Literary Theory

Series II: Handout #3

Louis Althusser (1918-1990): Algerian French (like Derrida), activist Marxist in 1960s—the role of the critic is to side with the oppressed in class struggle—helped to recreate the modern teacher as a radical opponent of the dominant ideology; contemporary Marxist criticism is largely filtered through Althusser’s view of the means by which social structures shape perception (revising the Marxian idea of false consciousness); he lost his mind in 1980 and murdered his wife.

“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (Norton 1476-1509): explains how societies reproduce their basic social relations: ideology wins consent of the majority through education, though this is not done through free will but through structural options built into society; the mechanisms by which consent is engineered in society are called ideological state apparatuses (ISAs)—these include churches, schools, the family, courts, political parties, unions, the media, sports, literature and the arts; ISAs are different from repressive state apparatuses (RSAs), which include the police, the military, the prison system, and the government. ISAs differ from RSAs in that they are not ideologically unified, they are mostly private, and they do not use force to get people to comply. Althusser observes how public schools have replaced the ideological role formerly performed by the church prior to post-capitalist secularization. Schools exist to make people into docile workers, soldiers, and citizens. ISAs are not centrally controlled (they are comparable to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony); they operate with “relative autonomy” and are overdetermined, that is, they respond to multiple and contradictory causes. The ideology inculcated by the ISAs and RSAs is “the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” Taking his cue from Freud and Lacan, Althusser argues for an interpellation of individuals as subjects by means of this imagined relationship constructed by the web of ISAs and RSAs.

Q. Can you describe the ideological function of the ISAs? Can you give some examples of how education inculcates ideology? Are you part of the ISA? Is it possible for a teacher not to be?

Q. Can you think of ways that literature and art function as ISAs? Can you identify specific instances of this?

Q. What do you think about Althusser’s explanation of the religious ideological apparatus (consider the French and American Revolutions)? And its means of interpellating subjects. See 1505-08.

Raymond Williams (1921-1988): British Marxist; major figure in “Cultural Studies” or cultural materialism; views literature as a conveyor of class-based values in reaction to the Arnoldian tradition; mentored Terry Eagleton; recognizable “keywords” approach (culture, art, democracy, industry, and class).

“Marxism and Literature” (1977, Norton 1567-1575): literature emerged as a concept under industrial capitalism to refer specifically to imaginative writing with high cultural and social value; this is not because of some inherent quality in the writing so much as by capitalist specialization, social stratification, and nationalism. The view of literature as concentrated human experience is naïve, a mystification; it prioritizes bourgeois vicarious experience over working-class lived reality. Williams defines “literature” over several centuries, showing how it is ideologically inflected (use the Oxford English Dictionary to do this on your own).

Q. Can you think of any words that have shifted meaning in your own lifetime?

Q. What is the class function of literature? How did you come to study it and why?