Marx & Althusser - Melanie Roth

I had a hard time with these readings. Even though I understood what ideology was, I couldn’t comprehend Marx and Althusser’s theories at first glance. After re-reading certain passages I began to break apart what they were theorizing, and was able to connect certain statements to experiences I have witnessed in real life, especially the notion of subjectivity of an individual.

I found it interesting when Althusser explained that one goes fro man individual to a subject when a culturally familiar sign is present. In this case he gives us the example of someone hailing someone else. When that person turns around, in a robotic reaction to the hail, he is now labeled as a subject. My own example of this would be a teacher saying “Shhh” and the individuals who were talking immediately stop talking, transforming to Althusser’s notion of a subject state. “The interpellation of ‘individuals’ as subjects; their subjection to the subject; the mutual recognition of subjects and Subjects, the subjects’ recognition of each other, and finally the subject’s recognition of himself; the absolute guarantee that everything really is so, and that on condition that the subjects recognize what they are and behave accordingly, everything will be alright: Amen – ‘So be it’” (Althusser 48). Althusser goes on to explain that “caught in this quadruple system of interpellation as subjects, of subjection to the Subject, of universal recognition and of absolute guarantee, subjects ‘work’” (48). Hopefully in class tomorrow I will grasp a better understanding of these two theorists.