Okay, so Althusser starts with Marx' ideas of "infrastructure" and "superstructure." There's the infrastructure--the economic base--and the superstructure, which stands atop the infrastructure. The superstructure has two parts: culture (law, politics, art, etc) and ideology (world views, values, beliefs).
Althusser adds to the superstructure the concept of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), which he distinguishes from the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). The RSA includes all the agencies that function by direct violence (police, courts, prisons, etc).
ISAs are less centralized. Their power gets overlooked because they function through ideology rather than through direct violence. (This isn't to say that there's no overlap; the RSA functions primarily through violence and ISAs primarily through ideology, but there's both violence and ideology involved in both.) But--and this is important--at least as much as the RSA, they serve the ruling class. They're the media through which that class' ideology is spread and constantly reinforced.
According to Althusser, the most significant ISA in the pre-capitalist period was the Church, and now it's the educational apparatus. "[T]he School-Family couple has replaced the Church-Family couple," as he puts it. And of course, education's function as the primary space of ideological inculcation must be hidden.
But it is by an apprenticeship in a variety of know-how wrapped up in the massive inculcation of the ideology of the ruling class that the relations of production in a capitalist social formation, i.e. the relations of exploited to exploiters and exploiters to exploited, are largely reproduced. The mechanisms which produce this vital result for the capitalist regime are naturally covered up and concealed by a universally reigning ideology of the School, universally reigning because it is one of the essential forms of the ruling bourgeois ideology: an ideology which represents the School as a neutral environment purged of ideology (because it is...lay), where teachers respectful of the 'conscience' and 'freedom' of the children who are entrusted to them (in complete confidence) by their 'parents' (who are free, too, i.e. the owners of their children) open up for them the path to the freedom, morality and responsibility of adults by their own example, by knowledge, literature and their 'liberating' virtues. (Latimer 83)So there's this popular view of the school as neutral, uncorrupted. We don't teach you what to think, we just teach you how to think! Supposedly, school doesn't reinforce the ideas of a particular class or party. In Althusser's view, however, school is anything but neutral: Its very purpose is in fact the "inculcation of the ideology of the ruling class."
As a teacher, I appreciate that Althusser makes an exception: "I ask the pardon," he writes, "of those teachers who, in dreaful conditions, attempt to turn the few weapons they can find in the history and learning they 'teach' against the ideology, the system and the practices in which they are trapped" (Latimer 83). He goes on to point out that those teachers are rare, though, and that the majority either have no idea what the system forces them to do or are themselves invested in the system and do its work with enthusiasm.
And really, I'm not sure if it matters whether a teacher has no idea what s/he's doing or is doing the work of the ruling class enthusiastically: Ultimately, it seems, ideology is more about action than about intent, anyway. I mean I think you could argue that both the oblivious person and the enthusiastic person are subjects acting according to their beliefs...and their beliefs are ultimately the result of the system they're in, the ISAs that construct their viewpoints and therefore determine their behavior. Or something like that, because this is where I lose the thread of that idea a bit...so don't quote me.
Here's a comparison many of today's intellectuals would surely not like very much:
So little do they suspect it that their own devotion contributes to the maintenance and nourishment of this ideological representation of the School, which makes the School today as 'natural', indispensable-useful and even beneficial for our contemporaries as the Church was 'natural', indispensable and generous for our ancestors a few centuries ago. (Latimer 83)That's right: We're thinking about education/school the way our ancestors thought about the Church.
It seems there's something potentially positive about ISAs, though, including education. They don't allow for the direct expression of power and repression that the RSA does, and they are more dispersed. These two facts make them sites where the oppressed classes can sometimes find and use ambiguities and/or insert ideas that empower them. The ruling classes dominate the ISAs and so they're largely a problem, but they at least leave some space for revolt (so they're not quite as bad as the RSA).
All right, possibly the most interesting idea of the lot: interpellation. According to Althusser, this is the process by which a person comes to be a subject (and actually using "a person" that way may be a bit misleading, but I can't think of how else to put it). How does one become a subject? Well, now we're back to ISAs. Think of ISAs as a person hailing you in the street--"hey, you!"--and of course you respond by responding to that call. This is how your identity is created...or in a sense, it's already created, and you're just now being called to it, which is the moment of YOU coming into being. Kind of. Have I mentioned that sometimes I start losing the thread of some of these ideas? I have a feeling they're kind of meant to work that way, honestly, though I'm sure some people hang onto the threads longer than I do.
This is what I got out of "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." I have a feeling it's a piece I'll come back to eventually, and that I'll probably get more/different things out of it on second, third, and fourth readings.
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