Category: Althusser

I have to admit I sometimes – often – have a hard time to see the connection between the text we have to read and the question that, I think, is supposed to guide our reading : How can this text help to read a piece of literature ?

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards and Investigation) by Louis Althusser is not different. While I find the text rich under many aspects, I have difficulty connecting it to literature. I’ll present anyway my general impressions.

Of the whole discussion on Ideological State Apparatuses, the argument made on the School being the number one ISA in our society is certainly the one that reached me the most. From my understanding of the text, an ISA is a social structure in which a given ideology is embedded and transferred ; for Althusser, the prominent ideology is that of the reproduction of the means of bourgeois production. It the way school is designed, young influencable brains quickly learn – explicitely and implicitely – their role in place and the society : the labour will get out of school at age 16 with a specific set of skills while the leading class will end up years later ready to reproduce the capitalist behaviour of their parents.

The concept of ISAs is a general one and is not limited to describe the bourgeois society. School is embedded with hidden curricula that promote given values. To many, absence of women or non caucasian people in school resources have created a bias in the conception that students have of their society. Today, this debate turns to the presence of gay people in resources. Teachers have huge privileges and responsabilities when they choose the resources they present to the students as these will shape the young minds. But teachers cannot escape the fact that, ultimately, they are unconsciously a product of the society in which they were fabricated and, to some extent, they are reproducing a given model ; model that can be close to the one described by Althusser.

To me, an important ISA that is not mentioned by Althusser is social conventions and stereotypes. While one can argue this ISA I’m proposing is part of School, Family or Work, the subtle ramifications of social conventions and sterotypes go beyond these somewhat independant ISAs. I will offer an example.

My sister has two daughters, 4 months and 3 years old. It is a given fact that the baby girl will be taken as a boy whenever she is wearing a blue outfit. What is more troubling is that the girl (3y.o.), with highly feminine physical traits, will be too mistaken for a boy because she has short hair and a blue shirt ! These social signs that were built in our western society (blue=boy ; pink=girl) are so anchored that they overtake simple common sense. Therefore, ideologies cannot be restricted to a given area. While they can be transmitted in specific ISAs, they circulate and grow at a supralevel ; the whole society one.

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.

In “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, Althusser begins by explaining that the ultimate condition of production is the reproduction of the conditions of production. This can happen in precisely two ways: the reproduction of the productive forces and the reproduction of the relations of production. What he means by the reproduction of productive forces is the reproduction of labor power. The reproduction of labor power requires not only a reproduction of skills but also a reproduction of submission to the rules of the established order. School serves to teach the “know-how” and guarantees the subjection to the ruling ideology. It is only under forms of ideological subjection that it can become possible for reproducing the skills of labor power. Although Marx represents a society using the metaphor of an edifice, Althusser argues that this is only descriptive and that it is only through the point of view of reproduction that we can begin to understand the meaning of society. Marx believed the state to be a machine of repression, a Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). The RSA enabled the ruling class to ensure domination of the working class via capitalist exploitation. The RSA consists of the government, the administration, the army, the police, the courts, etc. But for Althusser, the reproduction of the relations of production becomes possible through Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA), which corresponds to private institutions such as religion, education, family, media, etc.

There are some key differences worth pointing out between the RSA and ISA. First, there is only one RSA as opposed to a plurality of ISA’s. Second, the RSA belongs to the public sphere whereas the ISA is private. And finally, the RSA functions primarily by violence and secondarily by ideology whereas the ISA functions predominantly by ideology and secondarily by violence. Both apparatuses function side by side in order for the dominant class to maintain its power over the working class, but I am still unsure whether or not this inverse relationship is pertinent. Basically, ideology must be reproduced in every aspect of society in order for such a relationship of power to exist. Althusser explains that this reproduction of ideology works to produce an imaginary representation of the real conditions of their existence. In other words, the ruling ideology creates a false perception of the truth in order to maintain power and control over the people. Therefore, the ruling ideology can only survive if the people accept its conditions. It is precisely through the ISA’s that willing submission to a capitalist and exploitative system is achieved whereas in the RSA, compliance is forced. Althusser also mentions that the school has replaced the church as the dominant ISA and we often see many examples of this where values of the dominant class are preached as being the only existent values in society.

Althusser makes several theses regarding ideology, but I was particularly interested by his idea that ideology exists eternally, creating subjects out of individuals always. This is somewhat questionable to me since ISA’s are the sites of class struggle. Because these sites are so plural and diverse and full of contradictions, state power cannot be as easily asserted. There then seems to be a contradiction since if ideologies interpolate individuals into defined subject positions, what happens when an individual does not assume the imposed conditions of their identity? Isn’t this possible given that the ISA’s are sites of conflict? Because it is through language that interpolation of the subject occurs, what happens if the subject does not respond? Can the power of the ISA’s continue to influence identity formation? Is this power absolute? These all seem like very pertinent questions and are later taken up by theorists such as Foucault and Butler. Interesting read!