In
his essay “Ideological State Apparatuses” Marxist philosopher, Althusser, examines
the idea of authoritive control, in relation to class dominance and ideologies.
He investigated the ways in which authoritive institutes have attached
capitalist concepts and manipulative ideologies over society. The institutes he
looked into include groups which conduct authority such as schools, churches
and more commonly the media. He explains that “in order to exist, every social
formation must produce the conditions of its production at the same time as it
produces, and in order to be able to produce” (Althusser, 1971: 129).
He
later confirms that therefore it must reproduce the proactive forces and the
existing relations of production. To simplify this statement, in order to
survive is this colonised world we must become part of a ruling institute.
Whilst part of this institute we must exercise and reproduce certain ideologies
created by the state in order to sustain control. To put it simply if you are
not part, you are not in, and can only exist by following the rules governed by
these states. Grant (2005) admits that with regards to idealism, instead of
focusing on the importance of human freedom, it prioritised the “ideals of the ruling
class” (p.14). Therefore, even though this ideological state acted against
human freedom, society was forced to believe these declarations to be true as
they had no other choice but to trust them. This reference demonstrates the
significant amount of power which the state holds. Marx defined the state as a
“machine of repression, which enables the ruling classes to ensure their domination
over the working class” (Marx cited in Althusser, 1971: 137). Althusser (1971)
explains that this “state” can be divided into two groups, one, as we have
already discussed the Ideological State Apparatus and the other the Repressive
State Apparatus (Althusser, 1971: 142-4).
The
Repressive State Apparatus concerns governing bodies such as the government,
army, police, courts and prisons (Althusser, 1971: 142-3). He declares that the
RSA “belongs entirely to the public domain” (Althusser, 1971: 144), which
functions by violence; predominantly through repression and secondly by
ideology (Althusser, 1971: 145). He suggests that it “consists essentially in
securing by force the political conditions of the reproduction of relations of
production which are in the last resorts of exploitation” (Althusser, 1971:
149-150).
In
his essay he later concludes that “ideology is conceived as a pure dream, as
nothingness, as its reality is external to it” (Althusser, 1971: 159). Therefore
it is an imaginary construct, a dream. German ideology explains that these
ideas are forced onto the unconscious mind; therefore we are manipulated into a
certain way of thinking in which the state governs and controls. A Freudian
understanding of this would suggest that as information is stored in the
unconscious mind it is hard for individuals to wake into a realisation of what
is really going on in society.
Marx
argues that ideology should represent a positive reality. However due to the
constructs of control, is this
ideology actually positive at all? This is one of the questions that is tackled
in Puig’s novel Kiss of the Spider Woman
as Valentin struggles to define what a positive reality is constructed by and
which ideology, if any, is positive at all.
Reference
Reference
Althusser, L. (1971)
“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” In: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review
Press.
Grant, H. (2005)
Postmodernism Politics. In: Sim, S. (eds) The
Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. 2nd edition. Oxon:
Routledge.
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