• a Marxist philosopher
• born in Algeria and studied at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy
• a leading academic proponent of the French Communist Party and his arguments were a response to multiple threats to the ideological foundations of that socialist project
• These included both the threat from an empiricism, which was beginning to invade Marxist sociology and economics, and a threat from humanistic and democratic socialist orientations, which were beginning to corrode the purity of the European Communist Parties.
• is commonly referred to as a structuralist Marxist, although his relationship to other schools of French structuralism is not a simple affiliation

• is also widely known as a theorist of ideology, and his best-known essay is “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation” (available in several English volumes including Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays).
• The essay establishes the concept of ideology, also based on Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony.
• Whereas hegemony is ultimately determined entirely by political forces, ideology draws on Freud's and Lacan's concepts of the unconscious and mirror-phase respectively, and describes the structures and systems that allow us to meaningfully have a concept of the self.
• These structures, for Althusser, are both agents of repression and inevitable - it is impossible to escape ideology; to not be subjected to it.
  
• He died of a heart attack on October 22nd 1990 at the age of 72.

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“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”

• In this essay, Althusser
• builds on the work of Jacques Lacan to understand the way ideology functions in society

ASKS:

• what is ideology and how does it permeate society and conscience?
  
• why subjects are obedient, why people follow the laws, and why isn't there a revolt/revolution against capitalism?
   
• Althusser mentions two major mechanisms for insuring that people within a State behave according to the rules of that State, even when it's not in their best interests (in regards to their class positions) to do so
• The first is what Althusser calls the RSA, or Repressive State Apparatuses, that can enforce behavior directly, such as the police, and the criminal justice and prison system
• Through these "apparatuses" the state has the power to force you physically to behave—repressive here suggests that the State Apparatus in question functions by violence at least ultimately (since repression such as Administrative repression) may take non-physical forms.

Examples of Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)

• Government
• Administration
• Army
• Police
• Courts
• Prison

• The second mechanism Althusser investigates is what he calls ISAs, or Ideological State Apparatuses

• These are institutions which generate ideologies which we as individuals (and groups) then internalize, and act in accordance with

Examples of Ideological Status Apparatus (ISA)

• the religious ISA (system of different churches)
• the education ISA (system of different public and private schools)
• the family ISA
• the legal ISA
• the political ISA (the political system, including different parties)
• the trade-union ISA
• the communications ISA (press, radio, and TV, etc.)
• the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.)

• These organizations generate systems of ideas and values, which we as individuals believe (or don't believe) and  this is what Althusser examines 

IDEOLOGIES

• Althusser moves from a discussion of the state apparatus to a discussion of ideology—How do we come to internalize, to believe, the ideologies that these ISAs create, (and thus misrecognize or misrepresent ourselves as unalienated subjects in capitalism
• Althusser's first premise is that "Ideology is a 'representation' of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real conditions of existence." He begins his explanation of this pronouncement by looking at why people need this imaginary relation to real conditions of existence. Why not just understand the real?
• The first answer to this question, Althusser says, comes from the 18th century, and the idea that ideology comes from priests and despots. 
• The second (and, from the Marxist perspective, the correct) answer is that the material alienation of real conditions predisposes people to form representations, which distance (alienate) them from these real conditions. In other words, the material relations of capitalist production are themselves alienating, but people can't quite deal with the harsh reality of this, so they make up stories about how the relations of production aren't so bad; these stories, or representations, then alienate them further from the real (alienating) conditions. The double distancing involved here, or the alienation of alienation, works like an analgesic, a pill, to keep us from feeling pain of alienation; if we didn't have these stories, we'd know the alienation of the real relations of production, and we'd probably revolt--or go nuts.
• Althusser says that ideology is a structure, and as such is "eternal," i.e. to be studied synchronically; this is why Althusser says that ideology has no history--i.e. no actual content, no concrete origin in wrong perceptions etc., although specific ideologies do.
• These ideas about representation and reality assume that what is reflected in the imaginary representation of the world found in ideology is the "real world," or real conditions of existence. Althusser says that ideology doesn't represent the real world per se, but human beings' RELATION to that real world, to their perceptions of the real conditions of existence. In fact, we probably can't know the real world directly; what we know are always representations of that world, or representations of our relation to that world. Ideology then is the imaginary version, the represented version, and the stories we tell ourselves about our relation to the real world.
• So the "real world" becomes, not something that is objectively out there, but something that is the product of our relations to it, and of the ideological representations we make of it--the stories we tell ourselves about what is real become what is real. That's how ideology operates.
• Because ideology is a structure, its contents will vary, you can fill it up with anything, but its form, like the structure of the unconscious, is always the same
• Like language, ideology is a structure/system which we inhabit, which speaks us, but which gives us the illusion that we're in charge, that we freely chose to believe the things we believe, and that we can find lots of reasons why we believe those things.
• Althusser says that ideology, as material practice, depends on the notion of the subject. Hence the two theses: "there is no practice except by and in an ideology" and "there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects". In short, there are no belief systems, and no practices determined by those belief systems, unless there is someone believing in them and acting on those beliefs.

• Hence the final part of Althusser's argument: How is it that individual subjects are constituted in ideological structures? Or, in other words, how does ideology create a notion of self or subject?

• All ideology has the function of constituting concrete individuals as subjects--of enlisting them in any belief system, according to Althusser. That's the main thing ideology as structure and ideologies as specific belief systems do--get people (subjects) to believe in them. There are three main points that Althusser makes about this process of becoming subjects-in-ideology.
• We are born into subject-hood--if only because we're named before we're born; hence we're always-already subjects.
• We are always-already subjects in ideology, in specific ideologies, which we inhabit, and which we recognize only as truth or obviousness. Everybody else's beliefs are recognizable as ideological, i.e. imaginary/illusory, whereas ours are simply true. Think, for example, about different religious beliefs. Everybody who believes in their religion thinks their religion is true, and everyone else's is just illusion, or ideology.

Education—the main ISA

• It fits people to the labor market and gives them an appropriate ideology.
• It appears neutral - knowledge can even seem liberating [a dig at some old lefties here].
• Internal struggles - progressive challenges etc. - only make it look more neutral or "natural": the real challenge comes from "the educational crisis", the world class struggle.
• Children also learn the rules of good behavior
• the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labor according to the job he is destined for
  • rules of morality
  • civic and professional conscience
• rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labor and ultimately the rules of order established by class domination
• the school (but also other state institutions like the church, or other apparatuses like the Army) teaches "know-how," but in forms which ensure subjection to the ruling ideology or the mastery of its practice.

Individuals

• Althusser held that it was necessary to conceive of how society makes the individual in its own image. 
• Within capitalist society, the human individual is generally regarded as a subject endowed with the property of being a self-conscious agent.
• For Althusser, however, a person’s capacity for perceiving herself in this way is not innate.
• Rather, it is acquired within the structure of established social practices, which impose on individuals the role (forme) of a subject.  In other words, we acquire our identities by seeing ourselves and our social roles mirrored in ideologies.
• Social practices both determine the characteristics of the individual and give her an idea of the range of properties they can have, and of the limits of each social practice.
• Althusser argues that many of our roles and activities are given to us by social practice: for example, the production of steelworkers is a part of economic practice, while the production of lawyers is part of politico-legal practice.
• However, other characteristics of individuals, such as their beliefs about the good life or their metaphysical reflections on the nature of the self, do not easily fit into these categories.
• In Althusser’s view, our values, desires and preferences are inculcated in us by ideological practice, the sphere that has the defining property of constituting individuals as subjects.
• Ideology has a material existence in apparatuses, in practices, which are represented.
• The imaginary relation at the heart of ideology in general is grounded in important practices, which constitute individuals as "subjects" [i.e. acting individuals, with ideas of their own].
• This subjectivity must be confirmed by practice, or else individuals cannot be treated as such. Social rituals in ideological apparatuses confirm this view that we are subjects with consciousness "of our own."
• This is done so well that subjects seem obvious and natural. Ideologies thus affect all practices and all notions of the subject, individuality, consciousness etc.
• Society "forges" its individuals according to predetermined cells, spaces or functions created in it by the existing relations of production, and does this in the process itself of attributing an identity to individuals.
• This investment of identity takes place according to a preestablished series of acts of identification in the values imposed by the laws of religion, family, ethics, politics etc.
• The only way an individual can become a subject is by "subjecting" himself (Althusser naturally takes advantage of the double meaning of the word: subject being the one that performs the action, but also the one who is acted upon) to the existing set of values given by these institutions.

Interpellation

• How does ideology (as structure) get us to become subjects, and hence not to recognize our subject positions within any particular ideological formation? How do we come to believe that our beliefs are simply true, not relative?
• Althusser answers this with the notion of INTERPELLATION.
• Ideology INTERPELLATES individuals as subjects. The word "interpellation" comes from the same root as the word "appellation," which means a name; it's not the same as the mathematical idea of "interpolation." Interpellation is a hailing, according to Althusser. A particular ideology says, in effect, HEY YOU--and we respond ME? You mean me?? And the ideology says, yes, I mean you.
• You can see examples of this every day in commercials. I saw one the other night for a home gym system, claiming that "this machine will give you the kind of workout you desire, meeting your needs better than any other home gym." Each instance of "you" in that ad was an interpellation--the ad seeming to address ME PERSONALLY (in order to get me to see myself as the "you" being addressed, and hence to become a subject within its little ideological structure). This is also what Mr. Rogers did, when he looked sincerely into the camera and said "yes, I mean you." It also happens in the Uncle Sam recruiting posters, which say "I want YOU for the Army."
• All ideologies constitute the subject in the same way.
• Althusser illustrates this with the concept of interpellation.
• Ideology interpellates individuals as subjects -i. e. the very category of the subject is ideological, and "all ideology has the function [n.b.] of 'constituting' individuals as subjects".
• The very obviousness and naturalness of the experience of ourselves as subjects is an "ideological effect."
• We recognize ourselves as subjects - ideology has a recognition function as well as a misrecognition one.
• He uses the example of an individual walking in a street: upon hearing a police whistle, or any other form of hailing, the individual turns round and in this simple movement of her body she is transformed into a subject.

"Hailing"

• Althusser makes some final points about ideology working this way to "hail" us as subjects, so that we think these ideas are individually addressed to us, and hence are true.
• He says that ideology, as structure, requires not only subject but also Subject. In using the capital S, he invokes an idea similar to that of Lacan (whom Althusser studied and wrote about), that there is a small-s subject, the individual person, and a capital S Subject, which is the structural possibility of subjecthood (which individuals fill).
• The idea of subject and Subject also suggests the duality of being a subject, where one is both the subject OF language/ideology (as in being the subject of a sentence) and subject TO ideology, having to obey its rules/laws, and behave as that ideology dictates.
• The interpellated subject in the ideology of the home gym commercial would thus order the gym, behave as if bodybuilding or rigorous exercise was a necessity, something of central importance. The Subject here would be some notion of physical perfection, or body cult, the rules that the subject is subjected to. Althusser uses the example of Christian religious ideology, with God as the ultimate Subject--the center of the system/structure.
• Althusser discusses the process by which the person being hailed recognizes herself as the subject of the hail, and knows to respond.
• Even though there was nothing suspicious about her walking in the street, she recognizes it is indeed she herself that is being hailed.
• This recognition is a mis-recognition in that it is working retroactively: a material individual is always-already an ideological subject.
• The "transformation" of an individual into a subject has always-already happened.
• That is to say, our idea of who we are is delivered by ideology.
• Recognition arises in rituals such as "hailing" - calling someone's name: ideology does this too; it "hails" us (interpellation), although we are usually unaware of this.
• It has done this "eternally" - an abstract category of "subject" lies waiting for us long before we actually fill out that category with detailed, concrete "individual" performances.
   
• More farcically, Althusser gives the example of the Voice of God - as an embodiment of Christian religious ideology - instructing a person on what her place in the world is and what she must do to be reconciled with Christ.