Cultural Theory: Althusser's Concept of Ideology

[jkbosh]

you rock professor!

[badger279]

wow! look at all those books! this guy must be really smart!

[myballwall]

Pretty boring shit!

[Jaluzaga]

Thanks for sharing!

[Jaluzaga]

ISA are weapons of the system, wether the left or the right is ruling. The difference is that, when the left is ruling, the only ISA is the state itself.

[ahwd2892]

great video - really informative and helpful for my exams coming up! 

[bctemplar]

its ideology ... please learn to pronounce English correctly if you wish to be considered an academic! "ideot!"

[bctemplar]

its ideology ... please learn to pronounce English correctly if you wish to be considered an academic! "ideot!"

[ButherLi55ett]

People don't have to be convinced (ideologically) at all to carry out their repressive duties. The majority of soldiers are economic conscripts they didn't sign up for 'King and Country'- this is the concrete reality. If they don't carry out their orders they get shot, imprisoned, don't eat etc i.e there are material reasons for their actions. Saying everything is ideological is slipping into anti-materiaism. Quite easily done. Some rebel etc but this comes back to Marxism on consciousness.

[kaleo183rd]

@ButherLi55ett also most of the time, where Im from at least, its a poverty draft, when people are from impoverished neighborhoods, with limited options , it becomes an indirect poverty draft

[ButherLi55ett]

@kaleo183rd That's what I meant by the term "economic conscript". Though you added some depth. Workers are indirectly forced to sign up. Of course the state uses propaganda and nationalism too. Especially in the US, where military recruiters go into schools and colleges etc. This I think would be frowned upon in the UK but that's not to say it hasn't happened (but isn't common). And of course there are children 'cadets' though I imagine not on the scale of similar US programs.

[kaleo183rd]

@ButherLi55ett Jea, I mean, I'm Latino, and Studying the current context, Non-whites in the US are 2nd class citizens, on the one hand (Even though there is a bourgoueis that is Black , Latino in each nation and in the US etc), But coming from NYC, the are many Latinos/Blacks who sign up, in the military, inspite of the knowledge that they are being screwed by the same system, Idon't know too much about the UK but The US military is actively always going to poor nieghborhoods

[ButherLi55ett]

@kaleo183rd 1) Yeah, I agree the working class is split, sometimes purposefully by the state and capitalists. One section gets played against another. It could be Latinos against African Americans or firefighters against teachers to take another example. Added to this wonderful mix are also different forms of nationalism, Islamic, black, conservative and so on. The only way we can get anywhere as a class is to overcome these ideologies, which is no easy task.

[ButherLi55ett]

2) Owners of capital will do all they can to split working people to keep wages and conditions down and profits up, which isn't some conspiracy or deed of evil men though they might be utter bastards but a requirement within the current mode of production. It's certainly true that not too long ago in certain parts of the Britain it was 'the army or the coal mine' once you got out of high school. Just like the US, the more deprived areas are sucked into the military just not on the same scale.

[ButherLi55ett]

3) In the UK there is a 'welfare state', meaning unemployed, housing benefits and of course a national health care system although these are all under vicious attack at the moment. This probably means there isn't the level of desperation that there might be in the US. I mean it is possible to live - if you can call it that on whatever you can wring out of the state. Despite this there are very deprived areas in Britain which "The Voice of British Imperialism" - the BBC don't talk about much.

[TheJuga]

Dude your like Strickland from Back to the Future



[lbailey1952]

Another good lecture from the professor. Better comments from the gallery. I say this as a fellow professor.

[osheaad]

The video speaker needs work on his presentation.

I hate when this 'scholarly' theme is emphasized too much; really annoying and distracting that it is hard to initially grasp his message, so annoying.

Good luck anyway.

[mothermayhem1978]

Thank you Professor Strickland. As I follow criminology I find that the inclusion of the ideological state subject theory leaves me feeling like i live in a masked panopticon state that is ever evolving. Is the increase surveilance across the globe fueling the battle for power to the point that those desiring the privacy they are conditioned to love revolt in anarchy on FB? Could our level of policing increase and invade to the point of absolute pandemonium? Every crim theory i follow says yes!

[sam171]

Do you have a bibliography of references? This would be great for my essay!

[tithonus22]

great webcast truly informative... has helped a lot, thanks and please continue the good work...

[lanatravelbug]

This is awesome... I have to write on Althusser's concept of ideology for my exam in 2 weeks and this is a great aid to my study! Certainly beats reading my notes over and over... And over... And over...

[zomerdromer]

Waw, thank you! I'm studying my course 'cultural mediastudies' now and this makes everything much clearer!

[QwertyBstard]

I still can't help but side with Thompson on this... that Althusser always seems to come across as a pro-Stalinist who writes about oppression almost as if he's writing a manual for the State on how to do it.

[rudyleyva]

greetings professor, quick question. I've been racking my head for a while and cannot really find a difference between basic socialization theory and Althusser's notion of interpellation. Can you suggest a difference?

[rudyleyva]

greetings professor, quick question. I've been racking my head for a while and cannot really find a difference between basic socialization theory and Althusser's notion of interpellation. Can you suggest a difference?

[arzoyan]

Ideology arises from a limited mode of production ,distorting the social reality in the interest of the ruling class. In feudalism the society was hierarchical hence the religious expression. In capitalism, working class wage slavery are expressed as freedom in a monetary web of control and domination of the capitalist class. Karl Marx used the word ideology with a negative meaning . Ideology cannot be abolished by mere criticism but by revolutinary overthrow of capitalism .

[yeahmako]

thanks for this! brilliant

[arsj2008]

I am shocked that people think this "tears down" or "obliterates" anything. There are restrictions on agency, and sometimes they are huge, but to claim that agency does not exist is a type of absolutist thinking that is out of sync with scientific inquiry.

[goodrogering]

@arsj2008

Scientific inquiry, then, by your reasoning, is not absolutist thinking, but the 'truth' that provides agency to the subject. Ideological interpellation in its most modern formulation. If this is the case, that I am wrong for doubting the 'truth' of scientific method, and that you are right, we have a pure example of ideology in the test tube or 'culture tube' of science itself: I'm shocked that you're so embedded in your fundamentalist scientific vision that you can't even see it.

[arsj2008]

@goodrogering Hey goodrogering. No disrespect, but you just did a whole lot of mental gymnastics there. Yes, Science is NOT absolute, because it is tentative. It is open to replication and falsification...and that has happened many times (all major theories have had to be refined at least once). I have no idea what "the truth" is, of anything in this world, and since I said science is not absolutist, why would I think that it was "the truth?" Do you feel less aggrieved now? Hope so.

[laserspatula]

i just don't understand this crap! back to writing my thesis!

[soulmony]

lol this guy is so lost .... an ideology simply is as a bote that takes you to another shore...

so in extension to other topycs as kamikaze bombing so in practical terms I would say that ideology fits and enters into a society through the line of less resistance... So Whats Endures more in time in a society ... and whats endures less??

The more it endures is CULTURE

the second is TRADITION ...

maybe in third place is VOGUE

where do you put ART and the others?

[soulmony]

now you only need a wau out for the oppession felt in relationship to the degree in which people feels opresed, some would find their way out through dying and others by anarchist actions... and of course others through more progresists actions but do they know the expereinces of the more opressed and a way out in progress and safe?

[kantiankarma]

i think that Althusser's notion that we are always-already interpellated as subjects tears down the myth of the free individual and accordingly obliterates any notion of moral agency. The Ruling Subject, i.e., the upper case 'S' subject or called Ideology, does not 'empower itself' but rather it only persists because the subjects submit themselves to it by themselves, since we are thus interpellated.

[Lilsprog]

I'd disagree, society creates the idea of "an individual", a social agent. Arbitrated by he would call the ideological state apparatus and controlled by the repressive state apparatus, So we do have moral agency but this is defined by what society constructs within ideology. And by what the repressive state apparatus permits. This is where lines become blurry as within the courts what is constructed as wrong and permitted as right can be close.

[eydos]

I have a question, but I am not sure if I am not straying with it away from the central issue. If that is the case, please excuse me.

What would be the role of the commonly shared value-systems and notions of morality in a concept of ideological social control? In other words: is it impossible for the established power-structure to empower itself through influencing and maintaining status-quo through mass indoctrination by means of taboos, morality, fashion, and common-place thought patterns?

[Zarathustra06]

Excellent video, thanks so much for posting!

[Harpakhrad11]

Did Althusser have a theory on how particular Ideology could make a translation into general Ideology?

[comradepinko]

Or a breakdown of general ideology into specific?

[Lilsprog]

Not althusser i dont think, im no pro.

But focoults discourse might help you there,.. not to mention typical marxist writings...

[nmqtabtp]

There will always be classes within mankind. Think of putting rocks, gravels, sands, impurities, into a cylinder and shake it. Gradually these materials will find their own space. In communist country there are at least three classes: the communist party leader, the communist members, and the prisoner of the communist doctrine.

Education to eliminate ego and ignorance, teaching morale conducts are the key to harmonious social orders.

[tomsega]

I like the way you say 'ideology', although at first it sounds a bit bizzare. 'Idi' - like in 'idiocy' - does the term more justice than pronouncing it like 'ideal'.

Indeed, many people, especially politicans, use 'ideology' as a positive thing; a 'world view'. When in fact, the sociological use of the word is generally very different. It is false consciousness!

[rlstrick]

I got into the habit of pronouncing it that way when I spent several months teaching and doing research as a grad student in London in 1985.... I suppose it might sound like an affectation, but, I'd have to make a conscious effort to say it the other way by now! But, one point to note from Althusser--though ideology is false consciousness, it's very nearly the only consciousness we have. It's very difficult--at some level, impossible--to think one's way out of this box.

[5uffy]

Hey, I'm a high school student and am rather pathetic at understanding complicated theory. I have a question for Mr. Strick or others: is Althusser basically implying that because individuals are forced to take up subject positions to serve society, the individual's place in society is to conform (because they have no other choice)? How could this be extrapolated and used in argument for the essential goodness of human nature and consequently (microcosm/macrocosm) the goodness of society? Thanks

[rlstrick]

Althusser does imply the bleak prospects for individual agency that you suggest. I find his theory most useful because it imposes a critical self-consciousness--if you begin with the assumption that the individual is in control of his/her destiny, you will probably not notice how that individual agency is overdetermined by ideology. It's a bit like "negative theology" in the Kierkegaard tradition. You assume that human nature is not essentially good; it's your responsibility to be good.

[Maldororisdead]

These videos are great! I've been devouring Althusser lately and it's always helpful to hear/read concise explanations of dense theoretical work. I encourage you to keep making these videos!

[robleblanc]

Thank you very much for your informative webcast. So, for Althusser, is it possible for an ideological group that wants to resist the state to produce a radical subject through interpellation of some kind? Or does any act of interpellation necessarily produce what Foucault called a docile body?

[rlstrick]

Althusser doesn't offer a way out of his interpellation box.... this is why many cultural studies theorists shifted toward Gramsci in the 1980s. Gramsci's conception of "hegemony" was seen as more useful than "interpellation" and Gramsci's "organic intellectual" could be a "radical subject." I think Althusser is most useful as a negative theorist. But I think also he can be creatively "misread" in a way that allows some slippage in hegemonic interpellation.

[robleblanc]

Thanks so much for responding. My dissertation committee has suggested that I read some more Gramsci; I will have to return to his work.

[uristra]

good series! i'm going to try to view all the videos.

[barisozdil]

informative...and nice background music. Who is playing that? Could you give me a clue?

[daringdavie]

I think Shonbul's right Ron. You talk in a very confusing way and it's hard to follow. It's almost without soul or passion just very . . .erm . . Dry.

[rlstrick]

Thanks for your comment. The absence of passion was a more or less conscious choice in my effort to produce videos with as much information as concisely as possible. I don't want them to be confusing or off-putting, though, and I will consider these constructive criticisms very seriously as I produce subsequent videos.

[BrianBekker]

I like your lectures. People are very rude and crude on You Tube and critizize everything. If they would stop listening to Britney Spears CDs and realize the effort it took to produce these segments maybe they would not be so quick to judge.

[rlstrick]

Thanks for your question. These videos were originally made for students reading assigned texts related to each video. However, I think the series will make more sense to someone who is new to Marxism if it is viewed in a sequence beginning with the "history of modernity" videos ("Economic Conditions of Modernity," "Individual and Society in Modernity," etc), followed by the "Historical Materialism," "Labor Theory of Value" and "Commodities and Commodity Fetishism" videos.

[rastabus]

...you should create playlists then. Thankyou for your good work so far and please keep it up.

[Shonbul]

you enjoy confusing people, don't you??

"if anything worths saying, it can be said simply and clearly"

[ebauer]

go to school... in order to subvert the dominant, hegemonic order we must subvert the language game... please read Judith Butler etc...

[pabloacastro]

Muy buen material!!!

Very good stuff!!!

[WolfPharoah]

(And yes, I am a sociologist who thinks that Marxism can 'still' be applied throughout 'Post-modernity' and its succeeding periods, ex infinitum...)

[WolfPharoah]

Historical Materialism is the core of Marxist philosophy...the idea of it being ruling class mysticism?!...It kind of is the point. Its weird man, from any perspective their is an inverse...of course it is! but of course it is also THE VERY WEAPON of the proletariat! VIVE LA REVOLUTION!

[atypicalguy]

This question pertains to Marxist ideology past and present. I'm not nearly as well read on the subject as you so please correct me if I'm wrong about anything. As I understand it, the core belief; the kernel, of Marxist belief is dialectical materialism, but it seems that today, most modern marxist reject this and some have even declared it as ruling-class mysticism.

[atypicalguy]

I just want to know if this is accurate and maybe get some of your thoughts on the subject. Thank you and please continue the video series. It is quite fascinating.

[rlstrick]

I think the term "dialectical materialism" has sometimes been used in a way that is ahistorical--it asserts that the fundamental historical condition is class struggle, but "class" and "struggle" need to be defined more specifically--historicized. I think Gramsci wrote, somewhere, in reference to DM, that it was a method, not a dogma. I don't know about claims that DM is "ruling-class mysticism"--maybe it refers to rigid definitions of the term associated with Stalinism.

[Maldororisdead]

I think that the way the ruling class in the USSR used "marxism" in their propaganda etc. is a more or less casebook example of ideology in Marx's original sense. It's rather ironic, but proves Marx's point.

[Congest]

Marxism rocks!