Chris Boese's Weblog

By way of explanation on Althusser

From kiss of the panopticon:

kiss cultural theory: Adorno; Althusser; Anderson; Aristotle et al

LOUIS ALTHUSSER

French Marxist philosopher.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Marxist thinkers such as Althusser developed more sophisticated articulations of ideology in base-superstructure theory, in an attempt to explain why there hadn't been a world revolution along Marxist lines. Instead of a simple cause-and-effect relationship between ideology and the economic base of society, where one class imposes its values on another, Althusser redefined ideology as a continuous and all-pervasive set of practices in which all groups and classes participate. Obviously, this makes the task of organizing the overthrow of the oppressors much more difficult.

This participatory model, where even the oppressed classes happily accede to their oppression, is quite similar to Gramsci's notions of hegemony. However, it differs insofar as it makes social change appear unlikely. Gramsci's theory, on the other hand, allows a much greater role for resistance to dominating influences from within the hegemonized groups, and recognizes the opportunity for social change within a capitalist system. (Fiske, 176-178).

The modern British state provides a good example of a political entity dominated by what Althusser describes as the 'ideological state apparatuses' - the political system, the churches, the schools, the family, the legal system, the system of mass communication, and cultural activities like the arts and sports - instead of the more blatant "repressive state apparatus" of police, the armed forces, the prisons, and so on. See Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture, 92.

Althusser also originated the concept of interpellation, aka "hailing." Once again, this is all about power relations between individuals and groups in society. He argued that "ideological state apparatuses" 'hailed' persons into certain subject positions (for example, as "middle class", instead of the more revolutionary subject position of "working class"; as "black" instead of "white"; as "girl" instead of "man."). Hailing is, in this sense, a kind of "invitation" that actually works to situate people -- specifically, to coerce them (in non-apparent ways) into seeing themselves in particular ways.

For example, the "Hey, you there!" of the policeman constitutes the person addressed as a particular kind of subject (a "suspect", perhaps) within a particular structure of authority. Even though the person addressed may be innocent of any crime, he still may feel guilt, as if he had done something, simply by virtue of how he is reconstituted by the policeman's hailing within a legal structure of authority. You only need to compare this to another form of address the policeman might adopt: "Excuse me, sir (or ma'am)"; here the subject of the address is being interpellated in a very different way.

To take the point further: if a white policeman addressed a black man as "hey, boy!" the addressee would be placed as a subject in a structure of authority that was most likely predicated on a white power structure that placed blacks in an inferior position. If a male policeman addressed an adult woman as "hey, girlie!" or "Hey, doll!", that would suggest a patriarchal power structure that placed women in an inferior position to men. (See Louis Althusser. 1971, Lenin and Philosophy. Trans. by Ben Brewster. London: Monthly Review Press.)

A Movie I can't wait to see: Errol Morris's Fog of War

OK, so I've been an Errol Morris nutcase for years. I'll have to dig around and find a full filmography of Morris's documentaries. I'm already weird for liking documentaries as much as I do, but it is the leftover photojournalist in me. This one looks like a terrific coup, Robert S McNamara. Right up there with Stephen Hawking. I'll find more links to Morris stuff a little later, but here are few bits from the NYTimes review of "Fog of War."

Movie Review | 'The Fog of War': Revisiting McNamara and the War He Headed

Revisiting McNamara and the War He Headed
By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: October 11, 2003

If there's one movie that ought to be studied by military and civilian leaders around the world at this treacherous historical moment, it is "The Fog of War," Errol Morris's sober, beautifully edited documentary portrait of the former United States defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara. Mr. McNamara, who was 85 when the interviews that make up the bulk of the film were conducted two years ago, served under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to early 1968. He has been widely vilified as a major architect of the Vietnam War, which cost more than 58,000 American lives and, according to Mr. McNamara, the lives of 3.4 million Vietnamese.

[...]

The documentary, which has a solemn, anxious score by Philip Glass, incorporates White House tapes of conversations about Vietnam that Mr. McNamara had with both presidents, along with vintage clips from World War II and Vietnam.

Stocky and slick haired, with rimless glasses and a grand corporate manner, Mr. McNamara appears to be an exceptionally articulate, self-confident man who came to this project prepared to deflect embarrassing questions about his personal responsibility for the debacle. While he readily confesses to having made serious mistakes of judgment, he will not admit to any grave moral failures.

Near the end of the film, when pressed about whether he feels guilty about Vietnam, he dances nimbly away from the question.

[...]

"The Fog of War," goes far beyond Vietnam. During World War II Mr. McNamara served as a commander under the arch-hawk Gen. Curtis Le May, who appears in old photos and film clips as a caricature of a pragmatic, cigar-chomping war-monger. Under Le May, Mr. McNamara was part of the team that made the decision to firebomb 67 Japanese cities, killing large numbers of civilians. In Tokyo alone, more than 100,000 civilians died one night in March 1945.

That was before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The lesson that came out of that, Mr. McNamara says, is that "proportionality should be a guideline in war." After the war, he recalls, Le May surmised that had the United States lost World War II, he and Mr. McNamara would have been prosecuted as war criminals.

[...]

Mr. McNamara was also at Kennedy's side during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the president had to choose between answering two conflicting messages from the Soviets, one belligerent, the other more conciliatory. At the urging of the former ambassador to the Soviet Union, Tommy Thompson, who knew Nikita S. Khrushchev well and understood that the Soviet leader was looking for a way to avert war while saving face, Kennedy ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to destroy Cuba and responded to the softer message. It was dumb luck, he says, that averted a nuclear war. The lesson that came out of that experience is arguably the most useful of the 11: "Empathize with your enemy."