Any discussion on ideology would sure prove grossly inadequate and incomplete without invoking the name of the awesome Althusser!
And any discussion on Althusser would
possibly allude much to his student Foucault too! And for added info, it would
do well to remember that Macherey, whose Theory
of Literary Production we’d discussed in our previous post was also an
admirer and devoted student of Althusser!
I should also add to say that it was Louis Althusser who was quite instrumental in reconstructing and reinterpreting the
legendary Marx for the lay soul, the literary soul, and the philosophical soul alike, with such simple and refined elegance!
One reason why, one of his most celebrated of
essays, titled, ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’, (1969) elaborates much on the Marxist
conception of ideology! This essay also bespeaks to how ideology interpellates
individuals as human subjects!
[Well, in his extended notes to the concept
of Agency, in an invaluable reference tool titled, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, Bill Ashcroft has given us
the three chief means by which human subjectivity is constructed. I quote Bill:
‘human subjectivity is constructed by ideology (Althusser), language (Lacan),
or discourse (Foucault), the corollary is that any action performed by that
subject must also be to some extent a consequence of those things!]
So now let’s begin with Althusser!
‘Althusser’s most influential contribution to
literary and cultural studies has been his theory of ideology’, says Luke
Ferretter!
And this Althusserian concept of ideology is
first explicated in Althusser’s essay, ‘Marxism and Humanism’, published in the
year 1963. In this essay he defines ideology as, ‘a system of representations,
(images, myths, ideas or concepts, depending on the case) endowed with a historical
existence and a role within a given society'.
Giving below, Ferretter’s take on ideology from
Althusser’s perspective, for y’all –
Here goes Ferretter –
Althusser means that ideology is primarily
the kind of discourse that we do not consciously appropriate for ourselves,
rationally judging it to be true. It is not the kind of discourse to which,
having critically reflected upon it, a person makes a conscious act of assent. Rather,
ideology comprises the stream of discourses, images and ideas that are all
around us all the time, into which we are born, in which we grow up, and in
which we live, think and act.
Ferretter continues –
The messages of the advertisements by which
we are constantly surrounded, for example – the images of a healthy family
relationship, of a mother’s role, appearance, weight, hairstyle, reading matter,
interests, and so on, of the ideal male and female bodies, of the ideal
clothes, lifestyle, home, eating habits, entertainments, of the way in which we
are supposed to think, look, and want – all these are examples of ideology in
Althusser’s sense. It comes to us primarily in the form of obviousness – common
sense, popular opinion, what everybody thinks, what we take for granted.
Continues Ferretter, Western culture is
better than Muslim culture; people should get married and have children,
especially women; the British are fundamentally decent, tolerant people; hard
work brings success. All these assumptions, insofar as they remain assumptions,
rather than becoming objects of critical reflection, are examples of the kind
of sub-conscious conceptual framework that constitutes ideology.
To Althusser then, says Ferretter, ‘ideology
is the way in which people understand their world!’ Or in other words, ‘the set
of discourses in whose terms we understand our experience – it constitutes the
world of our experience, our ‘world’ itself’.
And he opines that we ‘misrepresent the world
in ideology’ because we want to do so, because there is some reward or benefit
to us in doing so! A general does not send his men out to die for their
country, without firmly believing that it is their duty to do so!
Ferretter is awesome for me, on many counts!
He applies Althusser’s theory of ideology for the study of culture, and how!
;-)
Follow the storyline now, to know howww and
the wowww of it all!
Let’s for a moment, get back on track to memory
lane, down the days, down a time travel of two decades ago, when the romcom You’ve Got Mail hit our silver screens! Tom
Hanks and Meg Ryan were the vibrant pair who made such an impact on their roles
as Kathleen and Joe! ain’t they!
Well, Ferretter takes up this movie as an
example of a ‘product of mass culture’, in which, a representation of an
imaginary relationship to real conditions of existence is offered to the
reader.
The heroine of this film, Kathleen Kelly (Meg
Ryan), owns a small children’s bookshop in the Upper West Side of New York. The
hero, Joe Fox, (Tom Hanks), owns a giant chain of bookshops, which puts
Kathleen out of business. The traumatic effect of this on her and her employees
is emphasized – she says: ‘I feel as if a part of me had died … and no-one can
ever make it right’.
Nevertheless Kathleen and Joe unwittingly
fall in love over the internet, as they correspond anonymously in an internet
chat room.
Once Joe finds out that it is Kathleen he has
been writing to, he pursues her. Just before the final scene, in which Kathleen
also realizes who she has been writing to, the question of the relation between
their economic relationship and their romantic relationship is explicitly
raised:
Joe: If I
hadn’t been Fox Books and you hadn’t been The Shop Around The Corner, and you
and I had just … met.
Kathleen: I
know …
In this penultimate speech, it seems that
their position in capitalist society defines them. Their lives are determined
by the material conditions that follow from their place in the system of
production relations. But in the next scene we discover that this is not true.
Kathleen finds out that it is Joe with whom she has fallen in love, tells him,
‘I wanted it to be you so badly’, and the film finishes with a close-up kiss.
It transpires, in other words, that at the
level of what really matters in human life, Joe is not Fox Books and Kathleen
is not The Shop Around The Corner. Their places in the production relations of
the capitalist society in which they live do not determine who they are.
Fundamentally, they are individuals, centres of emotion and desire, who will be
fulfilled above all by an emotional relationship with another individual.
In Althusser’s terms, the film represents for
its viewers an imaginary relationship to their real conditions of existence. In
reality, our lives are determined in every respect by the capitalist system of
production relations within which we live. You’ve
Got Mail, however, articulates the ideological claim that this is not the case.
Economic relations, it tells us, are only a secondary and inessential part of who
we ‘really are’; it is our emotional relationships that constitute our most fundamental
reality.
This romantic comedy, continues Ferretter,
deals too explicitly with capitalism before effacing its significance in
comparison to the love of the heroine and hero to be a ‘good’ example of the
genre. As Macherey pointed out in his analysis of Verne, there are realities of
which ideologies cannot speak. In the ideology of romantic love, economic relations
can only be mentioned insofar as they are superseded by personal relations!
To be continued…
images: amazondotcom, nytimesdotcom
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