An Attempt at a Humorless Response with Fewer Errors and Claims: Enjoy

Although I’d like to mention Jameson again, I think I’ve written all I dare about his article. I will, instead, focus Barry since he simplifies much of the more important points Althusser makes in his concise article (I can’t help myself). The Barry piece is so helpful because of its direct approach to the vocabulary of Althusser and others. The most important word that I took from the reading was Althusser’s term ‘overdeterminism’. I have never been a big fan of Marxism, specifically because of the one-one ratio of determinism: I have no problem believing that economic ideology affects culture, laws, and art; but I do have a problem with the idea that it (economic ideology, to be very clear) affects all parts of life by itself.

The second term that I found especially compelling was ‘interpellation’. This concept is far removed from scary soldiers wearing red badges and oppressing the people; it rather denotes the more subtle state control: ‘state ideological apparatus’. I think that this makes for a far more acceptable target for the Marxist to raise their fist against because of the way the ‘apparatus’ makes unknowingly-willing victims of the people. I also find this be different from what the Leninist Marxists were concerned with regarding literature. Where the Leninists were concerned with the unknowing embedding of the author’s ideology in his work, Althusser’s more complex theory is concerned with the knowing author purposely embedding his ideas to be absorbed by the unknowing reader (or watcher in the modern age: Go McDonald’s with your urban campaign).