{"id":40,"date":"2018-07-16T07:13:51","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T07:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soc15.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=40"},"modified":"2018-08-01T11:36:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T11:36:08","slug":"louis-althussers-ideological-state-apparatus","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/soc15\/chapter\/louis-althussers-ideological-state-apparatus\/","title":{"rendered":"Louis Althusser\u2019s Ideological State Apparatus"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\nIntroduction<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

In this module, we will go over the basic tenets of Althusser\u2019s argument\u2014his conceptualisation of the State; the difference between ideology in general<\/em> as opposed to ideologies; the various types of ISAs and their changing nature; the role of ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses in ensuring the reproduction of the relations of production; the process of subject formation in ideology; and the limitations of Althusser\u2019s model.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Louis Althusser (1918-1990) was a French theorist and one of Europe's leading intellectuals throughout the 1950s and 1960s. His essay, \u201cIdeology and Ideological State Apparatuses\u201d (the ISA essay hereafter) has been one of the key texts in the social sciences and is important for the entry points it provides into understanding the process of formation of \u2018subjects\u2019 who conform to the expectations and demands set for them by the state.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The essay follows a pattern typical of \"post-Marxist\" thinkers, who worked with Marx's ideas that still seem significant, and extended them in newer directions. Althusser himself was widely read in Freudian theory, as well as currents of structuralism and post-structuralism. All of these elements become visible as one reads the ISA essay.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In the ISA essay, Althusser addresses the question of how societies reproduce relations of production on the basis of which they function. This is an important question because, in the Marxist sense, relations of production are always relations of exploitation. How is it that relations of exploitation (production) are sustained over time, and despite \u2018revolutions\u2019, dominated groups often remain at the bottom of the table? How do the exploited continue to allow themselves to be exploited? In answering this question, Althusser develops the concept of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). In doing so, he modifies the Marxist theory of the State, adding ISAs as a distinct \u2018arm\u2019 of the State.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Let us begin by considering how Althusser develops his understanding of the modern capitalist state.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nI.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The State and its apparatuses<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

The attempt to revise NCERT History textbooks while the NDA was in power at the Centre (1998-2004) might provide us with a useful illustration for discussing Althusser\u2019s Ideological State Apparatuses. One might recall that the attempt to revise textbooks was carried out with the intent of correcting what the BJP saw as distortions introduced by Marxist historians who had come to dominate the social science academia since the 1970s. Through this exercise, the NDA also sought to highlight the roles of national leaders like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Sardar Patel and Lal Bahadur Shastri, supposedly ignored by the Congress.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

That the effort to revise textbooks was criticised as an attempt to \u2018saffronise History\u2019 and was ultimately revoked once the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) assumed power in 2004 is perhaps besides the point here, in the context of this module. What is important is to keep in mind that the books that were sought to be revamped were part of the syllabi at the school-level\u2014they were, in other words, part of what Althusser suggests is the core constituency of the Ideological State\u00a0\u00a0Apparatuses\u2014the educational apparatus. But what exactly are the Ideological State Apparatuses and what are their functions? In order to understand this, we must first concentrate on Althusser\u2019s reworking of the classical Marxist notion of the State.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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In the ISA essay, Althusser observes that, \u201cThe Marxist tradition is strict\u2026the State is explicitly conceived as a repressive apparatus. The State is a \u2018machine\u2019 of repression, which enables the ruling classes to ensure their domination over the working class [Althusser: 297].\u201d He then goes on to outline the constituents of this \u201cmachine of repression\u201d in the State apparatus<\/em>: the police, the courts, the army, the prisons, the government, the administration. He says the State apparatus may survive \u2018revolutions\u2019 and collapses of State\u2014a new dispensation merely takes over the running of this apparatus to suit its ends.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

To the above, Althusser adds another dimension: the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). ISAs, he says, are clearly on the side of the (repressive) State apparatus, but must not be confused with it. In order to differentiate the two, Althusser uses the term Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) to refer to State Apparatus as in Marxist theory. He says that while RSAs function primarily through repression\u2014 punitive action against those who refuse to fall in line is very much part of RSAs\u2014ISAs function primarily thorough ideology and only secondarily through repression. The key constituents of ISAs, according to Althusser, are:<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n--the religious ISA\r\n\r\n--the educational ISA\r\n\r\n--the family ISA\r\n\r\n--the legal ISA\r\n\r\n--the political ISA\r\n\r\n--the trade-union ISA\r\n\r\n--the communications ISA\r\n\r\n--the cultural ISA\r\n\r\n \r\n

Despite the plurality of Ideological State Apparatuses, they are unified by the ideologies through which they function. In all the ISAs, the set of ideological discourses at work is always dominated by the ruling ideologies, which are the ideologies of the ruling classes of societies in which they have developed.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The role of the Repressive State Apparatus lies in securing by force the political conditions of the reproduction of relations of production, which in effect are relations of exploitation. For instance, in the Capitalist system, the police may detain a poor person who steals from a rich person, as the former has no right over the \u2018hard-earned\u2019 material possessions of the latter; the judiciary may then prosecute him, put him behind bars for several years.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

ISAs, on the other hand, work behind this \u2018shield\u2019, to secure the reproduction of the relations of production. For instance, in the earlier example, ISAs, through lessons in morality and civics, would teach us not to steal, to respect the property of others, and to recognise that we have no rights over others\u2019 properties even though they may possess much more than we do. It is apparent in the above examples that the ruling ideology is perpetuated through ISAs: in not taking away from the more rich, in being resigned to our poor status except attempting to change it through hard work, what is\u00a0\u00a0ensured is that the relations of production\u2014the relations between the exploited and the exploiters\u2014 remains intact.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Althusser considers the educational apparatus as the core of ISAs in the contemporary period; the educational apparatus has replaced the church of the medieval period in terms of many of its functions. In fact, while the church-family duo was the most important constituents of ISAs earlier, it has been replaced by the school-family duo in contemporary times. This is because the school \u2018takes in\u2019 children at their most impressionable age and subjects them to liberal doses of ruling ideology through subjects like history, civics, morals, philosophy etc. The school attempts to teach children \u2018proper\u2019 ways of behaviour, ways of talking, interacting, thinking and acting. The educational apparatus \u2018ejects\u2019 at every stage a group of individuals who are best suited to fulfil specific roles in capitalist society\u2014at 16, most leave to become workers (they perform the role of the exploited, with a \u2018highly developed\u2019 \u2018professional\u2019 \u2018ethical\u2019 \u2018civic\u2019 \u2018national\u2019 and a-political consciousness); later, they leave to become lower and middle managers (they become, typically, the agents of exploitation, with an ability to give the workers orders and speak to them, \u2018human relations\u2019); yet later, they leave to become finance capitalists, managers, politicians and \u2018professional ideologists\u2019 (with the ability to give orders and enforce obedience \u2018without discussion\u2019)<\/p>\r\n

1.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

It will be wrong to assume, however, that ruling ideologies enjoy unfettered freedom in ISAs. Althusser notes that ISAs are the sites of (class) struggle, and it is not difficult to see why\u2014ISAs, after all, are responsible for the formation of the \u2018subject\u2019 which lives the ideology in question through its practices (a discussion we will return to in detail later). In ensuring that a certain ideology makes its way into ISAs is to ensure that the all individuals who pass through the ISAs (everybody does) believes in that ideology, thereby ensuring the reproduction of the relations of production in keeping with that ideology. It is because of the crucial importance of ISAs that the church (the most powerful ideological apparatus) was the centre of all \u2018revolutions\u2019 at an earlier point in time, as evidenced during the Renaissance and Reformation. During those times, the church was the fulcrum around which a person\u2019s life revolved. Gradually, the power of the church diminished, and specialised insitutions were formulated to fulfil the functions that were once the domain of the church.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Returning to our Indian example, it would not be wrong to suggest that today the school\/education that is the primary location of struggle, as evidenced in the NDA\u2019s attempt to revise History books. Through that effort, it could be argued, the NDA sought to make the ideology of Hindutva the backbone of the educational apparatus: this would ensure that the masses \u2018ejected\u2019 out of the apparatus would be ready to serve its interests, schooled in the discourse of Hindutva. The importance of the educational ISA is also borne out by the fact that entities like the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) have stressed on schools run by them. It is through their own schools that they sought to produce \u2018subjects\u2019 who would submit to the respective ideologies.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

It is important to note here that the concept of ideology does not have a negative connotation. Ideologies might be positive or negative, depending on how we look at them. But it is not particular ideologies that Althusser is concerned with. Instead, his concept of ideology and its working in ISAs focusses on ideology in general<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nII.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The contours of Ideology<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Ideology is the way in which we understand our world. The stories that we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives are ideologies we live in\u2014they are representations of the real that help us order our lives. They exist at the level of the common sense and are taken for granted. For instance, a businessman knows his life is a kind of competition, where he must be shrewd and intelligent to do well; a Christian thinks of life as a moral progression towards eternity.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nIdeology has no history<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Each one of such ideologies is marked by specific histories, specific struggles. Yet, Althusser concerns himself not with specific ideologies, but with ideology in general<\/em>. This is because ideology has no<\/em> History<\/em>; in terms of structure and functioning, it the same throughout History, in its various manifestations. In that sense, ideology is omni-historical.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

This conception of ideology is a departure from the Marxist connotation of ideology, present in The<\/em> German Ideology<\/em>, where ideology is pure illusion; an imaginary construction. Althusser, while speaking of the Marxian notion of ideology, likens it to the pre-Freudian notion of the dream. Before Freud, the dream was considered purely imaginary, empty, null and \u2018arbitrarily stuck together\u2019 (bricolage).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Marx\u2019s notion of ideology resembles this bricolage; for Marx, ideology has no history of its own because it is constituted by the \u2018day\u2019s residues\u2019, like a dream. For Marx, ideology has no history in the negative sense. For Althusser, on the other hand, ideology in general<\/em> has no history in the positive sense\u2014it has no history because it is omni-historcial. In this, Althusser likens his conception of ideology to the Freudian conception of the unconscious. Freud proposed the Freud\u2019s proposition that the unconscious is eternal<\/em>, i.e. that it has no history.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

\u201cIf eternal means, not transcendent to all (temporal) history, but omnipresent, trans-historical and therefore immutable in form throughout the extent of history, I shall adopt Freud\u2019s expression word for word, and write ideology is eternal<\/em>, exactly like the unconscious. And I add that I find this comparison theoretically justified by the fact that the eternity of the unconscious is not unrelated to the eternity of ideology in general,\u201d writes Althusser [Althusse:229] .<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Arriving at a precise notion of ideology in general<\/em> is important for Althusser because this becomes the basis of his theory. Only ideology in general<\/em> can help us theorise the workings if ISAs; in discussing particular ideologies, we will remain limited to descriptive theory. For Althusser, descriptive theory is the first phase of theory, and essentially a transitional one. For descriptive theory describes the situation as it is at one point in time. As such then, it is starting point, and one needs to develop the theory in a way that it goes beyond \u2018description\u2019.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nIdeology=illusion\/allusion<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Like Marx, for Althusser too, ideology does not correspond to reality (in other words, it constitutes an illusion). Unlike Marx, however, ideology for Althusser makes an allusion to reality. Althusser says ideology makes an \u2018allusion\u2019 to historical reality while at the same time constituting an \u2018illusion\u2019 with\u00a0 \u00a0respect to that reality. It gives is a certain \u2018knowledge\u2019 and \u2018recognition\u2019 of our world, but at the same time, introduces us to its misrecognition.<\/span>\u201cWhat is represented in ideology is therefore not the system of real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations they live in,\u201d writes Althusser.<\/span>The task of ideology then is to sense mask our real conditions of existence through a representation of our imaginary relationship with the real conditions of existence. In ideology, one is never aware of one\u2019s exploited of dominant status, for deprivation\/ superiority is attributed to an imaginary construct. Consider the ideology that legitimised caste hierarchies: those at the bottom of the caste structure believed that their deprivation was a result of their \u2018impure\u2019 status, and owed to the fact that they had emerged from the feet of the creator God Brahma; while the purest Brahmins believed in their superiority as they had emerged from Brahma\u2019s head. Note that in the Althusserian sense, everybody \u2018lives in ideology\u2019. It is not an instrumental discourse that the ruling classes\/ groups conceive of in order to deceive the oppressed classes\/ groups. Although a society\u2019s ideology consists of the ideology of its dominant classes, all sections of the society must \u2018believe in the myth\u2019.<\/span>Furthermore, the dominated classes can also produce their own ideologies, which may gradually become part of the society\u2019s ideology, as various dominated groups are co-opted into the system. In this sense, therefore, ideology is a site for struggle. Through ideology, men do not represent their real conditions of existence to themselves; rather what they do is represent their relations to the real conditions of existence.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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As the above example shows, ideology has a material existence, in the sense that it exists in an apparatus and its practices. Taking the example of the caste structure once again, the ideology of purity and pollution existed not merely in the consciousness of people, but in their day-to-day actions that were part of an elaborate set of rituals. Upper castes avoided touching\/ being touched by lower castes, did not eat with lower castes, and considered marriage outside their caste groupings as polluting.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In fact, Althusser repeats, after Pascal: 'Act as if you believe, pray, kneel down, and you shall believe,faith will arrive by itself' [Althusser: 1995:239]. Writing in the introduction to Mapping Ideology<\/em>2,<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Slavoj says the implicit logic of Althusser\u2019s argument is: \u2018kneel down and you shall believe that you knelt down because of your belief\u2014that is, your following the ritual is an expression\/effect of your inner belief; in short, the 'external' ritual performatively generates its own ideological foundation\u2019 [Zizek:1994:8].<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Zizek (1994) further delineates a similarity between Althusser and Michel Foucault; he says the Foucauldian counterparts to Ideological State Apparatuses are the disciplinary procedures that operate at the level of 'micro-power' and designate the point at which power inscribes itself into the body directly. However, Foucault never uses the term \u2018ideology\u2019 while speaking of these mechanisms of micro-power. He emphasises how power constitutes itself 'from below' and does not emanate from some unique summit (in the form of the Monarch or some other embodiment of Sovereignty).This summit, according to Foucault, emerges as the secondary effect of the plurality of micro-practices, of the complex network of their interrelations. \u2018However, when he [Foucault] is compelled to display the concrete mechanism of this emergence, he resorts to the extremely suspect rhetoric of complexity, evoking the intricate network of lateral links, left and right, up and down . . . a clear case of patching up, since one can never arrive at Power this way,\u2019 writes Zizek [Zizek:1994:9]. He says Althusser's advantage over Foucault seems evident: \u2018Althusser proceeds in exactly the opposite direction\u2014from the very outset, he conceives these micro-procedures as parts of the ISA; that is to say, as mechanisms which, in order to be operative, to 'seize' the individual, always-already presuppose the massive presence of the state, the transferential relationship of the individual towards state power, or\u2014in Althusser's terms\u2014towards the ideological big Other in whom the interpellation originates\u2019 [ibid., 9].<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThat brings us to the other crucial aspect of Althusser\u2019s conception of ISA: the notion of interpellation, or the fixing of subject positions.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nIII.\u00a0 <\/strong>Interpellation and the subject<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

We have already mentioned that all of us \u2018live in ideology\u2019, and everybody believes in ideology. The free market economist believes in the ideology of the free market\u2014in the promise of growth in urbanisation and industrialisation and the withdrawal of government from all functions save that as the facilitator for businesses\u2014as does the daily wage labourer who migrates to the city for better prospects. The returns of this belief in ideology, however, is different for each group. This begs the following question: why would people continue to live in ideology even though it may be detrimental to their prospects? Why would the Dalit continue to believe in the ideology of purity and pollution, or why would the clerk in the office believe that he would never occupy the upper echelons of management because he lacks sufficient educational qualification?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Althusser says this is possible because ideology is crucial in the process of subject formation\u2014a process that is part of the operation of ISAs. Ideological apparatuses constantly aid in the process of subject formation, and help create subjects who believe in the ideology. But how is this achieved? Althusser\u2019s answer: through the act of interpellation or hailing.\u201cIdeology interpellates individuals as subjects,\u201d writes Althusser in the ISA essay [Althusser: 1995:229]. \u201cIdeology acts or functions in such a way that it recruits subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or transforms the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing.\u201dHe goes on to cite an example to show how the act of hailing constitutes the subject: A person (individual) walking on the road hears a cry, \u2018Hey, you there!\u2019 This is the everyday police hailing, hearing which the individual turns around. In the act of turning around, he becomes a \u2018subject\u2019, because he has recognised that the hail was \u2018really\u2019 addressed to him. Through the act of hailing, the individual becomes a \u2018subject\u2019 in two ways, writes Luke Ferreter in \u2018Althusser<\/em>\u2019 (2006:106): (we) become subjects in the philosophical sense \u2013 free and responsible centres of thought and action \u2013 and, in doing so, ensure that we remain subjects in the political sense \u2013 submissive to the ruling class.It is this submissive subject produced by the ISAs that ensures the reproduction of the relations of production. Experience shows that the hail hardly ever misses the person who is hailed. What takes<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n

place here, on the street, seems to be outside ideology, and yet, in reality takes place in ideology. In other words, what takes place in ideology (the act of hailing or interpellation and the constitution of the subject, both at the same time) seems to take place outside ideology. This is why those who are in ideology believe themselves to be outside ideology.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nFurther, as ideology is without History, as it is eternal, Althusser (1995:245) says, \u201cideology has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects.\u201d In doing so, ISAs have always-already ensured that such \u2018subjects\u2019 are produced who ensure the reproduction of the relations of production even as they seek to reproduce themselves and their conditions of existence.\r\n\r\n \r\n

It could be argued, following Althusser, that modern capitalism, through its ISAs, interpellates individuals and creates \u2018subjects\u2019 out of them. These subjects identify themselves in ways that provide for the continuance of capitalist exploitation. ISAs serve capitalism by interpellating subjects within meaning systems that make them accept their exploitation.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nIV. Questions of agency<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Althusser\u2019s conceptualisation of the subject is not without limitations. For, to turn around and answer the hail (interpellation) of the law is to grant the ideological apparatus the recognition that we occupy the place it has designated for us. The subject of ideology then is a mere puppet, conscious of beliefs produced by a set of practices over which it has no control. According to this schema, we exist as part of a mechanised reality, in which we are imprisoned in a web of rituals and ideology conceals from us our existence as \u2018mindless automaton\u2019. Althusser\u2019s theory of ideology and subject formation denies any agency to the individual\u2014immersed in a complex set of practices within the various ISAs, he becomes exactly what ideology wants to make of him. From this standpoint, it is difficult to see how ISAs may become the site of struggle, as Althusser insists they are.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In the ISA essay, Althusser says ISAs are \u201cthe site<\/em> of class struggle, and often of bitter forms of class\u00a0 \u00a0struggle.\u201d He argues that since the class (or class alliance) in power cannot lay down the law in the\u00a0 ISAs as easily as it can in the (repressive) State apparatus, \u201cnot only because the former ruling\u00a0 classes are able to retain strong positions there for a long time, but also because the resistance of\u00a0 the exploited classes is able to find means and occasions to express itself there, either by the\u00a0 utilisation of their contradictions, or by conquering combat positions in them in struggle.\u201d However, he does not answer the crucial question: if subject positions are \u2018fixed\u2019 througinterpellation, how do the exploited classes find the wherewithal to express itself, to see through\u00a0 ideology.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Further, Althusser\u2019s argument that ISAs are the site of \u2018bitter forms of class struggle\u2019 assumes great importance when we examine Indian society. As has been argued, among others by Anand Teltumbde3 (2011), capitalism in India has built on previously existing divisions. Teltumbde provides examples of how caste has become substituted by class under capitalism\u2014lower castes had been economically worse-off than the upper castes, and under capitalism, this division has become economised. We can see, therefore, how societies or \u2018social formations\u2019 comprise multiple interacting<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\n \r\n

structures\u2014in case of India, instead of a purely capitalist class structure, we have elements of the earlier feudal casteist order, as well as vast numbers of people who exist as part of the informal sector. Following Althusser, these various groupings try to extert their influence on ISAs. Their influence in institutions like the family, religion and school is different. We therefore have a situation where an individual may be subject to several, often conflicting, instances of interpellation. How does one then account for the unity of ISAs, as Althusser posits?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Althusser\u2019s interest in ideology as interpellation is shared by Roland Barthes. While writing in a different context about myths4, Barthes [2006:124-125] says: \u2018\u2018For this interpellant speech is at the same time a frozen speech: at the moment of reaching me, it suspends itself, turns away and assumes the look of a generality: it stiffens, it makes itself look neutral and innocent5.\u201d For Barthes, ideological interpellation takes place through a language that at the very moment of hailing an individual as its target suddenly repositions itself and speaks instead to a generic addressee, as if the personal trajectory of its call had been an illusion all along. Ideological language arrests us, \u201cin both the physical and the legal sense of the term\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Like Barthes, Althusser\u2019s notion of interpellation also gets trapped in a language game; we must accept the rules of the language and its obviousness in order to be able to recognise ourselves. In the event that we may be made aware of the functioning of ideology, we may respond saying \u2018That\u2019s obvious\u2019. Yet, the obviousness becomes obvious only with the utterance of those words. For Barthes and Althusser, the individual who becomes a subject is in a sense imprisoned by a discourse that may never speak to, for, or about it.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Further, as Judith Butler writes in The Psychic Life of Power<\/em>, the \u201ccall\u201d Althusser speaks of arrives severally and in implicit ways. Even if one were to accept that Althusser\u2019s scene is allegorical, it is unclear what guarantees the fact that the individual would always-already turn around and be constituted as a subject. The turning around, for that matter, depends not only on the \u201cvoice\u201d of the law, but also the responsiveness of the one hailed by the law. The turning around is not determined unilaterally of exclusively either by the law or the addressee\u2014for although there would be no turning around without first having been hailed, there would also be no turning around without some readiness to turn. The question is why would the addressee turn around, when it involves accepting a certain guilt? For, let us remember that the call \u201cHey, you there!\u201d in any situation elicits a turning around where one ascribes some wrongdoing and therefore guilt to oneself.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Butler says there must be something that may be gained despite the self-ascription of guilt. \u201cThe turn toward the law is not necessitated by the hailing; it is compelling, in a less than logical sense, because it promises identity,\u201d she writes, adding \u201cthe readiness to accept guilt to gain a purchase on identity is linked to a highly religious scenario of a nominating call that comes from God and that constitutes the subject by appealing to a need for the law, an original guilt that the law promises to assuage through the conferral of identity\u201d.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n \r\n

The theory of ideology here seems to be supported by a set of theological metaphors. Although Althusser introduces the Church as merely an example of interpellation at the end of the ISA essay, Butler contends that ideology in his terms cannot be thought except through the metaphorics of religious authority.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nIn the example of the Christian Religious Ideology, Althusser argues that the \u2018subjects\u2019 of the ideology\r\n\r\n \r\n

\u2013 Christians \u2013 are addressed or interpellated by the ISA of the Church. They are told that God exists, that He created them, shed His blood for them and tells them how they must behave in order to please Him. They are told that God became a human being like them, and that as human beings, they will become like God. It is through these terms that Christians understand themselves and act.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The act of interpellation in the Christian ideology is possible only because of the existence of an Absolute Subject, God. Within the Christian ISA, individuals become subjects when they are hailed by the Subject that precedes them.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Here we run into another problem, for Althusser argues all ideology \u2018interpellates individuals as subjects in the name of a Unique and Absolute Subject\u2019. It is difficult to see how, in other ideologies, a subject is posited that is \u2018Absolute\u2019 in the way that God is thought of as absolute in Christian theology.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In this module, we have dealt with a host of important concepts that have proved to be extremely useful in understanding the dynamics of a capitalist state as seen from a vantage point of a Marxist critique. We have looked at how Althusser has developed the critique of a modern capitalist state by bringing to the fore his concepts of RSA and ISA. Together these repressive and ideological apparatuses account for the continued reproduction of the modern state, under capitalism. Similarly, we have looked at how ideology functions as a critical tool that pervades the entire gamut of civil society institutions to produce a subject that is in keeping with the ideological requirements of the modern capitalist state. Further, Althusser introduces his concept of interpellation pointing to how subjects are created through the process of interpellation. It is through interpellation that the ideological apparatus is able to ensure the recognition that will occupy the place it has designated for us. If Althusser\u2019s concept of the ISA and the RSA proved to have a decisive influence on Marxist thought in the sphere of modern capitalism, it was also critiqued by many for its mechanistic understanding of subject and agency, thereby ensuring that within the modern capitalist system, any attempt to understand individual and collective resistance would have to transcend the limitations of subject-agency as represented by the ideological state apparatus.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

\r\n\r\nWEB LINKS<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cultural Theory: Althusser\u2019s concept of Ideology , http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Wz3YNMPMNzU<\/a>\r\n\r\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Marxists Archive, https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/reference\/archive\/althusser\/glossary.htm<\/a>\r\n\r\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the Reproduction of Capitalism:Rereading Althusser, http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JMD75bNAGYo<\/a>\r\n\r\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=e0gjy_dZQzY&list=PLug-vFp8R-<\/a>f2XWBfuUIaG1uvdFjDg1g5y&index=46<\/a>\r\n\r\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophyon Althusser, http:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/althusser\/<\/a>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nFURTHER READING<\/strong>\r\n