Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Althusser was a Marxist critic whose ideas were used to interpret various forms of popular culture. His theories concerning
ideology, like Gramscis hegemony, challenge the simplistic determinism governing the relations between the base and the
superstructure.
Interpellation
This is a concept designed to explain how ideology works. He saw ideology not only as ruling or dominant ideas but as material
practice: ideology is contained in the practices of everyday life. Interpellation is about how individuals become subjects of
ideology, which functions like a summons. In the media, you are implicitly constructed as a subject and subject to the persuasive
power of the discourse of the advert. We might think that we are free of dominant ideas, beliefs, ways of doing things that
characterize capitalism but we are actually products of cultural systems. Society is full of subjects who live the illusion of feeling
like they are free individuals but they arent. They are victims of misrecognition. According to Althusser, the only way to see
through ideology is through Marxist science; through Althusserian Marxism. Ideology had imaginary and material aspects:
Imaginary: It is not their real conditions of existence that people represent to themselves in ideology but their relation to them.
Material: ideology is linked to forms of action which are inserted into practices which are governed by rituals. (Baptism)
Apparatuses
The Ideological and Repressive State Apparatuses represent the interests of the ruling class, which holds state power through
alliances between classes or class fractions and must exercise hegemony over and in the ISAs. Through them, individuals are
exposed to repressive and persuasive mechanisms which regulate normative behaviour, attitudes and values. Some become the
agents of exploitation (capitalists and managers), others the agents of repression and others professional ideologists (priests).
ISA: Law, education, religion, family, politics: mainly ideological (but not entirely). They seem to have autonomy but tend to
reinforce the basic principles of capitalism: individualism, competitiveness, the protection of property
RSA: Government, administration, armed forces, police: mainly work through violence and repression (but not entirely)