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Ilulletin de la Socihe Americaine de Philosophie de Langue FranfaisVolume 14, Number 2, Fall 2004

Donner avoir l'ideologie:Althusser and Aesthetic Ideology

Thomas Albrecht

The past several years have seen a reinvigoratedinterest in the work of Louis AIthusser. Eventhough AIthusser has never been fully absentfrom the intellectual debates on the left, he hasoften been relegated into a Marxist problematicdeemedobsolescent. But oEall the 1960s Marxisttheorists he is undoubtedly the onewho has bestwithstood the fall of communism. Newgenerations of students are in the process oflearning about Althusser's writings, and thepublication of a great number of unpublishedtexts from his posthumous papers makes itpossible for those who have long engaged withhim to discover new aspects of bis thought.There is surely still much we can learn fromAIthusser.

-Chantal MouffeiEven a cursory look at recent publicationswill substantiate

Chantal Mouffe's claim about a renewed interest in the work andlegacy of Louis AIthusser. Last year alone saw the appearance of

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THOMAS ALBRECHTtwo newmonographs onAlthusser, alongside the release of TheHumanist Controver-!y and Other Writings, a translated collection ofposthumous essays originally from 1966-67, flrst published inFrance in the mid-1990s. 2 The return to Althusser and

' ~ t h u s s e r i a n i s m " in such diverse fields as cultural studies, literarycriticism, critical theory, social science, and philosophy testifies,among other things, to a sustained interest in Althusser's theoryof ideology as a tool for a critical engagement thatwould be ableto account for the ideological and political dimension of culturaland literary works. In his new book on Althusser, for instance,WarrenMontagidentifies the current task for literaryand culturalstudies as rejecting the notion of the author as origin, and asanalyzing "the historically specific ways in which individuals are'recruited' and interpellated as authors by different ideologicaland repressive apparatuses."3 ComplementingMontag's emphasison ideological interpellation, Isolde Charimhas argued in arecentbook-length study of Althusser's famous essay on ideology andideological state apparatuses that the essay must be appreciatedas one of the foundational works for the discipline of culturalstudies.

In some instances, the applications of Althusser's writingson ideology as ameans to examine literaryworks and other culturalartifacts operate on the assumption that those writings are notthemselves texts that would flrst need to be read (in Althusser'sown strong sense of reading), but that their meaning istransparent. I would like to put this assumption into question byreturning to one ofAlthusser's foundational texts on the relationbetween art and ideology, his "Lettre sur la connaissance de l'art;'and submitting it to the same rigorous reading that it itselfexemplifies. I will argue that the success of applyingAlthusser'sn10del of ideologycritique to literaryand cultural artifacts cannotbe assumed apriori, since that model itself demonstrates at eachpoint the difficulty for the critique to remain outside the veryideological phenomenon it criticizes.

The "Lettre sur la connaissance de l'art" ["Letter on theI

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYmost eategorical statement on the relation between works of artand ideolog)T.4 In the essay, Althusser outlines the distinetions aswell as the paralleIs betweenwhat he ealls art, seienee, and ideology.He argues that works of art are both produeed from, andeontained within, ideology, but that they are not simply redueibleto ideolog)T. He also draws a parallel between art and seienee byproposing that both give the critic access to ideology; though indifferent forms. In the essay's most well-known formulation,Althusser maintains that while seience (i.e., Marxist theory) givesknowledge of ideologybyeoneepts, the "speeifieityof [authentie]art" (222) is that it enables the eritie somehow to "see," "perceive,"and "feeI" the ideology that produeed, and is reproduced by; thework of art. Althusser's referenee to the specificity of an authentieart was routinely eritieized by the Marxist literary erities whofollowed Althusser, in partieular by British Marxists writing inthe late 1970s and early 1980s,as unrefleeted formalism. Aeeordingto its eritics, Althusser's essay privileges what it ealls authentie artas having a eritieal, and even a potentially transformative, relationto ideology.5 Mosdy as a result of this eritique of Althusser'ssupposed formalist understanding of the "specificityof art," theessay has fallen into critieal disrepute and even negleet.

In the following pages, I propose that while a formalistunderstanding of what Althusser means by the "speeifieity ofart" is eertainly justified, it is by no means eertain that the formin question is that of the artwork. Any eritieal eommentary onthe speeifieity of art has thus far focused almost exelusively onart (as a supposedly privileged formal eategory). For Althusser,however, the specificity of art seems to have less to do with theformal properties of the art objeet itself, and more to do withthe formal effect art has on its reader, viewer, or eritie: the effeetAlthusser eal1s a "pereeption" of ideology. This importantdistinetion has been noted, for example, by Miehael Sprinker:"The apparent privilege granted to art [in Althusser's essay] eanreadily be miseonstrued. The basic coneeptual oppositiongoverning the logie of [the essay] is not art/ideology, butpereeption/knowledge [i.e., art/seience] ...The speeifieity of artor aesthetic praetice lies in its perceptual features, its presentation

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THOMAS ALBRECHTof ideology in phenomenal forms."6 In the following essay, I willconcentrate on the perceptual features of art, "its presentationof ideology in phenomenal forms." This critical shift of foeuswill help to underline the ongoing relevance of Althusser's workto any theorization todayof the relations betweencultural artifactsand i d e o l o g ~ At the same time, itwillmake explicithow accordingto Althusser, any critical practice is potentially susceptible to theideological phenomena it theorizes.1. Ideology and/as Ideological Effects

In the "Letter on Art," Althusser draws a distinctionbetween art and science on the basis of their respective relationto ideology: "The real difference between art and science lies inthe specific form in which they give us the same object in quitedifferent ways: art in the form of 'seeing' and 'perceiving' or'feeling', science in the form of knowledge (in the strict sense, byeoncepts)" (223). The object given to us by art and by science isideolog)'. Althusser goes on to specify that what art gives us inthe form of "seeing," "perceiving;' and "feeling," andwhat sciencegives us in the form of knowledge and concepts, is never anideology as such, but always "the spontaneous 'lived experience'of ideology" (223). As is well known to readers of the essay onideology and the state, Althusser argues against distinguishingbetween an ideology as such and ideology in its lived, materialpractiees. This is because for Althusser, ideologynecessarily takesthe form of lived experience, and does not exist except as such:''Whenwe speak of ideologywe shouldknow that ideology slidesinto all human activity; thatit is identicalwith the 'lived' experienceof human existence itself" (223).7

At the same time that Althusser equates ideology with theideological lived experience of individuals, however, he alsodistinguishes between the two, as in the following passage aboutAleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which ostensibly elaborates the formaldistinction between art and science:If Solzhenitsyn does 'n1ake us see' the 'lived

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYexperience' ... of the [Stalinist] 'cult ofpersonality' and its effects, in no way does hegive us a knowledge of them: this knowledge isthe conceptual knowledge of the complexmechanismswhich eventuallyproduce the 'livedexperience' that Solzhenitsyn's novel discusses.If Iwanted to use Spinoza's language again here,I could say that art makes us 'see' 'conclusionswithout premisses', whereas knowledge makesus penetrate into themechanismwhichproducesthe 'conclusion' out of the 'premisses'. This isan important distinction, for it enables us tounderstand that a novel on the 'cult', howeverprofound,maydrawattention to its 'lived' effects,but cannotgive an understanding of it. (224)

According to AIthusser's defmition of ideology, an ideology's'''lived' effects" (which art makes us see andwhich science allowsus to know) are that ideology. However, the word "effects" notonlydesignates the ideologicallived human experiences to whichSolzhenitsyn's novel draws our attention. Understood as the kindof effect that follows an antecedent cause, it also sets up a causalrelationship between itself and aprior, distinct ideology (the cult ofpersonality). The causality in turn implies aseparation of causeand effect. AIthusser makes such aseparation between a causalideologyand its '''lived' effects" in the first sentence, for instance,when he explicitly distinguishes the "cult" of personality from"its effects." The subsequent reference to Spinoza similarly setsup a causal relation ("the mechanism wmch produces the'conclusions' out of the 'premisses"'), which again separatesideology and ideological effects (in the analogy between premisesand ideologies, conclusions and lived effects). The claim that artonly shows us conclusions divorced from their premises, whilescientific knowledge encompasses both conclusions andpremises,reiterates this separation. At several moments, therefore, thepassage on Solzhenitsyn seems to contradict AIthusser's ownargument that ideology and its lived effects are conceptuallyinseparable and practically identical. It posits a linearor expressive

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THOMAS ALBRECHTcausality inwhich the lived effects towhich art draws our attentionare only a secondary effect of a prior ideology.8

Confronted with this apparent contradiction, Althussermight respond that his separating ideology from its effects ismerely an expository necessit)T. This is the argument he makes,for example, in "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"about having to present ideology and the interpellation ofindividual subjects (which to him are the same thing) in the formof a temporal succession:

Naturally for the convenience and clarity ofn1y little theoretical theatre I have had topresent things in the form of a sequence, witha before and an after, and thus in the form ofa temporal succession ... But in reality thesethings happen without any succession. Theexistence of ideology and the hailing orinterpellation of individuals as subjects are oneand the same thing. 9

The word "naturally" is one clue that what Althusser calls anexpository necessity is also a symptom of an ideologicalnecessity, specifically of an ideological necessity proper toAlthusser's scientific project. In the last instance,Althusserianscience, qua science, wants to theorize ideology as such or anideology as such, and not merely "see" or "know" ideologicaleffects. This is because science is for Althusser by definition aknowledge of ideology. Any knowledge of ideological effectsattained by science therefore implicitly and necessarily looksbeyond those effects towards an ideological premise thatoriginally produced them and is reproduced by them. As ascientific exposition, it cannot do otherwise, and so cannothelp reproducing the expository separation of ideology fromits effects, even while it also denies the tenability of any suchseparation.

While the splitting of ideology and ideological effectstestifies to an underlying scientific imperative, Althusser'sstatements about science in the passage on Solzhenitsyn alsodeny to science any conceptual knowledge of ideological6

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYpremises as such, distinct from their effects. According tothose statements, what science allows us to know is preciselythe production of ideological effects: "[scientific] knowledgeis the conceptual knowledge of the complex mechanismswhich eventually produce the 'lived experience' thatSolzhenitsyn's novel discusses ... [It] makes us penetrate intothe mechamsm which produces the 'conclusions' out of the'premisses'" (224). AIthusser makes explicit that scientificknowledge is not a knowledge of ideology as such or of premisesas such, but of the mechanisms wmch produce "lived" effects(i.e., "conclusions"). To the extent, therefore, that scientificknowledge is a knowledge about the production of ideologicaleffects, it is a knowledge of those productions and those effectsas ideology. In other words, these formulations imply that ideologyis not a distinct and prior premise in itself, but is always alreadythe productionof lived effects in materialpractices suchas writingand reading, aesthetics and criticism. Consistent with statementsAlthusser makes elsewhere, ideology here does not exist distinctfrom the production of its effects.

It seems then thatAlthusser's textis dividedinto statementsthat disavow any separation of ideology and effects, andstatements that make precisely such aseparation (sometimes theseare the very same statements). I will be arguing in what followsthat this internal contradiction touches on the ideological doublebind in wmch Althusserian science fmds itself. On the one hand,as a science of ideology, it wants to arrive at a knowledge ofideology as such. On the other hand, the separation of ideologyand its effects is not only a philosophical error, but is a move intoideology, specifically into an ideology proper to Marxist science.This ideology is the scientific ideology that presupposes anideology that could somehow be conceptually separated from itslived effects. So the juxtapositionof the two contradictory strandsin Althusser's statements is in fact closely linked to the questionof ideology that is also posed thematically by those statements. Iwill suggest that in the splitting of ideology and effects that isprompted bya scientific imperative to knowledge about ideology,Althusser's essay touches on the question of its own ideolog)T.

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THOMAS ALBRECHTIdeology is conceived byscience as a distinct entitybecause

the concept oE such an entity is an ideological knowledge-effectof scientific texts like Althusser's essa)T. We can fmd a usefulexample of one such knowledge-effect in the essay's Englishtranslation. Privileging science over art and following science'simperatives, Althusser's translator Ben Brewster makes the errorof separating an ideology from its effects in the followingsentence, already quoted earlier, from the passage on Solzhenitsyn:,ca novel on the 'cult', however profound, may draw attention toits 'lived' effects, but cannot give an understanding oj it [ne peut endonner I'intelligence]" (224). Brewster translates the French pronoun"en" in the phrase "ne peut en donner l'intelligence" as "it;'indicating he takes it to refer exclusively to the cultof personality.His translation draws a definitive distinetion between the cultand its livedeffects.The distinetion in turn produces a knowledgeeffect. It makes possible in the English translation a knowledgeof an "it" (the ideology of the cult) that would be separate fromthe cult's lived effects. In the French text, however, the pronoun'sreferent remains aITlbiguaus since the ward "en" refers to eitheror both "le culte" ("the cult'') and "les effets 'vecus' du culte"("the cult's 'lived' effects").l0

Brewster's error, framed here as a problem of translation,is symptomatic of an ideology that Althusser's essay itself bothdenounces and also perpetuates. To posit an understanding ofan ideology as such, as Brewster's translation does, is to producean ideologJ oj criticism, an ideology Althusser implicitly criticizes inthe very text Brewster is translating and trying to help out.Brewster attributes to Althusser an understandingof an ideologyas such, an understandingAlthusserknows to be itself ideologieal.In doing so, Brewster turns Althusser's text over into ideolog)T.His errot is a move into ideology not because the splitting ofideology and ideology's lived effects is contradicted by some oEAlthusser's statements about ideology. Rather, it is an ideologicalinterpellation insofar as it reproduces an ideology Althusserspecifically identifies with the science of arte It reproduces whatAlthusser calls the aesthetic effect.

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGY2. The "Aesthetic Effect": Donner avoirl'ideologie

In the essay on ideology and ideological state apparatuses,Althusser famously reminds us of the "material existence" ofideology in "material practices": "the 'ideas' or 'representations',etc., which seem to make up ideology do not have an ideal (idealeor ideelle) or spiritual existence, but a material existence ... Anideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices.This existence is material."ll In the realm of art and aesthetics,ideology's material practices are the production by art of an"aesthetic effect": "in order to answer most of the questionsposed for us by the existence and specific nature of art, we areforced to produce an adequate (scientific) knowledge of theprocesses which. produce the 'aesthetic effect' of a work of art"(225). This statement does not mean that, for Althusser, art isthe same thing as the production of its aesthetic effect. Rather, itsuggests that a scientific knowledge of art (which for Althusseris always, in the last instance, a knowledge of the relationbetweenart and ideology) would have to be a knowledge of the aestheticeffect art produces.Therefore, if ideologyonlyexists in its materialpractices, and if the object of a scientific knowledge of art is theproduction of art's aesthetic effect, then the material practicesof aesthetic ideology would have to be the production of thateffect.

The word aesthetic derives from the Greek aisthanesthai (toperceive), so it would seem that the phrase "aesthetic effect"designates the work's perceptual effect, the effect on the readerof "perceiving" in works of literature the ideological livedexperiences of human individuals. According to Althusser, sucha "perception" may provide readers with a critical point of viewon a particular ideology that is reproduced through those livedexperiences: "Balzac, despite his personalpolitical options, 'makesus see' ['donne avoir1 the 'lived experience' of capitalist societyin a critical form" (224). Our critical insight into lived capitalistideology is the aesthetic effect of Balzac's art on us, the effect

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THOMAS ALBRECHTAlthusser calls "donner avoir." By insisting it is precisely thiseffect of which Marxist criticism is constrained to produce ascientific knowledge,Althusser suggests our critical "perception"of ideological effects is itself a form of ideological interpellation.

If art is the occasion for a critical insight that is also anideological interpellation, this may be because it positions thecritic in avantage point that would be in some sense outside of

i d e o l o ~ Althusser defmes the aesthetic effect not only as thereader's perception of ideology, but also as a spatial distancebetween the work and ideology, a distance that alternately placesthe readeror thework somehowat avisibleremove from ideology:

Balzac and Solzhenitsyn give us a 'view' of theideology to which their work alludes and withwhich it is constantly fed, a view whichpresupposes a retrealj an internaldistantiation fromthe very ideology from which their novelsemerged. Theymake us 'perceive' (hutnot know)in some sense [en quelque sorte] from the inside}by an internaldistance} the very ideology in whichtheyare held. (222-23)

The fact that the content of the work ofBalzac and Tolstoy is 'detached' from theirpolitical ideology and in some way [en quelquesorte] makes us 'see' it from the outside} makes us'perceive' it byadistantiation inside that ideology,presupposes that ideology itse!f. (225)

In th'ese sentences, a distance or detachment becon1es visiblebetween thework and the political ideologyfromwruch theworkwas born; trus distancingenables the critic to "perceive" thegivenideology as discernibly separated from thework, from its content,or from him or herself.12

Both of the above citations present us with a critical doublebind similar to the one in theearlier passages about the separabilityand inseparabilityof ideologyand ideological effects.At the sametime that Althusser posits the possibility of a detaching of theumbilical relation between ideology and the work of art, he alsoemphasizes that thework is always still inside i d e o l o ~ continually10

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYbeing held by it and being fed by it. On the one hand, the workaffords a "retreat" or "distantiation" from the ideology out ofwhich it emerged. This distancing enables the critic to "see" thatideology in a critical form. On the other hand, the distantiation isinterna4 taking place "from the inside" of ideology. In the secondpassage, for instance, the criticalperspective on ideology "in sameway ... from the outside' is due to a distantiation that takes place"inside that ideology:" It seems these entangled statements are atbest ambivalent about the possibility of attaining through art acritical vantage point on ideology that wou1d whoIly or evenpartially be from outside of ideology: 13

Like the manifest tension in Althusser's text between thepossibility and impossibility of separating ideology fromideological effects, the tension in these passages between thepossibility and impossibility of seeing ideology from the outsidesuggests that the ideology with which Althusser is concernedhere is not only the political ideology feeding the work of writerslike Tolstoy and Balzac.He is concernedwith thepresupposition ofa political ideology that cou1d somehow be seen from the outside.As the text states explicitly, any detachment by art from a politicalideology "presupposes that ideology." This presupposition of adetachable and visible ideology is itself an ideology, as Althussersuggests when he teIls us that it is the work's aesthetic effect(rather than the work as such) of which we must produce ascientific knowledge. Itis the ideologywhicllpresupposesa potentialretreat or distance from a political ideology, and whichpresupposesa political ideology thatwou1d become visible through the readingof novels. It is, in short, the ideology of the Marxist critic.

Althusser seems at once to reproduce this ideology and toquestion it. He reproduces it at the level of his explicit statementsabout the critical potential of art and the science of arte Thequestioning, on the other hand, is more muted. Althusserindicatesin the above citations that any "seeing" of political ideology bythe critic is only a seeing in quotation marks, a seeing "in samesense." The telling use of quotation marks and the qualification"en quelque sorte" in both citations suggest that the criticalinsightinto ideology is not to be taken literally, butdesignates the rhetoric

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THOMAS ALBRECHTo f art criticism. Terry Eagleton, for one, has noted the emphasison rhetoric in Althusser's text: "[Althusser] can [redeem art fromideology] only by resorting to a nebulousfyfigurative language ('allude,''see,' 'retreat') which lends amere!J rhetoricalquali!J to the distinctionbetween 'internal distantiation' an d received notions o f art's'transcendence' o f ideology."14Eagleton is correct that Althusserevokes the figurative language an d rhetoric o f criticism. ForEagleton, the rhetoric in question is Althusser's ow n rhetoric,which aims (apparently unsuccessfully) to redeem art fromideology, distantiation from transcendence. Bu t in the statementscited above, Althusser does not separate art from ideology; to theextent that he posits a "distancing" between the two, he locates itnot in the artwork itself, but in the critical rhetoric that wouldhave ar t "allude to" an d "retreat from" ideology. This is animportant distinction, one that Eagleton's indictment o fAlthusser's alleged formalism overlooks.15As thequotationmarkssuggest, the phrases "seeing," "retreating from," an d "alludingto" are the rhetoric o f a kind of criticism that presupposes thepossibilityo f such seeing, retreating, and alludingin the first place.For Althusser, this "seeing" of ideology from the outside is hardlya transcendence o f ideology, but is rather an ideological effect,an ideological knowledge-effect o f a critical ideology that readsworks o f literature in order to see ideology outside of itselE It isthis ideological effect,Althusser insists, o f whichwemust producea scientific knowledge. Even as he maintains that works o fliterature can give us "perceptions" into political ideologies, heconsistendy takes care to identify such perceptions as a rhetorican d an ideology o f Marxist criticism.

Althusser repeatedly points to this critical ideology in hisdiscussion of the aesthetic effect: both the distancing an d thecriticalperception he associateswith the phrase "aesthetic effect"are effects the novelist's art has on the critic. The distance fromideology an d the perception o f ideology are effects producednot within the work itself, but within the critic's analysis o f thework. This distinction is specified in another important text byAlthusser on ar t and ideology, "Cremonini: Painter o f theAbstract," a 1966 review essay about the ltalian painter Leonardo12

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I ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYCremonini: "Everyworkof artis bornof a projectboth aestheticand ideological.When it exists as a work of art it produces as awork of art (by the type of critique and knowledge it inaugurateswith respect to the ideology it makes us see [donne ci v o i ~ ) anideological effect."16 AIthusser makes explicit here that a work ofart inaugurates a type of critique which sees a particular i d e o l o g ~He also makes explicit that the inauguration of such a critique isan ideological eJfect, a kind of interpellation. On the one hand, thework "makes us see" an ideology: this aesthetic effect is thespecificity of art, art's critical potential. But the aesthetic effectsimultaneously produces an ideological effect, namely the typeof critique that could orwould somehow "see" ideology outsideof itselE17

Both aspects of this double bindon the critic are inevitablyimplicated in what AIthusser calls the "specificityof art": ' ~ s thespecific function of the work of art is to make visible (donner dvoir)J by establishing a distance from it, the reality of the existingideology (of any of its forms), thework of art cannotlail to exercisea directly ideological effect."18 Althusser links the inevitableideological effect of art to the aesthetic form inwhich art "givesus" ideology: the form of "making visible." He n1akes explicitthat art's perceptual effect is an ideological effect, and that Wsideology is inevitabfy implicated in the project of Marxist science,in "the type of critique and knowledge [art] inaugurates withrespect to the ideology it makes us see." Marxist science strivesto make the reality of existing ideology visible by establishing adistance from it. According to AIthusser, it thereby exercises adirect and inevitable ideological effect. It reproduces the aestheticideology that there exists an accessible point outside of ideologythatwould provide a critical distance from, and aview o ~ i d e o l o ~

AIthusserinsists the proper object for any scientific criticismof art must therefore be not only the artwork itself, but theproduction of the work's aesthetic effect, which is to say theideological aesthetic effect in art criticism: "in order to answermost of the questions posed for us by the existence and specificnature of art, we are forced to produce an adequate (scientific)knowledge of the processes wl1.ich produce the 'aesthetic effect'

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THOMAS ALBRECHTof a work of art" (225). If "perceiving" ideology is the aestheticeffect of wmchwe are forced to produce a scientific knowledge,that knowledge would have to be a knowledge of the type ofcritique art inaugurates with respect to the ideology it makes ussee. ForMarxist science, itwould have to be a reflexive knowledge.Althusser predicates such self-reflection on close and rigorousreading. This is because he associates the aesthetic effect with afailure by critics to read, and, conversely, because he associatesreadingwith an attentiveness to the materialpractices andmaterialexistence of i d e o l o g ~ in particular of aesthetic ideolog)T.3. The Necessity of Reading

My contention that Althusser's essay on art is concernedwith the aesthetic ideology of Marxist criticism, no less thanwith the insights into political ideologygiven to Marxist criticismby art, derives not only from the specific statements discussedabove, but more fundamentally from Althusser's axiomaticemphasis on the material practices and material existence ofideology: In the "Letter onArt," the examples of art are notablyall works of literature: the novels of Balzac, Tolstoy, andSolzhenitsyn.What strikes any reader of Althusser's essay is thatdespiteAlthusser's repeated injunction to attend to the "specificityof art," these novels are at no point discussed in terms of theirmaterial specificity, which is to say in literary, verbal, or linguisticterms. Instead, the specificity of what is fundamentally literary artis discussed exclusively in terms of the perceptual effect the novelsin question have on the critic: the effect of "seeing" and"perceiving" ideology. The specificity of literature, thesemetaphors suggest, is above all else that it is not readby its critics.

No less than the separation of ideology and ideologicaleffects, of ideologyi and art, and of ideology and science,Marxistcriticism's failure to read is a fall into ideolog)T. This is because thecritics fail to attend to the material specificity of their object, thenovels of Balzac, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn. At the mostfundamental level, the material specificity of those novels would

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYseem to be simply black marks on white paper. The critics, itappears, do not read those marks or even acknowledge them assuch; rather, they see them as windows ormirrors throughwhichideology could be "perceived" or "feIt."WhatAlthusser calls theaesthetic effect desigl1ates the critics' sensory access, via aphenomenalization of linguistic marks, to a phenomenalizedideology:19 The phenomenalization of ideology into somethingtangible orvisible implies that linguistic marks and languagemoregenerally are somehow transparent to the critic. Yet Althussermakes explicit in "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"that to see language as transparent is itself an ideological effect:"the obviousness of the 'transparency' of language ... is anideological effect, the elementaryideological effect."20 In the essayon art, what Althusser calls "seeing" and "perceiving" designatesprecisely this elementary ideological effect. These metaphorssuggest an assumed transparency of language, rather thanattention to the material existence and material practices ofideolog)T. They are indicativeof the critic's fall into ideologyinsofaras they reveal his or her confusion of linguistic with materialreality; and of reference with phenomenalism.21

If the critic's confusion of linguistic with phenomenalreality is indicative of bis or her failure to attend to the materialexistence of ideology, Althusser himself is by contrast attentiveto the material existence of the aesthetic ideology with which heis concerned. Unlike the critics, he does not confuse writingwithphenomenal reali1:)r. What he calls "seeing," "perceiving," and"feeling" are not literal sensory experiences, but are metaphorsdesignating the critic's rhetoric about a given novel. ForAlthusser,this rhetoric is the material existence of the aesthetic ideology ofcriticism, the veryideology of which he teils us wemust producea knowledge: "we are forced to produce an adequate (scientific)knowledge of the processes which produce the 'aesthetic effect'of a work of art" (225).

Given the above, it is hardly surprising that Althusserdefines such a scientific knowledge of art's aesthetic effect as aclose and rigorous reading.

I believe that the only waywe can hope to reach15

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THOMAS ALBRECHTareal knowledge of art, to go deeper into thespecificity of the work of art, to know themechanisms which produce the 'aesthetic effect',is precisely to spend a long time and pay thegreatestattention to the 'basicprincipksofMarxism'and not to be in a hurry to 'move on tosomething else', for if we move on too quicklyto 'something else' we shall arrive not at aknowkdge of art, but at an ideology of art. (227)

Althusser insists that we must read the fundamental principlesofMarxism carefullyand attentively. In the contextof his critiqueof aesthetic ideology, he also implies simply that wemust read assuch, at least if our object is literature or literarycriticism.Marxistcritics must read the novels of Balzac, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn,rather than hastening to move on to something else, namely the"perception" of ideology through those novels. And we in turnmust read the texts and the rhetoric of Marxist art criticism, asAlthusser does when he qualifies the alleged "perception" ofideology with quotation n ~ a r k s and with the phrase "en quelquesorte." Through such reading, we can come to apprehend thematerial existence of a given ideology, for example of aestheticideologyinMarxist art criticism. C o n v e r s e l ~ ifwe fail to read, wefall into ideolog)T. This is whathappens to the critics inAlthusser'sessay; who bypass the labor of reading in order to move quicklyon to "somethingelse" (a criticalview of ideology), thereby fallinginto the ideologyAlthusser calls the aesthetic effect. This is theideology that presumes there exists "something else" beyondthe work for the critic to move on to. It is the ideology thatpresumes a distinct and prior ideology that couldbe arrived at byway of the transparent language of literary works. In order forus to recognize this ideological effect in others and to avoidperpetuating it ourselves, Althusser insists, we must read, andwemust notwish tomove too quicklyon to "somethingelse" beyondthe text we are reading.

Ben Brewster's translation error, discussed earlier, is oneexample of this kind of non-reading, of a moving on to"something else" that culminates in ideology rather than outside16

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ALTHUSSER AN D AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYo f ideology: Brewster translates the w ar d "e n" in the phrase "unlroman ... nepeutendonnerl'intelligence" as "it," therebycreatinga conceptual distinction between an ideology (the Stalinist cultof personality) and its lived effects. This distinction is an aestheticeffect, since it allows Brewster to "see" an ideologyas such, distinctfrom the lived ideologieal experiences portrayed in Solzhenitsyn'snovel. It is also an aesthetic (i.e., a perceptual) effect because itoccurs as a result o f not reading a text, the original French versiono f Althusser's essay. It is by not reading that Brewster is able tosee. Ta put it in the words o f the passage discussed just above:Brewster is in tao great a hurry to move on to "samething else,"namely to the ideology o f the Stalinist cult, and to a scientificknowledge o f it. He does not take the time to read Althusser'stext, and thus falls not into a knowledge o f art, bu t into an ideologyo f art.22

4. Inside/Outside IdeologyFo r the critic to want to move on tao quickly from thetext to "samethingelse,"Althusser writes, is for him or her to fall

into ideology.This statementimplies thatitis preciselybywishingto move to a criticalvantage point thatwould be somehowoutsideo f ideology that we are ideologically interpellated. In one o f themore equivocal sentences discussed above, for instance,Althusserwrites, "The fact that the content o f the work o f Balzac andTolstoy is 'detached' from their political ideology an d in sameway makes us 'see' it from the outside) makes us 'perceive' it by adistantiation inside that ideology,presupposes that ideology itse!!" (225).HereAlthussernot only locates the outsideperspective on a politicalideology inside that same ideology. He also implies that any seeingof a political ideology from the outside takes place within a criticalideology that presupposes such a politicalideology (andan outsideto it). In "Ideology and Ideological StateApparatuses,"Althussersimilarly takes up the question o f a potential outside to ideology.He concludes that to suppose oneself to be outside o f ideologyis itself a moment o f ideological interpellation:

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THOMAS ALBRECHTWhat ... seems to take place outside ideology(to be precise, in the street), in reality takes placein ideology. What really takes place in ideologyseems therefore to take place outside it. That iswhythosewho are in ideologybelieve themselvesby definition outside ideology: one of the effectsof ideology is the practical denegation of theideological character of ideology by i d e o l o g ~ 2 3

Althusser not only teils us that we are in fact in ideologywhenwthink of ourselves as being outside of i d e o l o ~ He goes on toinsist that any point in ideology by definition believes itself to beoutside ideology, implying that any outside to ideology theorizedfrom such a point is always already within ideology. Ideologytakes place in the very act of negating ideology, i.e., in supposingoneself to be detached or distant from ideology: "one of theeffects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideologicalcharacter of ideologyby ideolog)T."Any suchnegationof ideologyis a point in ideology that by defInition believes itself to be outsideof ideology. The negation reproduces the ideology maintainingthat ideology exists outside of itself:

In Althusser's essay on art, this ideological effect takes theform of intermittent distinctions or movements between an"inside" and an "outside" to ideology. Althusser reflects on thecritical ideology that presupposes an attainable vantage pointoutside of a given political ideology, a point fromwhich the criticcould "see" and "perceive" that i d e o l o g ~ He recognizes that tomake such aseparation between an inside and an outside notonlyprovides potential insight into political ideologies, but is alsothe aesthetic effect that turns the critic over ioto aesthetic ideolog)T.

ForAlthusser, knowledge of the aesthetic effect must be aform of se!f-knowledge. This is because the "Letter on Art" doesnot situate aesthetic ideologyoutside of itselE It continually posesthe questionwhether, as a form of science, it escapes perpetuatingthe error it calls "seeiog" and "perceiving." For one, it ostensiblyendorses a form of art criticism that would position the criticoutside of ideology. In order to be a science, it cannot dootherwise. Yet it also knows that at the moment it posits an18

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYideology that could be "seen" or "feIt" from the outside, it turnsitself over into i d e o l o ~ This is the double bind of Althusser'sessay: on the one hand, it produces a "perception" and a criticalknowledge of ideology from the outside, and, on the otherhand,it knows that in doing so it reproduces the aesthetic ideology ofMarxist science.24 The double bind raises the broader questionofwhetherMarxist sciencemust be I?JI definition ideological becauseits most fundamental imperative is to arrive outside of ideology.1f scientific knowledge of an ideology is by defmition a pointoutside of that ideology, and if any such point is an ideologicalknowledge-effect produced by the ideological discourse ofscientific knowledge, can Althusserian science ever truly bescience? Can it ever be truly "outside" of an ideology; and knowthatideologyfrom the outside?Or doesAlthusserleave us trappedin an endless ideological aporia, insofar as any outside to whichwe lay claim invariably inscribes us within ideology?

The passage from "ldeology and 1deological StateApparatuses" cited above goes on to suggest that only through arecognition of its own inscription in ideology can Althusserianscience paradoxically arrive at an outside to ideology:

Those who are in ideology believe themselvesby defmirion outside ideology: one of the effectsof ideology is the practical denegation of theideological character of ideology by ideology:ideology never says, 'I am ideological'. 1t isnecessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientificknowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (aquite exceptional case) or (the general case): Iwas in i d e o l o ~ As is weil known, the accusationof being in ideologyonlyapplies to others, neverto oneselE25

The passage constructs the familiar opposition between ideologyand science ("lt is necessary to beoutside ideology; i.e. in scientificknowledge ..."), but then abruptly coilapses it (" ... to be able tosay: I am in ideology''). 1t is in science's paradoxical reversal fromoutside to inside thatAlthusser locates the real difference betweenscience and ideology. For its part, ideology "never says, 'I am

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THOMAS ALBRECHTideologicaL'" By Althusser's own defmition, it would say: I amoutside of i d e o l o g ~ And one thing it does say is just d ~ a t : ' ~ s isweil known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies toothers, never to oneselE" Like ideology, science must say thatideology is outside of itself. And in saying this, it invariably fallsinto ideology: "one of the effects of ideology is the practicaldenegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology."However, the difference between science and ideology is thatscience takes this fall knowingly, for it also says, "I am in i d e o l o g ~ "Bysaying the latter, it falls "outside" of ideology; because ideology,by definition, always believes itself to be outside of i d e o l o g ~Thus science occupies a paradoxical position: it is "outside ofideology" insofar as it is knowingly"in i d e o l o ~ " 1ts place outsideof ideology is a self-conscious position in ideology that arrives atan outside precisely through this consciousness. I

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYlof self-knowledge, and self-knowledge is for Althusser foremostthe ability to say; "I amin i d e o l o ~ " According to the cited passagefrom "1deology and 1deological State Apparatuses," such a selfknowledge is the paradoxicalconditionof anyoutside to i d e o l o ~Its reflexive quality is what distinguishes it from the ideologicalblindness Althusser associates with "perceiving" and "seeing."

Besides the presence or absence of a self-critical element,what distinguishes knowledge from "seeing" and "perceiving" isthe presence or absence of reading. As I have demonstrated, thewords "seeing" and "perceiving" in Althusser's text designateacts of non-reading through which the critic, for instance BenBrewster, attempts to attain avantage point outside of ideology,only to fall thereby into aesthetic ideology. I

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THOMAS ALBRECHTThis distinction sets Althusser's critique off from the type

of criticism that on!J "sees" and "feels" i d e o l o ~ even as Althussernecessarily identifies with the latter (he can only lay claim to adifference from it insofar as he also identifies with it). 1ts selfknowledgeplacesAlthusser's textinto an irreducibleundecidabilityvis-a-vis its own ideology; an ideology from which it knows it isunable to escape, and fromwhich it escapes precisely through itsrecognition of this impossibilit)T. This undecidability is not thedead-end of an infinite ideological aporia inwhich any ideologicalinside invariably turns into an outside (and vice versa). Althusserteaches us that the first step towards any outside to ideology is tocome to know (byway of reading) one's own i d e o l o ~ He arrivesat this self-knowledgebycontinually rereadinghis own text againstthe reflexive implications oE its insights into ideology, a rereadingthat is necessitated by nothing less than the text's most rigorousepistemological and ideological imperatives.

Tulane UniversityNotes

1This citation is taken fromMouffe's preface to 1soldeCharim, Der Afthusser-EJfekt: Entwurf einer Ideofogietheorie(Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 2002), 11.

2 See Louis Althusser, The HumanistControver!} and OtherWritings, ed. F r a n ~ o i s Matheron, trans. G.M. Goshgarian (NewYork: Verso, 2003). The monographs are Warren Montag,Louis Althusser (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); andAndrew Levine, A Future for Marxism? Afthussetj the Ana!JticalTurn and the Revivalof Sociafist Theory (London: Pluto Press,2003). For another revision of contemporary Marxist theoryin light oE Althusser's work specifically and poststructuralismgenerally, seeJason Read, The Micropolitics of Capital Marx andthe Prehistory of the Present (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003).

3 Montag, Louis Althusser, 135.4 Louis Althusser, "Lettre sur la connaissance de l'art,"

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYLa Nouvelle Critique 175 (1966), 136-146. The essay has beentranslated as ''A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre," inLenin and Philosopf?y and OtherEssqys, trans. BenBrewster (NewYork: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 221-227. All referencesto the translated version will be given parenthetically by pagenumber. For intellectual-historical background on Althusser'sessay and its place in Marxist literary theory, see Montag, LouisAlthusser, 38-42; Francis Mulhern, "Message in a Bottle:Althusser in Literary Studies," in Althusser: A Critical Reader,ed. Gregory Elliott (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994), 161-163;James Kavanagh, "Marxism's Althusser: Towards a Politicsof Literary Theory," in Diacritics 12 (1982), 33-34; and TerryEagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1976), 18-19.

5 This critique is made, among other places, in TerryEagleton, Criticism and Ideology (London: Verso, 1982), 82-86;Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, "On Literature as anIdeological Form," in Unrying the Text:A Post-Structuralist Reader,ed. Robert Young (Boston: Routledge, 1981), 79-80; TonyBennett, Formalism andMarxism (New York: Methuen, 1979),120-149;Thomas Lewis, ''Aesthetic Effect/ldeolog1cal Effect,"in Enclitic 7.2 (1983), 5-6; Gregory Elliott,Althusser: The Detourof Theory (London: Verso, 1987), 176; and Steve Giles, "FromAlthusser to Brecht-Formalism, Materialism, and TheThreepenny Opera," in New Wqys in Germanistik, ed. RichardSheppard (New York: Berg Publishers, 1990), 274-275. Forhelpful commentary on this line of critique, see MichaelSprinker, Imaginary Relations: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Theoryof Historical Materialism (New York: Verso, 1987), 101-102;Kavanagh, "Marxism'sAlthusser," 34; andMulhern, "Messagein a Bottle," 164.

6 Sprinker, Imaginary Relations, 102.7 Althusser first equates ideology with the '''lived'

relation between men and the world" in the 1964 essay"Marxism and Humanism," later republished in For MarxJtrans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 1996), 219-247. Heelaborates this argument in the essay on ideology and the

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THOMAS ALBRECHTstate, where he famously identifies the subject as theconstitutive category of all ideology. SeeAlthusser, "Ideologyand Ideological State Apparatuses," in Lenin and Philosophy andOther Esssqys, 127-186. On the relation between Althusser'stheory of ideologyand bis theory of art, see Bennett, FormalismandMarxism, 112-118; Kavanagh, "Marxism's Althusser," 2630; and Sprirlker, Imaginary Relations, 270-271.

8 This causality not only separates ideology andideological effects, but also joins them, insofar as Althusser'sdefinition of causality synthetically suspends any strictdistinction between cause and effect. In his essay "Freud andLacan," for example, Althusser writes, "If one understandsthe term effect in the context of a classical theory of causality,one will think it in terms of the actual presence of the causein its effects (cf. Spinoza)." See Althusser, "Freud andLacan,"in Writings on P.rychoana!Jsis) ed. Olivier Corpet and Fran

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGY13 See Michael Sprinker's reading of these passages in

Imaginary Relations: "The presentation of ideology in art placesthe reader or spectator, for themoment and within the contextof the work's ideological materials, outside the particularideology or ideologies being presented" (282, my emphases).Sprinker goes on to identify the clistance produced betweenart and ideology as simultaneously an alienation effect and anideological effect: "The mode of presentation in art isperceptual or phenomenal: in it we see and feel the livedexperience of ideology. Ideology thus appears in aestheticpresentation, but at a clistance ... But the alienation-effectcan also serve as a means for ideological interpellation, sothat the work of art can therefore be said to function in twodifferent ways: as the distantiation of ideological materialsand as the product ion of a new ideology" (282). Thissomewhat equivocal claim about art's double effect is in factbased on a very close reading of Althusser's text, as my essaywill demonstrate.

14 Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology, 84, my emphases.15 In his commentary on the "Letter on Art," Tony

Bennett specifies that the aesthetic effect takes place notwithinthe actual artwork, as critics like Eagleton have maintained,but within Marxist criticism of the work: "It is ... Marxistcriticism which, through an active and critical intervention, so'works' upon the texts concerned as to make them 'reveal' or'distance' the dominant ideological forms to which they aremade to 'allude.' The signification of ideology that [the textsconcerned] are thus said to have is not somehow 'natural' tothem; it is not a pre-given significationwhich criticismpassivelymirrors but is a signification they are made to have by theoperations of Marxist criticism upon them" (Formalism andMarxism, 141). Bennett understands this point as a correctiveto AIthusser's alleged formalisn1. Yet what he says is quiteconsistentwithwhat AIthusser himself says. A slight differenceis that whereas Bennett is unqualifiedly optimistic about suchcritical operations, Althusser is more cautious about theadvantages such operations are presumed to afford. This is

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THOMAS ALBRECHTwhy he speaks of an ideological effect, not only of a distancingeffect.

16 Louis Althusser , "Cremonini: Painter of theAbstract," in Lenin and Philosop!?J and Other Essays, 241.

17 The quoted sentence from the Cremonini essay isvery explicit about equating the aesthetic effect with anideological effect. Nevertheless commentators on the essayhave focused exclusively on distinguishing between them.Thomas Lewis, for instance, at tributes to Althusser adistinction between the two effects, and goes on to critiqueAlthusser for making the distinction (''Aesthetic Effect/Ideological Effect," 6). According to Lewis, the distinctionupholds the problematic privileging by Althusser of art overideology. Michael Sprinker similarly finds a distinction betweenaesthetics and ideology in Althusser's text, but unlike Lewis,he endorses the distinction. For Sprinker's Brechtian readingof the Cremonini essay, the aesthetic effect is not anideological, but an anti-ideological, effect. It is the productionby works of art of an "internal distance" from the ideologiesthey present. Through the creation of such a distance, Sprinkerargues, ideologies are estranged from themselves. This in turncreates the possibility for an auclience to attain knowledge,the kind of knowledge it can use to transform the socialconditions that produced a given ideology in the first place.See Michael Sprinker, ' ~ r t and Ideology: Althusser and deMan," inMaterial Events: Paul deMan and the Afterlife of Theory,ed. Tom Cohen, Barbara Cohen, J. Hillis Miller, and AndrzejWarminski (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 2001),42-44.

18 Althusser, "Cremonini," 241-242.19 The aesthetic effect is a phenon1enalization of

ideology insofar as the critic gains a spatial distance fromideology, and can see ideology. See Sprinker, Imaginary Relations,271; I

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ALTHUSSER AND AESTHETIC IDEOLOGYtransparent. This mutual transparency is what Althusser callsa fundamental ideological effect. According to Ellen Rooney,it is also indicative of a defense by critics against doing theverywork that would bring them closer to a true understandingof ideology, namely the difficult and tenuous labor of reading:"The theory of ideology that could render transparent to thecritical intelligence any (and every) ideologieal operation mightalso protect us from the uncertain work of reading." See EllenRooney, "Better Read Than Dead: Althusser and the Fetishof Ideology," in Yale French Studies 88 (1995), 184.

21 My reference here is to Paul de Man's definition ofideology from "The Resistance to Theory": ' 'What we callideology is precisely the confusion of linguistic with naturalreality, of reference with phenomenalism." See Paul de Man,The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1986), 11. De Man's formulation complementsAlthusser's critique of the aesthetic effect, insofar as whatAlthusser indicts as an ideological effect is the critics'phenomenalization of linguistic reality (i.e., their failure toread), and their confusion of language with the phenomenalworld. Althusser indicates the critics' phenomenalization oflanguage in the metaphors oE "seeing" and "perceiving," andindicates their confusion of linguistic with material reality inthe telling use of quotation marks. On paralleIs betweenaesthetic ideology in deMan andAlthusser, see Sprinker, ' ~ r tand Ideology," 32-42; J. Hillis Miller, "Ideology andTopography: Faulkner," in Topographies (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 1995), 192-196; and Andrzej Warminski,

' ~ l l e g o r i e s of Reference," in Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology,ed. Warminski (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1996), 9-12.

22 In her essay on ideology and "symptomatic reacling"in Althusser's work, Ellen Rooney establishes a connectionbetween the predominant critical emphasis on Althusser'stheory of ideology, on the one hand, and a simultaneousresistance by critics to reading Althusser's text as such, on theother. For Rooney, the critical "fetishization" of Althusser's

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THOMAS ALBRECHTtheory of ideology and the accompanying refusal to readAlthusser are themselves "profoundly ideological." SeeRooney, "Better Read Than Dead," 185.

23 Althusser, "Ideology," 175.24 This self-critical dimension, though explicit in later

texts such as Elements of Self-Criticism, is not always recognizedin Althusser's writings on ideology. Perhaps this is becausethose writings are so often approached in view of theirpotential application to literary and cultural artifacts. Fromsuch a perspective, they have to be assumed to be imperviousto the ideologies they theorize. There are of course exceptionsto this tendency. According to Judith Butler, for instance,

' ~ l t h u s s e r ' s own writing, he concedes, invariably enacts whatit thematizes, and thus promises no enlightened escape fromideology through this articulation." See Judith Butler,"'Conscience Doth Make Subjects of Us All,'" in Yale FrenchStudies 88 (1995),9.

25 Althusser, "Ideology," 175.

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