ALTHUSSER'S THEORIE VAN DE IDEOLOGIE

Abstract

SUMMARY This study gives a survey of Althusser's theory of ideology in its present state of development. To start with, a distinction is made between Althusser's materialistic theory of ideology—a theory of the specific structural mechanism and efficacy of the ideological social instance—and a formalistic theory. The latter finds the origin of ideology in wrong perceptions, which are the consequences of the place and function the subject occupies in social reality. In contradistinction to this theory Althusser ascribes the specific ideological effect to a specific cause, the ideological social instance. Indeed he explains the specific structural mechanism and logic of the ideological instance on the basis of the concept “structure of interpellation”. This concept expresses the efficacy on man's consciousness of the ideological category of Subject. The mechanism of this category brings the individuals to an identification with an historical system of standards of behaviour so that this system is lived as a natural and inevitable complex of behaviour and social relations. This enables Althusser to explain the social function of ideology by the analysis of its structure. Ideology permits a social system to win the individuals' spontaneous cooperation. In the next paragraphs the cognitive humanism of ideological theory is related to the initial, ideological, evident convictions of man, which are originally given by the efficacy of the ideological instance, especially by the category of Subject. It is obvious that the fact that the experience of reality is necessarily ideological explains some formal characteristics of an ideological discourse (evident and allusive exposition). Nevertheless these general characteristics of both practical and theoretical ideology do not sufficiently explain the whole historical meaning of ideology. Two important characteristics must be added. Ideologies are regional, i.e. they vary as far as they invest and give sense to man's experience as lived in different social practices: esthetic, political, moral, economic, juridical, etc. practices are always exercised under a specific esthetic, political, moral, economic, juridical, etc. ideology. A more important feature is the relationship of ideologies to the social classes, and especially of the dominant ideology of a society to the dominant social classes. The latter relation however is not direct but indirect, mediated as it is by the function of the state. This fact leads Althusser to his fundamental thesis of the material mode of existence of ideology and to his theory of the role of the ideological state-apparatuses as conditions of possibility for the (material) existence and reproduction of ideology. In conclusion some of Althusser's remarks on proletarian, communist ideology are taken up. Especially the Althusserian construction of a scientific ideology argues for the fact that Althusser's epistemological reading of Marx reduces marxism so far that it can no longer be considered as a practical-philosophical foundation of a political praxis.