Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Louis Althusser 1971

(Notes Towards an Investigation)

Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works

Ideology, ideological state apparatus, repressive state apparatus, power, hegemony,

subjugation, politics, subjectivity

Author info

One sentence summary

Althusser illustrates the way that ideology, through its material power of ideological state
apparatuses (and repressive state apparatuses) subjugate individuals through individuals
having ideology.

Paragraph summary

Althusser explains the difference between ideological state apparatuses and (repressive)
state apparatuses, stating that the former operates mainly with ideology and the latter with
violence, though both must contain both elements. ISAs don’t only exist in the public, but
in private through various institutions or spheres like the church or culture. He also states
that ideology is material, and becomes material through the actions that individuals take
when being guided by ideology. In the case where one doesn’t act according to ideology,
the dominant ideology will lend him other ideas that correspond to one’s actions. He then
moves on to describe the ways ideology creates subjects by ‘hailing’ them, recruiting them
into the ideology and transforming them into subjects, thus everyone is always-already a
subject. Sad.

Significant Quotes

Relation to my work / Thoughts

Notes

- Ideological state apparatuses are a certain number of realities which present

themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialised
institutions (79)
- The following are ISAs
- religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade-union, communications,
cultural
- ISA vs repressive state apparatuses (RSA)
- There is only one RSA whereas there are a plurality of ISAs, the unity that
constitutes it are not immediately visible
 - Many ISAs are part of the private domain as opposed to the public domain of
RSA
- The following basic difference: RSA functions by violence, ISA function
‘by ideology’
- Both ISA and RSA function through violence and ideology, but RSA functions
predominantly with violence and ISA with ideology
- If ISAs function predominantly by ideology, what unifies their diversity is this
functioning lying beneath the ruling ideology which is the ideology of the ‘ruling class’
(81)
- As far as Althusser knows, no class can hold state power over a long period without
also exercising its hegemony over and in the state ideological apparatuses, putting
us in a position to understand that ISAs may not only be the stake but the site of
class struggle, often bitter class struggle at that
- An ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice(s), its existence is
material (82)
- In every case, the ideology of ideology recognises that the ‘ideas’ of a human
subject exist in his actions (or should do so) and if it doesn’t, it lends him other
ideas corresponding to those actions that he does perform (83)
- Habitus, dominant/parent culture etc
- These practices are governed by the rituals in which these practices are
inscribed, within the material existence of an ideological apparatus
- the existence of the ideas of one’s belief is material in that his ideas are his material
actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are defined
by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject
- classic french style ‘we’re all fucked’
- Two conjoint theses: (84)
- There is no practice except by and in an ideology
- There is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects

Ideology interpellates individuals as subjects

- There is no ideology except by subjects for subjects, there’s no ideology except for
concrete subjects, and this destination for ideology is only made possible by the
subject: meaning by the category of the subject and its functioning (84)
- The category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at the same time and
immediately the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology as far as all
ideology has the function of ‘constituting’ concrete individuals as subjects
- We have to outline a discourse which tries to break with ideology to dare to be the
beginning of a scientific discourse on ideology (85)
- All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete
subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject
- Ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the
individuals or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects by the precise
operation of interpellation or hailing, like ‘hey you there!’
- Ideology has thus always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which
amounts to making it clear that individuals are always-already interpellated by
ideology as subjects, leading us to one last proposition: individuals are
always-already subjects, hence individuals are ‘abstract’ with respect to the subjects
which they always-already are (86-7)
The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas Karl Marx and 1976
Friedrich Engels

Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works

Class, struggle, ruling class, ideas, subjugation, subjectivity, power, politics, ideas,
philosophy

Author info

One sentence summary

Ruling class create ruling ideas and those who cannot create these ideas are mere
subjects.

Paragraph summary

Marx details how ideas are often abstracted away from the various structures and people
who create them and thus use them as ideologies to rule as the ruling class. He breaks
down how material force and intellectual force are one and the same, that those who own
the means of mental production subject those who lack the means through these ideas.

Significant Quotes

Relation to my work / Thoughts

Notes

- The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of every epoch: the class which is
the ruling material force of society is also its ruling intellectual force (9)
- The class which has the means of material production at its disposal also controls the
means of mental production, so the ideas of those who lack the means of
mental production are on the whole subject to it
- We cannot detach the ideas of the ruling class from the ruling class itself and
attribute them to an independent existence, because we’d be ignoring the individuals
and world conditions which are the source of those ideas (10)
- The class that makes a revolution comes forward from the start as the
representative of the whole of society, as the whole mass of society confronts
the one ruling class - its victory benefits many individuals of other classes
- The whole trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit in history is confined to the
following three attempts: (11)
- 1. One must separate the ideas of those ruling for empirical reasons, under
empirical conditions and as corporeal individuals, from these rulers, and thus
recognise the rule of ideas/illusions in history
 - 2. One must bring an order into this rule of ideas, prove a mystical connection
among the successive ruling ideas, which is managed by regarding them as
‘forms of self-determination of the concept’
- 3. To remove the mystical appearance of this ‘self-determining concept’, it’s
changed into a person - ‘self-consciousness’ - or to appear thoroughly
materialistic, into a series of persons who represent the ‘concept’ in history,
into the ‘thinkers’, philosophers, ideologists, who are understood as the
manufacturers of history, as the rulers
- Our historiography hasn’t been able to distinguish between what someone says they
are and what they really are, it takes every epoch at its word and believes that
everything it says and imagines about itself is true (12)
 History of the Subaltern Classes, the Concept of Antonio Gramsci 1971
‘Ideology’, Cultural Themes: Ideological Material

Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works

Class, subaltern, subjugation, class struggle, ideology, apparatus, revolution

Author info

One sentence summary

Gramsci explains how dominant powers dominate through superstructural apparatuses,

namely ideology, and give a suggestion of how the subaltern classes may be able to fight
back with ideologies of their own.

Paragraph summary

Gramsci illustrates the ways that dominant classes can subjugate subaltern classes
through analysis of ideology and how it figures into the equation of power. The dominating
class uses apparatuses like the press and other structures in the superstructure to enforce
their ideology as the dominant one. Gramsci also suggests that subaltern classes may be
able to overturn the power imbalance by first acquiring a consciousness of their own
historical personalities, and through their own ideology bring together other classes that
can be allies in the struggle.

Significant Quotes

Relation to my work / Thoughts

Notes

History of the Subaltern Classes

- The historical unity of the ruling classes is realised in the State, and their
history is the history of States and groups of States
- The fundamental historical unity results from the organic relations between
State or political society and ‘civil society’ (13)
- Hence it’s necessary to study:
- The objective formation of the subaltern social groups, by the developments
and transformations occurring in the sphere of economic production
- Their active or passive affiliation to the dominant political formations, their
attempts to influence the programmes of these formations to press claims of
their own, and the consequences of tehse attempts
 - The birth of new parties of the dominant groups to conserve the assent of the
subaltern groups to maintain control over them
- The formations that subaltern groups produce to press claims of a
limited/partial character
- Those new formations that assert the autonomy of the subaltern groups within
the old framework
- Those formations which assert integral autonomy etc
- Among subaltern groups, one will exercise or tend to exercise a certain hegemony
through the mediation of a party, established by studying the development of other
parties too (14)
- The supremacy of a social group manifests itself two ways: as ‘domination’
and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership’, a social group dominates
antagonistic groups, tending to liquidate them, or subjugate by armed force
- A social group can and must already exercise ‘leadership’ before winning
governmental power, it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power,
but even if it holds it firmly it must continue to ‘lead’

The concept of ‘ideology’

- The passing of the concept of Ideology from meaning ‘science of ideas’ and ‘analysis
of the origin of ideas’ to meaning a specific ‘system of ideas’ needs to be examined
historically (15)
- ‘Ideology’ itself must be analysed historically in terms of the philosophy of
praxis, as a superstructure
- One must therefore distinguish between historically organic ideologies which
are necessary to a given structure, and ideologies that are arbitrary,
rationalistic or ‘willed’
- Historically necessary ideologies have a validity which is
‘psychological’, they ‘organise’ human masses and create terrain on
which men move
- Arbitrary ones only create individual ‘movements’, polemics etc

Cultural themes: ideological material

- A study of how the ideological structure of a dominant class is actually organised:

namely the material organisation aimed at maintaining, defending, developing the
theoretical or ideological ‘front’ (16)
- Its most prominent and dynamic part is the press in general: publishing
houses, political newspapers, scientific/literary/philological/popular
periodicals etc
- The press is the most dynamic part of this ideological structure but it
isn’t the only one, everything which influences or is able to influence
public opinion belongs to it
- What resources can an innovative class set against this formidable complex of
trenches and fortification of the dominant class?
- The progressive acquisition of the consciousness of its own historical
personality, a spirit of scission that must aim to spread itself from the
protagonist class to classes of potential allies, requiring a complex ideological
labour
 The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article Jurgen Habermas 1989

Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works

Private, public sphere, assembly, freedom of expression, individuality, mass

Author info

One sentence summary

Paragraph summary

Habermas describes the differences between the public sphere and the private sphere,
covering its development and changes over history. The public sphere according to
Habermas is a sphere of public opinion where individuals in a society assemble to form a
public body, mediating between the society and state where it bears its public opinion. He
also goes through some of the contradictions of notions of private and public spheres in
the modern social welfare state.

Significant Quotes

Relation to my work / Thoughts

Notes

The concept

- The ‘public sphere’ means a realm of our social life in which something
approaching public opinion can be formed, a portion of the public sphere comes
into being in every conversation where private individuals assemble to form a
public body (73)
- Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion,
with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and expression of
opinions about a matter of general interest
- The public sphere is a sphere which mediates between society and state,
where the public organises itself as the bearer of public opinion (73-4)
- Public opinion can only exist when a reasoning public is presupposed

History

- There’s no indication that European society of the high middle ages possessed a
public sphere as a unique realm distinct from the private
 - The prebourgeois social structure had princes and stuff that represented the power
‘before’ the people rather than ‘for’ the people
- Society now is a private realm occupying a position in opposition to the state, as if in
clear contrast to the state
- The bourgeois public sphere can be understood as the sphere of private individuals
assembled into a public body which lays claim to theo officially regulated intellectual
newspapers for use against the public authority itself

The liberal model of the public sphere

- The medium of the debate of public discussion was unique without historical
precedent, the estates had negotiated agreements with their princes, settling claims
to power from case to case
- In the first modern constitutions, the catalogues of fundamental rights were a perfect
image of the liberal model of the public sphere where a sphere of private autonomy
and restriction of public authority to a few functions was guaranteed
- The constitutions further insured the existence of a realm of private
individuals assembled into a public body to transmit the needs of bourgeois
society to the state to transform political into ‘rational’ authority within the
medium of this public sphere

The public sphere in the social welfare state mass democracy

- The liberal model of the public sphere is instructive but it can’t be applied to the
actual conditions of an industrially advanced mass democracy organised in the form
of the social welfare state, the liberal model always included ideological components
but the social preconditions had been fundamentally transformed (77)
- The public sphere became a field for the competition of interests which assume the
form of violent conflict, laws that came about due to ‘pressure of the streets’ cannot
be understood as arising from the consensus of private individuals engaged in public
discussion
- With the interweaving of the public and private realms, social powers
now also assume political functions
- This leads to the ‘refeudalisation’ of the public sphere, large organisations
strive for political compromises with the state and one another, excluding the
public sphere whenever possible
- The political public sphere of the social welfare state is characterised by a peculiar
weakening of its critical functions, but this weakening is opposed by the extension of
fundamental rights in the social welfare state (77-8)
- A public body of organised private individuals will take the place of the defunct public
body of private individuals who relate individually to each other, and only these
organised individuals can participate effectively in the process of public
communications and use the channels of the public sphere which exist within
parties/associations and the process of making proceedings public to facilitate the
dealings of orgs within the state (78)
- Political compromises have to be legitimised through this process of public
communication
- The idea of the public sphere threatens to disintegrate with the structural
transformation of the public sphere itself, and can only be realised today on
an altered basis as a rational reorgainsation of social/political power under
mutual control of rival organisations committed to the public sphere in their
internal structure and relation with the state/each other