Althusser's Ideology

In the first half of his essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, Althusser says that, “the resistances of the exploited classes is able to find means and occasions to express itself there” (99), by which he means in the Ideological State Apparatuses. In the second half of the essay, Althusser argues there are places that can be found in the ISA that allow expression of the exploited class, but this expression is an illusion as they can only express themselves in terms of being subjects.

Althusser separates the State Apparatus into two sections, one being the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) and the other being the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). The RSA encompasses things like the military, police and government, whereas the ISA contains things like education, religion and family. The RSA is fundamentally different from the ISAs for two reasons, the first being that the RSA is strictly in the public domain whereas the ISAs can exist in both the public and private domain. The second difference is that, “the Repressive State Apparatus functions ‘by violence’, whereas the Ideological State Apparatus functions ‘by ideology’”(97). Althusser qualifies this statement by saying that the RSA truly functions by both violence as well as ideology since no apparatus can function by one alone. Therefore, conversely, the ISAs function primarily by ideology and secondarily by violence, although most of this violence is usually internal to the apparatus.

Althusser ends his discussion of the distinction between the RSA and ISA by saying that, “the Ideological State Apparatuses may be not only the stake, but also the site of class struggle, and often of bitter forms of class struggle” (99). By this, Althusser means that it is inherently difficult to take the ISA’s from the “formal” ruling class since they can retain their roles for a longer period of time than being thrown out of power in the RSA. This also leads us back to the question at hand; how do the resistances of the exploited classes find means and occasions to express themselves in the ISAs?

The occasions for expression come from ideology. For Althusser, ideology is, “conceived as a pure illusion, a pure dream, i.e. as nothingness. All its reality is external to it” (108). Althusser differs from Marx on who controls this reality. Marx argues that this illusion is controlled by those who are in power and is used to control those who are not in power.