Louis Althusser

An Algerian philosopher, Althusser was influenced by Marx as well as the

psychoanalysts Freud and Lacan. He wrote on the concept of ideology,
believing that our choices, intentions, values and desires are inculcated by
ideological practices. In other words, social practices impose certain roles
upon the individual which determine the concept of the self. In his 1971 essay
Ideology and State Apparatuses, Althusser claimed that ideological practices
are constituted by an assortment of institutions he refers to as ideological
State Apparatuses such as religious systems, the family, political systems,
trade unions and communications (the media). Such structures are both
agents of repression and inescapable everyone is subjected to ideology.
Althussers conceptualization of ideology has been influential to critical
discourse analysis