Ideological State Apparatus | Peter Brooker
A description introduced by the French
Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser in an important essay in his Lenin and
Philosophy.
The concept develops Antonio Gramsci's
emphasis on the operation of ideology in civil society, and has been extremely
influential on a range of work within Literary, Film and Cultural Studies.
Althusser distinguishes between two kinds
of state apparatus: repressive state apparatuses (or RSAs - for example, the
penal system, police and army) and ideological state apparatuses (ISAs -
including religion, the legal system, education, the family, culture and
communication).
The first are coercive in their
operation, while the second function to unify society through ideology and
reproduce a regime through consent.
The latter are relatively independent of
the state, though they serve to ratify and legitimize it, and to function, says
Althusser, 'beneath the ruling ideology which is the ideology of "the
ruling class".
Althusser's concept is an important
aspect of his critique of traditional Marxism and his re-reading of Marx.
Althusser proposes a thoroughly
anti-idealist and anti-humanist Marxism, which would suggest that everything is
'material', including ideas.
Thus 'the "ideas" or "representations",
etc., which seem to make up ideology do not have an ideal or spiritual
existence, but a material existence'.
Ideological state apparatuses therefore
simultaneously comprise ideas and material forms.
This perception was welcomed since it appeared
to re-articulate Marx's classic distinction between the economic base and the ideological
superstructure, so as to free it from a mechanistic and deterministic
interpretation.
In Althusser's view of 'the social formation',
ideas and ideological forms (the 'representations', above, which are the object
of cultural study) have a 'relative autonomy' and the economy while determining
is determining 'in the last instance'.
This formulation was seen to acknowledge
the specificity and critical ideological potential of culture.
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