PHOTOGRAPHISM IN ALTHUSSER’S THEORY OF IDEOLOGY

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to establish some provisionary points of articulation for a “non-philosophical” critique of Althusser’s theory of ideology. It builds on Ernesto Laclau’s argument that Althusser’s ISA essay is symptomatic of the ideology of ideological critique. Althusser argues that Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), such as the school, political parties, and cultural institutions, and Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs), such as the police and army, produce the “subject,” which willingly submits to power. Althusser thus reduces the plurality of ideological instances to a single equivalent: the constitution and category of the subject. My argument explores the metaphoricity that underwrites this equivalential (and ideological) dimension. Drawing principally on the work of François Laruelle, I argue that the chain of technical metaphors that Althusser employs signifies a metaphorical condition that Laruelle terms photographism. By imaging ideology, particularly via the scene of “interpellation,” Althusser’s theory appears to capture ideology as such as an image as if the entire theoretical apparatus was a kind of philosophico-photographic apparatus. Following Laruelle, I argue that his photographism is symptomatic of the ideology of standard philosophy as such.