Ideology – Louis Althusser EN 2903 Literary Theory

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

Ideology Louis Althusser

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

Louis Althusser : ideology

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

!   Ideology: “representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”

!   Ideology: illusion/allusion

!   Ideology: an imaginary relation to real relations

Examples of ideologies !   Democracy

!   Multiculturalism

!   Capitalism

!   Communism

!   Individualism

!   Liberal humanism

Literary texts produce or construct ideological subjects

!   We are surrounded by ideologies and cannot see them

!   Like ‘good taste,’ they are ‘naturalized’, rendered invisible, thought of as ‘just the way things are’ or common sense

!   Texts are always imbued with ideologies which we must unpack and de-naturalize in order to reveal and understand the ideologies at work

!   There is no outside to ideology

!   The ideological subject produced by the text is us—the reader

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

Interpellation or hailing

!   Individuals are interpellated or hailed as subjects of ideology

!   Ideology speaks to an individual through images and language

!   Ideology constitutes individuals as subjects

!   Subject simultaneously constitute all ideology

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

Double meaning of ‘subject’

1.  A free subjectivity, with free will, author of its own actions

2.  Subjected to the authority of someone dominant (e.g. the Queen’s subjects) stripped of free will except the will to submit to domination

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

Interpellation

!   Wikipedia: “The process by which ideology addresses the pre-ideological individual and produces him or her as a subject”

!   Problem with wikipedia’s definition?

!   There can be no “pre-ideological” individual

!   The subject is ‘always-already’ interpellated

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

Ideology: practices & subjects

!   “there is no practice except by and in an ideology”

!   “there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects”

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

State apparatuses Repressive

!   Police force

!   Military

! Juridico-legal (punitive: jails, reform schools, etc.)

Ideological

! Juridico-legal

!   Church

!   Schools

!   Family

!   Culture

!   Banks

!   Workplaces

Reading images, reading selves

!   as subjects of ideologies, we interpret images and texts

!   images and texts interpellate or hail us as viewers who are subjects of the ideological situation depicted

!   Images and texts simultaneously tell us the kind of viewer we are

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

YOU WILL

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

Ideologies in Dead Poets Society

!   How can we identify ideologies at work in a literary text?

!   Identify the “imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”

!   Which subject-positions are the boys interpellated into?

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen

Next class: Nov 15 The Culture Industry (Horkheimer and Adorno 1242)

11-11-10 Professor S. Jeppesen