Althusser’s essay on Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses is an attempt to answer the question of how the conditions of production reproduce themselves within a capitalist society. In classical Marxism the forces of production are the basic units of the system: labor power + capital, and these two mutually regenerating forces affect the social relationships amongst everyone in the system. But it requires more than just new workers being born as old ones die off, new materials (capital) being added etc. There’s something else required to insure the system continues to reproduce itself. So how does that happen? That is the question Althusser is seeking to answer in this famous essay.
This blog post is not a complete summary of Althusser’s entire argument in that essay but it does summarize and comment on some of the key points Althusser makes in regards to his theory of interpellation, which is what Althusser is most remembered for today.
In classical Marxism the concept of the State is seen only as a repressive power of force, but Althusser has two things to say about this. First, he says it’s important to distinguish between State power and State apparatus. State apparatuses are the specific institutions or manifestations of State power and these can change during revolutions and regime changes while State power (the ruling class) still persists. Second, Althusser says the State apparatuses themselves have two parts: there are Repressive State apparatuses (like prisons and militaries) that predominantly use force and then there are Ideological State Apparatuses that predominantly use ideology. Both of these apparatuses are needed to get people to behave in the desired ways (in reality both use a bit of each, but this is a minor point). Althusser says the way the superstructure reproduces itself is via Ideological State Apparatuses.
The most important ISA is the educational ideological apparatus. Makes sense. We learn a lot about the society we live in from going to school. Not just the lessons but the social skills we gain there teach us how to behave in society and instill within us the predominant ideological beliefs of our society.
So far so good, right? But what is ideology exactly? The second part of Althusser’s essay tries to answer that question. Althusser says Marx said “ideology has no history.” Personally I don’t remember that particular assertion in Marx but I guess this is a reference to Marx’s materialist ontology (as opposed to Hegel’s idealism). As Althusser puts it, “ideology, is for Marx an imaginary assemblage (bricolage).” This is just a fancy way of saying ideas don’t have material existence so therefore they do not exist, i.e. they are imaginary, but Althusser sorta rejects this. He (Althusser) asserts that ideas/ideology do have a material basis in the actions and practices that people undertake because of their ideological beliefs. Example: Jason believes in God, and this belief is manifest via Jason’s actions. Jason goes to church, performs the sign of the cross, kneels etc. All of these things are the material manifestation of Jason’s ideological belief in God.
Since he is a Marxist Althusser doesn’t like to talk about ideas (he says that word is “disappeared”). Instead he talks about the material manifestation of ideas in actions and behavior. Ideological apparatuses are the everyday practices and rituals of ideological belief.
He writes, “Ideas have disappeared as such (insofar as they are endowed with an ideal or spiritual existence), to the precise extent that it has emerged that their existence is inscribed in the actions of practices governed by rituals defined in the last instance by an ideological apparatus“
Now we get to the concept of interpellation!
Althusser continues directly after the sentence above: “It therefore appears that the subject acts insofar as he is acted [upon] by the following system (set out in the order of its real determination): ideology existing in a material ideological apparatus [e.g. the Church], prescribing material practices [e.g. tithing, genuflecting] governed by a material ritual, which practices exist in the material actions of a subject acting in all consciousness according to his belief.” (brackets inserted by me for clarification purposes)
The central concept here is the notion of the subject. Althusser links ideology to the creation of subjects, by which he means something like our social identities, how others categorize us, our role in society. Ideology gives us our identities as social creatures and that is the entire purpose of ideology: to tell us who we are within society but it’s not a one way endowment. It is instead a sorta collaborative process. We are called or hailed as X, and we ourselves respond to this call and that’s how ideology works. It’s called interpellation. Both the call and our response. This, Althusser says, is how social identities are created, how ideology works to reproduce the system.
It’s very important to realize this is not society saying to us YOU ARE X and therefore we are X. It requires the response by us. Althusser uses the word “recruit;” he says ideology “recruits” subjects among individuals and the way it does this is via interpellation or hailing. He gives an example of the beat cop on the street who shouts out “Hey you there!” at someone and then someone turns around (responds) to that call. That’s interpellation. Ideology hails the individual; and we as individuals answer that call and become subjects.
There is no point in time in which we exist before this process. We are all always already interpellated as subjects from birth.
One final point, Althusser says this small-s subject requires or implies the existence of a large S-Subject. If we are called, that means there is a caller. In the religious ideology this Subject is also called God. These two, subject and Subject, are mirrors of each other. You can’t have one without the other. They need each other. He calls this the mirror structure of all ideology.
And that is Althusser’s essay in a nutshell.