02.18.03
Lecture notes:
 attempt to trace a bit of historical narrative within the readings we’ve
covered so far
 diagram: Marx and Engels at top
 M/E lead to Lukács, who attempts to provide a philosophical
grounding for Marxism, and who in so doing focuses our attention on
reification, or the ways that the worker is objectified by his labor
 M/E also lead, more indirectly, to Gramsci, who translates their work
to his own situation (fascist Italy) and in so doing focuses on
hegemony, or the ways that the subjects of ideology are led to consent
to their oppression
 M/E also lead to the Frankfurt school — both Benjamin and Adorno
and Horkheimer, who take two different approaches to the same
material
o Benjamin sees potential for revolutionary change in new
technologies (though not wholly optimistic)
o Adorno and Horkheimer see no such potential, as everything
has been completely absorbed and coopted by the culture
industry (the capitalist mode of production of culture)
 Althusser
o Born in Algeria in 1918; the most influential Marxist
philosopher of the 1960s and 70s; attempted to integrate
structuralism into Marxism
 Williams/Hall: culturalism; descends from Gramsci
o ideology as process; need to look at totality
 Baudrillard: move into concern with representations; postmodernism
Questions from students:
 Dialectic/contradiction:
o Contradiction = unity of opposites
o Dialectic = historical process by which those opposites
configure and resolve; philosophical process through which one
thinks such oppositions
o Hegel introduced the dialectic into German philosophical
thought but confined it to the realm of the ideal; Marx
“inverted” that dialectic by insisting that the material must take
precedence over the ideal, that in fact the material produces the
ideal
o Hegel introduced the dialectic as a means of combating the
overwhelming force of formal logic in German philosophy;
formal logic holds that if a is true, then not-a cannot be true; the
dialectic is a means of acknowledging that both a and not-a can
be true at once, that everything contains its own contradiction
o Marx and Engels introduce materialism into this equation —
thus the theoretical foundation of Marxist practice will often be
referred to as “dialectical materialism” — thus, the kinds of
things that Marxists generally refer to when they talk about
“contradiction” in capitalist society include the institution of
private property (which leads to a situation in which some are
free to own property, and others are not), free labor (in which
some are free to sell their labor on the open market, and others
are not), and so forth, all of which point to the contradictory
nature of capitalism itself, which operates on the belief that all
are free to get rich while necessitating a vast underclass in order
to survive.
o Thus contradiction is precisely the thing, for Marx, that will
lead to revolution, because the simultaneous existence of these
opposites demands a resolution.
 Gramsci: state v. civil society:
o For Gramsci, the ruling apparatus of any given society can be
broken down into the state (which is the official government
and all of its structures) and civil society (which is all of the
other structuring institutions of the society, such as the
educational system, religious institutions, etcetera)
o The importance of this distinction contributes to the distinction
that he draws between the “war of maneuver,” in which the
revolutionary forces attack the state directly, and the “war of
position,” which is carried out largely within civil society. The
war of maneuver is thus largely physical and military, while the
war of position is largely ideological.
o Moreover, this distinction contributes to Gramsci’s shift from
the Marxian idea of dominance to his idea of “hegemony,” in
that hegemony is not simply control of the government but in
fact a negotiated control of civil society. Hegemony is thus
first and foremost ideological, the hegemony of ideas.
o You can thus see a reflection of Gramsci’s ideas about the state
and civil society in Althusser’s ideas about the distinction
between the Repressive State Apparatus and the Ideological
State Apparatus. One difference between Gramsci’s ideas,
though, and Althusser’s should be obvious through the ways
they name their terms — Althusser considers both the
repressive and the ideological to form part of the state. We can
talk about this more today in conjunction with Althusser.
o There is also a similar division in Althusser between the base
and the superstructure that needs to be explored: the base for
Althusser is, in its simplest form, the mode of production —
capitalism, for instance — and the superstructure is the rest of
the society (both the RSA and the ISAs), the structure of which
is determined by the base (like the way the foundation of a
building determines what can be built upon it). There’s a bit of
a paradox contained in the ISAs essay, though, which I hope
we’ll talk about in a bit, in that Althusser begins from the
notion that the mode of production needs constantly to be
reproduced by a culture, and thus, in a paradoxical fashion, the
superstructure supports the base.
 Overdetermination
o This term arises from Freudian psychoanalysis; Freud suggests
in The Interpretation of Dreams that the latent content, or the
meaning, of a dream is “overdetermined” by its manifest
content — which you should understand to mean that the
significance of the dream is produced not simply by one image
or symbol or occurrence within it, but by multiple images or
symbols or occurrences — and thus multiple paths of
interpretation will lead you to the same conclusion. The
meaning is thus “overdetermined” because it is determined
simultaneously by many variables, and is thus inescapable.
o Althusser adopts this notion of overdetermination to Marxist
thought by putting forward the argument that ideology is not
determined by a simple correspondence to the “general
contradiction” — that of class — but is rather overdetermined
by a multiplicity of contradictions — not simply class, but also
race, gender, language, religion, etc. Thus, ideology is not
determined by a simple functioning of the mode of production,
but rather a complex functioning of all of society.
o A key group of ideas in Althusser grow out of this concept of
overdetermination: one is the “relative autonomy” of the
superstructures from the base, which suggests that the
relationship between the mode of production and civil society is
no longer seen as being directly determinant or causative;
another is the notion that the mode of production is determinant
“in the last instance” of the structure of society — and thus that
economy is important in, but not the sole origin of ideology
 Ideology:
o At this point, I need to talk a bit about ideology. Marx’s
writing, and that of the majority of his followers, largely
equates “ideology” with “false consciousness” — ideology is,
in other words, the lies that are told to the oppressed classes in
order to keep them in check. Thus the need, in Marx (and in
Lukacs), to awaken the proletariat from false consciousness into
class consciousness.
o Althusser is the first of the writers we’ve read to fully dissociate
ideology from this earlier sense. Ideology is, for Althusser, a
whole complex of multiple systems of representation which
describe the imaginary relations of men and women to their
real, lived conditions of existence.
o There is, however, a real divide between the early work of
Althusser (that which we’ve read in “Overdetermination and
Contradiction,” for instance) and his later work, which we
encounter in “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.”
 This is where I’m going to leave off. I’ll leave time at the end of class
for any further questions that this may have raised for you. But for
now, what I want to do is to ask you to get into your small groups and
address the following questions:
o What is the overall argument of “Overdetermination and
Contradiction”? Of “Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses”?
o What specific differences do you see between
“Overdetermination and Contradiction” and “Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses”? Are there substantive
differences between the arguments? Are there differences in
the way terms seem to be used? Are there differences in overall
tone?
o Can you take a guess about how you might begin to account for
these differences? Do the dates of the essays suggest to you
what might have changed Althusser’s view?
Notes:
 Argument of “Contradiction and Overdetermination”?
 Other elements than the economic affect the contradictions in a
society (examples of Russian and German societies, which are
different)
 The economic contradication is insufficient to induce a revolution;
must be an accumulation of circumstances – and some of those
circumstances may themselves be contradictory
 Argues that Marx fails to fully separate the dialectic from Hegel, and
thus doesn’t fully invert it
 Argument of “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”?
 For capitalism to maintain itself, the means of production must be
reproduced; reproduction occurs via state apparatus; divided into RSA
and ISAs; maintain a labor force that is willing to function within the
current system
 Differences between essays?
 In ISA, says this is an expansion of Marx’s theory, beyond the
descriptive; C&O seems more a departure from that theory, expanding
sense of what contributes to revolution
 Tone of ISA seems to negate C&O; ISA essay seems much more
economically determined – reproduction of system continues pattern
rather than allowing for complex influences of C&O
 ISA seems much more in keeping with Horkheimer and Adorno –
ideology is top-down, and not negotiated as in C&O
For next time:
Another group reading project:
a: Williams, “Base and Superstructure…”
b: Williams, from Marxism and Literature
c: Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms”
d: Hall, “Signification, Representation, Ideology…”
Each group member should read his or her assigned essay carefully. Skim
the others.
Everyone should also bring to class a one-to-two page single-spaced piece of
writing on the theoretical concept of your choice. This may be the same
concept you selected earlier, when I asked you to make notes for yourself, or
you may have changed your mind. In this piece of writing, you should both
define the concept and discuss how different writers we’ve read (not
including Berger and Rose) seem to deal with it. You can do this in outline
form, if you like, but be as specific as possible — for instance, include
quotes, if you can.