology, an ideology always exists in an apparatus and its practices, the existence is material. People inscribe their ideas as a free subject in the actions of their material practices, which are governed by material rituals within the material ideological apparatus.

Althusser deemed all ideology has the function of “constituting” concrete individuals as subjects; man is an ideological animal by nature. We are all ideological subjects, a material individual is always already an ideological subject—the elementary and peculiar ideological effect. We also function in the practical rituals of ideological recognition. Althusser took the existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects as the same thing, this argument resembles to Lacan’s Mirror Stage. What happens in ideology also takes place outside ideology. Then Althusser gave us an example of the Christian religious ideology—God duplicates himself to a man, a subject subjected to God, and interpellates more individuals as subjects to submit freely to the commandments of the Subjects. There is a mutual recognition of subjects and Subject as well (mirror recognition). All the subjects are inserted into practices governed by the ritual of the Ideological State Apparatus.

Althusser’s writing changed the face of literary and cultural studies, and continues to influence Marxist Philosophy, his argument of interpellation and the concept of Ideological State Apparatuses have been popularized among later philosophers.

Lacan followed Saussure’s structural linguistics and integrates Saussure’s theories in his own opinions. Lacan thought the unity with mother’s body is our primordial experience, all desire is determined by this original lost unity which is unattainable even though all desired objects are signifying it. Desired objects are just substitutes for the unattainable goal. Desire, stay in the conscious but influenced by unconscious, moves along the chain of desired objects, a chain of signifiers which circulates unceasingly without anchorage, in the chain of signifiers, one signifier can point to another signifier, but never the signified. Like the function of dictionary, one word can give you an explanation composed of other words, but never the object signified by the word. As to Lacan, this is unconscious. He compared a bar separating the signifier from the signified to the bar separating consciousness from the unconscious. Unconscious can be signified but never be inaccessible. Unconscious is neither primordial nor instinctual, it’s a group of elements of the signifier, a group of all the existence. Lacan used an example of two same doors with different signs to symbolize how signifier and signified reinforce each other’s function. Through the story of a little boy and a little girl who notice the signifiers signifying the opposite sex, I think Lacan believed every child develops their comprehension of the nomination of objects and the relation between the signifier and signified in the process of nomination.

As “the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud”, Lacan pointed out that Freud’s works indicate “connection” and “substitution” of signifier to explain unconscious. Lacan believed “significance of the dream” can be obtained by us because we take dream-images as signifiers, the linguistic structure is fundamental for the interpretation of dreams. This thought is based on the two principal mechanisms posed by Freud—condensation and displacement—which are naturally linguistic phenomena. The signification is condensed by metaphor or displaced by metonymy.

Lacan thought the order and methods of psychoanalytic mediation of Freud were no longer true. Freud believed “where the unconscious was, consciousness shall go”. Freud hoped to merge the unconscious into consciousness to dispel the depression and neurosis. Freud emphasized on the integration of “ego” and consciousness, which could become stronger than unconscious. But Lacan deemed “ego” could not replace or control unconscious, he thought “ego” was just an illusion, a product of unconscious itself. He elaborated in his essay on the mirror stage, a psychoanalytic theory which explains the process of an infant obtaining the illusion of the “ego” from the mirror and how he induces apperception of a whole integrity. Then we can know the human subjectivity is inherent. Although a child can get the conception of “ego”, he takes the image in the mirror as “himself”, but it’s not the reality, what shows in the mirror is only an image, an incorrect identification, this concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Lacan shows that the “ego” is the product of misunderstanding.

In the nineteenth century–the epoch of the bourgeoisie, a newborn power–communism gradually expanded in Europe. 《Manifesto of the Communist Party》 was sketched to declare Communists’ views and missions, the Manifesto expounds the theory of historical class conflicts and struggles, the characters and aims of Proletariat, the principles of Communist Party and it criticizes spurious socialism and literature at that time and devises the struggle tactics of Communists.

In the history, every epoch had class struggles. The modern bourgeois society simplified class antagonisms and divided the society into two great hostile camps— Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

“The bourgeoisie set up an unconscionable freedom — Free Trade– for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions to substitute naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation in feudal society. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.” The bourgeois epoch is distinguished by constant disturbance of all social conditions and the ceaseless expanding market. To establish connections and its “civilization”, bourgeoisie compels all nations to adopt the bourgeois mode of production, to become bourgeois themselves. Bourgeoisie develops with a corresponding political advance of that class, and it has conquered the exclusive political sway. Political centralization was hence the consequence of concentration of the means of production and property in a few hands.

In addition to the periodical commercial crises– the objective law of the bourgeoisie—which is an irreversible result of too much means of subsistence and productive forces, the proletariat is also the product of the epoch. The proletarian has no property or national character, its number and strength grow very fast with the development of industry. To realize every person’s independence and individuality, it is destined to struggle with the bourgeoisie. This struggle between classes is also a political struggle. As the lowest stratum of society, the proletariat is in the interest of the immense majority. Their mission is to destroy individual property and to abolish the bourgeois property to become masters of the productive forces of society and to establish the sway of the proletariat. That’s the first step in the revolution. Theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. As a revolutionary class, the proletarian political party’s organization and development did not go without any difficulties.

“When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.” I doubt this argument, it’s a little idealistic, and I think the development and realization of communism will last long, there are distinguishing socialist systems conforming to different countries’ situations, it sounds a bit like “all men are equal”, not that easy to be attained.

“Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” This argument turns out to be incorrect, our society develops quite well under the bourgeoisie, and there is no indication of its fall or replacement by socialism and then communism.

Undeniably, as the symbol of the generation of Marxism, 《Manifesto of the Communist Party》 is one of the world’s most influential political manuscripts, it provides an important guiding ideology on the revolutionary road for many socialist states, like China, Viet Nam, the North Korea, Cuba and Mongolia, after socialist revolution and transformation, they have socialist market system, socialist democracy, socialist legal system and general line for socialist construction. Communists are atheists, they believe in science, not in God. I think this is a defect of communism, because religious beliefs are really important in our lives, faith impels us forward.

No matter socialist society or capitalist society, they all have their own mode of production and inherent laws of development. They can develop harmonious in this epoch, on the same globe.

Dreams seem mysterious at ancient times, they are always connected with the augury in some countries, if you remember your dream-content, the visionary will tell you what your dream signifies, whether it is a favorable or an ominous augury. When I was a child, I wondered what a dream was, where did they come from? It’s a consciousness existing out of our mind? Or it’s just our imagination? Freud made an analysis of dreams as a psychological research, it’s more reasonable for us to understand the formation of the dream. In 《The Interpretation of Dreams》, there are relations investigated between the dream-content and dream-thoughts.

Sometimes, dreams are weird, but most of them are vivid. You can even “watch” yourself doing activities with a feeling as an outsider. Dream-content can be manifest or obscure in different forms. In general, the background in the dream is our living environment and dream-content is made of familiar objects, our friends or family members, but it also could be a nightmare about being injured or murdered.

It’s obvious that dreams are generally connected with the related events happening in the daytime. I could have a dream taking an examination nervously because of the coming test in the real life; I could have another dream looking for water with difficulty because I’m thirsty when I’m asleep… These are typical examples coming from the potential consciousness, that’s an unconscious process of thought. During the state of sleep, the brain is still “awake”, and these active thoughts form the dream. That’s another reason why dreams always seem real, a person may cry during his sleep because of a sorrowful dream, or feel disappointed because he thought that happy dream were the reality. Due to the close connection with dream-thoughts, dream-content becomes living. The subconscious dream activity persists for several minutes after waking. Even though you have realized that’s a dream, not real, you’re still inclined to finish this dream.

Dreams can lead us to relevant memories or even childhood memory, the childhood recollection sometimes arises by accident in the dream. I still remember when I was a little girl, I was so keen on sketch and watercolor, but I had to give up this hobby as my studies were getting busy, after I graduated from high school or even recently, dreams of being a painter appear frequently, it’s sentimental, there is no obvious connection with my daily life, but this childhood memory still returns to me.

In the view of the visible nature of the relation between manifest dream-content and latent dream-thoughts, we can see a dream of which the different visible or obscure elements are determined by the whole mass of dream-thoughts. We can analyze these elements separately and treat them as they are of small value to dig for the inherent psychical value and signification in the dream-thoughts. In the meantime, dream-displacement and dream-condensation should be considered as two important aspects and influential factors in the formation of the dream.

As a famous writer and philosopher, Roland Barthes is also a genius critic and thinker. Barthes is a versatile person, his ideas touched upon a wide range of fields, it’s hard to classify his categories according to the styles of his works. I’d like to talk about my impressions of several arguments of Barthes after reading 《Image Music Text》 and《Mythologies》.

In 《The Death of the Author》, Barthes mentioned that language reigns the work instead of author, language itself is the origin. As a general rule, we take the work as a “product” of the author, because the author turns his/her view into the language to narrate the story, the work should be connected with author’s biography, life and passions, all is connected to the author. Nevertheless, Barthes believed writer’s interiority is less important, the relation between writer and work should be diluted, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is not the subject with the book as predicate. Writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original (P7). To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing (P8). And Barthes took one instance—in Surrealism, language desacralizes author’s image. Reader is the destination of a text’s unity which gives writing its future.

In 《From Work to Text》, Barthes summed up the characters of text and the differences between Text and Work, the fifth point of the arguments concerns the importance of writer. Work has to be finished in conformity with the author’s intentions, but the Text is a result of a combinatory systematic, it can be broken and read without the guarantee of the author.

Actually, I’ve been interest in the connection between author and literary works for a long while, but I have an intimate knowledge of the significance of language on literary works in this post-structuralist work of Barthes.

In addition, through the study of several articles in 《Mythologies》, I found Barthes is really talented and creative. He decomposed daily life problems and analysed the essence and connotations with an original view. Those specific problems or cultural materials, which seem very common and regular, could be cut apart to two parts–positive one and negative one— from different points of view. In 《The Romans in Films》, fringes and sweat were designed to express emotional sentiments, but Barthes took it as the most benign symptom, it’s ambiguous, shallow, intermediate and degraded, it’s a kind of sarcasm to regard itself as “nature”; in 《Toys》, Barthes thought toys are socialized, as a microcosm of adult world, they prepare the children to accept adult opinions instead of their own consciousness of inventing other original things, besides, artificial materials of toys instead of wood makes children far from the nature, Barthes thought this phenomenon is pathetic; in 《Soap-powders and Detergents》, through the comparison between the quality and nature of two objects, it turned out they are abrasive, people are always conceived by their own imagination; in 《The Blue Guide》 , Barthes thought it’s just a tool of keeping images of graceless landscapes and inane phrases without the bliss and significance of travel, it turns travel into a method of senseless approach instead of an art or a culture; in 《The Brain of Einstein》, from a different viewpoint, Barthes took Einstein’s death as the condition of myth in the universe signifying Einstein is still the most sublime representation of the human being. Barthes amplified the problem with a lively description and explicated its dual character as his critique, and he exposed how bourgeois values and motivations were asserted through those materials.

Saussure, one of the fathers of 20th century linguistics, said:” The linguist must take the study of linguistic structure as his primary concern and relate all other manifestations of language.” Language is a social product passively assimilated by the individual. Saussure raised the idea of setting up a science that studies the life of signs within society –semiology. Language is a part of the general science of semiology, it’s not a process of naming those ready-made ideas, but a system of signs that express ideas, the essential part of all similar systems.

The linguistic unit (sign) is a double entity formed by the associating of two psychological systems –a concept (signified) and a sound-image (signifier). The concept is abstract, the sound-image is sensory, language signs are inevitably psychological. All the information and signification expressed by signs only exist in the mind of language users. And we can summarize the other characteristics of language: it is a social side of speech, its social nature is inherent; it could be studied separately; language, as well as language sings, is concrete and changeable. Saussure proposed to retain the word sign to designate the sound-image, the concept and the word.

The sign has two principles: Principle I is arbitrary nature. One signified could have many signifier in different languages; signifier is unmotivated, the connection between signified and signifier is arbitrary. Even though Onomatopoeia and Interjections could be raised as objections to Principle I, Principle I still dominate all the linguistics of language and its consequences are numberless. Principle II is linear nature. Although sometimes this principle is not obvious, it’s fundamental and its consequences are incalculable. The signifiers have at their command only the dimension of time. Their elements are presented in succession; they form a chain.

Then Saussure spoke of synchrony and diachrony that designate respectively a language-state and an evolutionary phase. Synchrony has both the autonomy and the interdependence, through a comparison between the functioning of language and a game of chess, we found each linguistic term derives its value from its opposition to all the other terms; values depend above all else on an unchangeable convention in the changing system. Studying the language from the viewpoint of language-state, synchrony is more important than diachrony because of its reality.

Linguistic value is doubtless one element in signification. We all know the concept is the counterpart of the sound-image, however, sign itself is the counterpart of the other signs of language, since language is a system of interdependence, terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others. To solve this paradox, we can exchange a dissimilar thing for the thing of which the value is determined or compare the similar value of the same system with the thing. So word can be exchanged to a different idea or another word. The value of term is accordingly determined by its environment. The concept is only a value determined by its relations with other similar values. Both the conceptual and the material sides of value are made up of relations and differences with respect to the other terms of language. For example, phonic differences have their signification, signs function not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position, even lots of linguistic signs changed in the history, their value didn’t change.

The linguistic signifier is constituted not by its material substance but by the differences that separate its sound-image from all others. Although the pronunciations of two phonemes are same, they could be taken as the same, they have different meanings and values. The signs used in writing are arbitrary, the value of letters is negative, differential, values function only through reciprocal opposition within a fixed system that consists of a set number of letters, the sign doesn’t affect the system at all, it still have the same signification.

Saussure’s ideas laid a foundation for the development of linguistics, I noticed that it’s important and meaningful to compare the similarities and distinctions between different languages and to study their structures. However, Saussure’s opinions may have epochal character and limitations, as he said, “Changes in the system are unintentional and fortuitous”, we should develop a more comprehensive research on linguistics.

The major idea of this essay is the research of verbal art which connects “formal” and “ideological” approaches together. Verbal discourse, in linguistics definition– the use of language in speech and writing in order to produce meaning and to see how the different parts of a text are connected– must be a social phenomenon in all of its factors. As to “the stylistics of genre”, Bakhtin believes stylistics should not be separated from the fundamentally social modes. The essence of all style concepts is the concept of poetic discourse, which is conditioned by specific verbal-ideological discourse and specific historical destinies. The strength and the limitations of such basic stylistic categories help to create a unitary language, which comprises mutual understanding and makes the unity of dominant conversational and literary literature clear. In the process of sociopolitical and cultural centralization in every epoch, mutual understanding in ideological life is expressed by a common creative language, which is considered as a system of elementary forms.

Poetic genres are influenced by centripetal forces of verbal-ideological life, however, the novel, is formed by decentralizing forces. The object of a word has contradictory acts of verbal recognition. Since the object’s dialectics are inextricably interwoven with the social dialogue surrounding it, the prose artist will take heteroglot voices as the background, a prerequisite to make his own opinion be sound. Every living discourse has a natural dialogic orientation towards the “common opinion”.

Social stratification of literary language could be determined by different forms, their social significance, different generation or social circles, even families. Different languages coexist with each other, poetry depersonalizes them whereas prose underlines their difference. Then, new socially living “languages” of heteroglossia cohabit with one another, and they all have a totally different principle to form their meanings and values, as such, they could be utilized by novelists. Heteroglossia could exist in the “low” poetic genres, and even in the speeches of characters as a depicted thing.

Internal dialogism in semantics syntax and stylistics are significant for style shaping, that’s the reason why Bakhtin said “a word forms a concept of his own object in a dialogic way.” Discourse should not be detached from social modes since it lives in a living impulse, otherwise, we’ll learn nothing about it. Discourse is of different significance in various disciplines, a dialogic penetration of their ideological meanings is necessary, verbal-ideological centralization and unification with the process of decentralization and disunification.

Bakhtin believes there are highly specific dialogic relations between “languages”, they all are particular points of view on the world. The more social elements in the language, the more important and stable are the languages. Words have their intentions and contextual overtones, they form the language which is a concrete heteroglot conception. In the rhetorical genres, some words may present different social meaningful utterance, even protest against the specific verbal utterance toward which it is dialogically aimed. Then Bakhtin talked about the discourse in human speech and dialogized transmission in artistic reformulation.

Language is closely connect with human being and society. It has a historical life in the process of hereroglot development on the social-ideological area: language can talk to itself and represent another language to sound both within and outside it. Hybridizations, the dialogized interrelation of languages and pure dialogues are three basic devices in the novel for creating the image of a language. The language in the novel makes itself as a social language surrounded by a single cultural-political world, in which exists a radical revolution in the destinies of human discourse, literary languages must has a surrounding extraliterary environment and it comes with cultural-ideological systems.

It’s necessary to carry on a profound artistic and ideological penetration into the dialogic interrelationship in the novel, this should be guided by stylistic analysis. Besides, a historical-linguistic research in the language system will also help us to have a profound understanding of various intentions in the work.

Actually, real life of language exists in utterances, languages’ forms and styles and stylistics of genres all come from social practices and complicacy of human activities, which could not be isolated from utterances. The discourse in the language lasts and develops with its own ideology, and it is still unended. Bakhtin’s arguments about the discourse is an important idea of Russian Formalism and they still have a great influence on the research and development of linguistics, stylistics and the philosophy of language.

Shklovsky, one of the founders of the Formalist study group, believes the nature of literature is their form, which comprises all literary devices and techniques, artistic materials and defamilization of forms are the essential characteristics of literature. Influenced by new opinions of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics, Shklovsky analysed this technique from the linguistic viewpoint.

To introduce and spread the concept of defamilization, which turns something that has become over-familiar into something reactivated, Shklovsky gave several examples to illustrate perception has become unconsciously automatic, he took it as a retreat of our habits. And he thought over-automatization of an object, the greatest economy of perceptive effect could impede our entire comprehension of objects.

In this essay, I noticed a sentence “…if the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.” I once saw a similar sentence “It never happens when something real had been forgotten”, people try hard to recollect scenes of the past when they look back, they are apt to forget routine matters which happen around them every day because of unconsciousness. To reverse this trend of modern living, Shklovsky proposed a technique of art which makes objects “unfamiliar”. Art is extracted from life, but superior to life in many respects. Art, as an essential method of writing, makes real objects look different through images and modes of expressions, then unexpected results are fed back to readers.

Shklovsky cited several Tolstoy’s passages to explain his theory. The first method is using different words to replace familiar names. Author has to use more words to explain an act or a phenomenon, this seems a little bit tedious and complicated, readers will notice other parts then the greatest possible effect will be produced. Such like that harsh example of flogging, it’s a typical Tolstoy’s way of pricking the curiosity and conscience of readers.

Personally, I prefer the second method of estrangement, authors make a story from different point of view. First of all, a story made from special angle of view intrigues people into reading it. Secondly, it’s easier for us to accept a totally different opinion. Specifically, people won’t have an attitude of exclusion towards “different arguments” of a horse, but they tend to refute the same argument from a person. This horse thought it was incorrect that people think animals should be naturally possessed by human being. People are guided by words, not by deeds in life, their instinct is narrow. I totally agree to what this horse has said, correct ideas are not innate in the mind, people seldom dare to face squarely their problems and they are unwilling to acknowledge their shortcomings and responsibilities.

Shklovsky cited Tolstoy’s other passages to show how common the method of narrative is used, seeing things out of their normal context makes writings more impressive. Many people considered it blasphemy to present as monstrous what they accepted as sacred, in my opinion, they merely declined to approve those habitual things in an unfamiliar way.

The third method used mainly in poetic speech is using artistic trademark as a way of lingering to impede perception; making the language appear strange, intricate and roughened. Sometimes, foreign languages, archaism and popular language, even dialects are new devices to create a properly poetic language. Speaking of the rhythm of poetry, which is totally different from the rhythm of prose— an essential automatizing element, the adjustment of poetry rhythm orders are necessary as well, even if it would not have too much effect for the roughening of language, the unpredictable disordering of rhythm should become a convention, anyway.

In brief, Shklovsky developed the critical theories and techniques of Russian Formalism. The concept of “defamilization” creates a special perception of objects, it’s an innovative writing technique which produces a great influence on theories of literature and the study of modern Russian poetic language.