consritu�ive o
!
all i�
eo�
og;
insofar a� a!
l.
ideology has the £unction (whichdefines It) of constituting concrete mdmduals as subjects (LP, 160),
Althusser puts 'constituting' within quotation marks because this is the language of Husser!. The phenoJ'!lenology of �he ego Jalls under the con· cept of ideology ro the extent that it defines ideology; ideology is human� ism, humanism relies on the concept of the subject, and it is ideology· which constitutes the subject. Ideology and the subject are mutually con stitutive. Whereas someone like Erik Erikson argues that ideology is a factor of identity and so maintains that the relationship between ideology and the
subject
should be taken in a positive sense, the language of Althusser is much more negative.We
are forced to put on the side of ideology what in a sense is the most interesting philosophical problem: how do we be· come subjects? It is a bold attempt to give so much to ideology in order to deny it so much also. This is why I have said that if we give too much to science, we have to give still more to ideology. It becomes more and more difficult to treat ideology merely a..'l a world of iHusi'ons, of super· structures, because it becomes so constitutive of what we are that what we might be when separated from ideology is completely unknown; we are(
what we are precisely thanks to ideology. The burden of -ideology is to make subjects of us. It is a strange philosophical situation, since all our concrete existence is put on the side of ideology.Althusser's interesting analysis of what he calls 'interpellation' demon· strates more specifically the relationship betw1=en ideology and �he subject. 'As a first formulation, I shall say: all ideology ha·i!s or interpellates con crete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject' (LP, 162), We are constituted as subjects through a process
of recognition, The use of the term 'interpellation' is an allusion to the theological concept 9f call, of being cal!ed by God. In it� ability to inter pellate subjects, ideology also constitutes them, To be hailed is to become a subject. 'The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the sam!l thmg' (LP, 163). The idea is that ideology is eternal and so does not belong to the history of classes and so on, and it acts to constitute and
be
constituted by the category of the subject. The theory of ideology in general rebuilds the framework of a complete anthropology, but it does so with a negative cast. This anthro· pology is the world of illusion,Althusser's claim about the illusory nature of what constitutes us as subjects is based on the Lacanian notion o_f the mirror-structur_e of the imagination. 'We observe that the structure of all ideology, interpellating individuals as subjects in the name of a Unique and Ab�olute Subject is speculary, i.e. has a mirror-structure, and doubly speculary: this mirror· duplication is constitutive of ideology and ensures its functioning' (LPo 168). When emphasis is placed on the primacy of illusion in the symbolic
ALTHUSSER'S THEORY OF IDEOLOGY 65
process, all ideology must be illusory. Here there is a complete merging of the concept of the mirror - the narcissistic structure - with ideology. Ide_ology is established at the level of narcissism, the subject looking at itself indefinitely. Althusser rakes as an illustrative example religious ideol ogy. He says that the function of Christian theology is to reduplicate the subject by an absolute subject; they are in a mirror relation. 'The dogma of the Trinity is precisely the theory of the duplication of the Subject (the Father) into a :subject (the Son) and of their mirror-connexion (the Holy Spirit}' (LP, 168
n.).
A!thusser's treatment here is not a good piece of work; I do not thmk it makes much sense. It is expeditive; Althusser summarizes Trinitarian theology in a footnote. We perhaps could say that the mirror relatibn would be more interesting as an expression of a neu rotic way of hfe. If we took, for example, the Schreber case analyzed byFreud, and in particular what Freud called Schreber's theology, we would see this teduplicative process, there being in fact no god to worship bur ·only a projection and retrojection indefinitely of oneself, a projection and
assimilation of one's own image.
It is most difficult, therefore, to construct the whole concept of the subject on the narrow basis of the narcissistic relation of mirroring. We can more easily understand this relation as distortive, the distortion of a constitution, but it is difficult to understand it as constitutive itself. The only way to maintain that this· relation is constitutive - and this is Althusser.'s
stance -is to argue the radical position that the constitution is the distor tion, that aU constitution of a subject is a distortion. If ideology is eternal,\.
though, if there are always already interpellated individuals as subjects,
'>
if the formal structure of ideology is continuingly the same, thenhappens to the epistemological break? The problem of the
break has to be removed from the sphere of particular ideologies to that of ideology in gener"al. The break with religious ideology, with humanism, and so on is nothing compared to the break with this mutual constitution of primary ideology and subjectivity. I would agree that a break must occur, but not where Althusser places it. Instead, we may break and we have to break with the 'miscognition' (micomwissatlce) that adheres to recognition (reconnaissance). What point would there be in a critique of miscognition if it were not for the sake of a more faithful recognition? We must make sense of true recognition in a way that does not reduce it to ideology·, in the narrow and pejorative sense.of that term. Althusser, how· ever, rejects this possibility. He talks of 'the reality which is necessarily ignored
(m€c.Otltlue)
[so 'miscognized', not ignored) in the very forms of recognition . . .' (LP, 170). All recognition is miscognition; it is a very pessimistic assertion. If ideology must have no value in itself, then it must be the world of miscognition, mic.onnaissanc.e. The whole dialectic of re\!ognition is broken by Althusser'� ideological reduction of the problem atic of the subject." PAUL RICOEUA
Instead of there being a relation of recognition, Althusser correlates the mirror relation with a relation of subsJ.lmption. 'There are no subjects except by and for their subjection' (LP, 169), he says. Althusser uses the play on words to indicate that the subject means both subjectivity and subjection. The two meanings are in fact reduced to one: "tO be a subject means to be submitted to. Yet is there not a history of the individual's. growth beyond the 'speculary' stage? What about the dialectic of the speculary and the symbolic within imagination itself? For A!thusser, how� ever, to be a subject means to be subjected, to be submitted to an appar� atus, the ideological apparatus of the state. To my mind, if ideo1ogy must be tied to the mirror stage of the imagination, to the submitted subject, I do not see how it would ever be possible to have as citizens authentic subjects who could resist the apparatus of the state. I do not see from where we could borrow the forces to resist the apparatus if not from the depths of a subject having claims that are not infected by this supposed submissive constitution. How else will someone produce a break in the seemingly closed shell of ideology(
The task, then, is to disentangle recognition (reconnaissance) from mis cognition (me'connaissance). I shall later connect. my analysis of Habermas precisely at this point. The problematic for Habermas is the need to start from a project of recognition. Ideology is troublesome because it makes impossible the true recognition of one human being by another. Further, this situation is placed entirely on the side of ideology, then no weapons ist against ideology, because the weapons themselves are ideological. herefore, we need a concept
o"f
recognition, what Habermas' more recent work speaks of as a concept of communication. We need a utopia of total recognition, of total communication, communi�ation without boundaries or obstacles. This supposes that we have an interest in communication which is not, we might say, ideology-stricken from the beginning. In order to connect, as does Habermas, the ·critique of ideology to an interest in liberation, we must have a concept of recognition, a concept of the mutual task of communication, that is not ideological in the distortive sense of that word.Before we reach Ol!t examination of Haber mas, however, we shall spend some time discussing Mannheim and Weber, and we have some final questions of Althusser as well. To prepare for the transit from Althusser, I would like to present a general framework of the questions arising from our readings of his work. I shall consider five .main problems. First is the question of the scientific claim of Marxism: in what sense is it a science? While Althusser speaks in some more recent writings of the discovery of a continent, the continent of history, even here the subject-matter is to be raised to the level of a systematic science. The focus of this history is not empirical historiography but the systematic concatenation of stages in the development of economic relationships (from primitive communism to
ALTHUSSER'S THEORY OF IDEOLOGY "
feudalism to capitalism and so forth), If we speak of science in a positivist sense, then a theory must be submitted to verification and therefore to the whole community of, we might say, intellectual workers. It is hard, though, to identify this science with the science of a class. To put the notion of scien-tific verification within the framework of dass struggle introduces a practical concept within the theoretical framework. My question, then, is in what sense can Marxism be a science if it is not verifiable or falsifiable in the Popperian sense? Perhaps it can be scientific in another fashion, that of a �;titaque. But what motivates a critique if not an interest, an interest in emancipation, an interest in liberation, something which pulls a critique necessarily into the ideological sphere? It is quite difficult to think of a non�positivist scien� that is not supported by a human interest, a practical interest. Tt is also difficult to think of a science. that is not understandable for all, even for members of other classes. As we shaH discover, the prob lem of Mannheim's paradox in fact starts !rom the generalization of the concept of ideology at th_e point where ideological a11alysis is raised to the level of a science, that- of the sociology of knowledge.
Our second problem, a corollary of the first, concerns th.e notion of the epistemological break. Is a complete break understandable without some kind of intellectual miracle, a sense. of someone emerging from the dark� In Althusser's more recent
Essays in Self� Criticism,
even while subjecting himself to reproach (saying that he has been too theoretical and needs to return to the class st_tuggl� in a more militant way), he still reinforces his concept of the epistemological break. He says that it is an i.lfiprecedented eYeJ1t. Althusser even speaks of Marx as a son without a father, a. kind ofabsolute orphan. He argueB that it is the idealists wh.o are always seeking continuity. Possibly a certain providentia!ism does imply continuity, but; I do not know why historical continuity alone should be considered necessarily ideological and, perhaps, even theological. The concept of discontinuity gives rise to difficulty itself. It does so principally if we consider, once more, ·the motivation of this break. The epistemological break appears to be motivated, and.