Althusser: ISA

1. What is this essay on ISA about?

ISA is Althusser’s contribution to existing Marxist analysis of State power and an explanation for the reproduction of
social relations. As such, the essay is a contribution in which Althusser deliberates on the role that the superstructure
has in material relations and argues for a rethinking of ‘ideology’. Instead of viewing ideology etymologically as a
system of ideas, Althusser argues for a theory of ideology and plurality of ideologies within material praxis. Althusser
argues that it is the function of ideology which constitutes individuals into subjects who, in turn, represent their real
social relations in a misrecognized and imaginary manner. Althusser argues that the theory of ISA offers a convincing
explanation of the reproduction of social relations.
Since Althusser offers his explanation in a theoretical manner, it is best to observe the function of the theory in the
following manner.

2. Let us begin by noting where Althusser poses the most important question: why is an explanation of
State power needed?
In the essay, Althusser proposes to analyse the reproduction of social relations—the fundamental argument for
understanding the reproduction of society and reproduction of labour power with which the essay begins—and for that
he argues that an analysis of state power is needed.

3. What is the relation between State power and social relations?

Althusser argues that the location of the State is in the superstructure and that the latter’s relative autonomy—in the
last instance—allows for a “reciprocal action of the superstructure on the base”. For this reason, a theory of the State
and State power ∴ ISA, is needed.
*Note: Althusser had already hinted at the importance of ideology in the early section on the reproduction of labour
power where he said that “the reproduction of labour power takes place essentially outside the firm” (emphasis added).

4. Why or what is existing State function in Classical Marxism?

Within classical Marxism, the State (and its apparatus) function is defined as “a force of repressive execution and
intervention in the interests of the ruling classes in the class struggle conducted by the bourgeoisie an its allies against
the proletariat”.

5. Why is this insufficient to explain reproduction of social relations?

Althusser has a novel explanation as to what is missing. He claims that the classical definition is restricted to the
function of State apparatus. He states that the following should be retained:
a) State = RSA
b) State power ≠ RSA
c) Objective of class struggle → seizure of State power.
d) Keeper of existing state power: bourgeoise. Given existing class relations, a theory needed for how proletariat
can seize → State power.
e) ∴ additional theory of ISA needed.

6. What are the features of ISA and RSA?

a) ISA is distinguished by plurality and by its existence in the private domain. Althusser identifies at least seven
institutions which can be claimed under ISA. (*There is debate whether Trade Union should be identified as
an ISA as it is clearly a workers’ organization.)
RSA is unified and belongs entirely to the public domain.
b) RSA: Dominated by violence
ISA: Dominated by ideology
c) RSA: functions predominantly with violence and secondarily with ideology
ISA: functions predominantly with ideology and secondarily with repression/ violence.

7. What does this dual nature of State power do?

The RSA provides physical control and conditions for the reproduction of existing class relations.
The ISA provides the ideological control as Althusser holds that “no class can hold state power over a long
period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatus”. Hence, the
 addition of ISA to the existing theory of State power shows the challenges that the proletariat must overcome in its
struggle over existing social relations for seizure of State power.
Althusser explains the change in Western history in ISAs from feudalism to capitalism by examining the role of
the Church in the Middle Ages as against the educational ideological apparatus, the dominant ISA in mature
capitalist formations.
8. Why does Althusser need to explain that ideology-in-the singular lacks history?
Purported as a digression, this aspect of the essay is important insofar as recognizing that Althusser is also a theorist.
Hence, he explains that ideology in the singular (as a general theory) lacks history as it/ideology is outside history in
the same way as the Freudian unconscious is eternal. Following Marx, he says that ideology is an imaginary
assemblage (bricolage), a pure dream, empty and vain, constituted by the ‘day’s residues’ from the only full positive
reality, that of the concrete history of concrete material individuals materially producing their existence”.
9. Doesn’t this argument about ideology being ‘empty’, ‘a pure dream’ contradict the materiality of the
argument that Althusser excavates—the argument of the reproduction of social relations? Doesn’t this
suggest that Althusser is following an ‘idealist’ position, like Plato?
No. The purpose is that as a theorist, Althusser needs to distinguish between the singular and plural, between
ideology-in-general and particular ideologies. Unlike the general argument, the specificity of an individual ideology is
wholly historical. This explanation, between the general theory and the specificity, is also a rigour that Althusser
brings to the understanding of theory.
10. So, what does ideology do?
Althusser says that ideology is a ‘representation’ (an imaginary construct) of the relationship that individuals have to
their material conditions of reality (their reality). The question that need to be asked is why do people need ideology to
understand their material reality? Is it because:
a) The Priests and Despots have forged beautiful lies? No
b) Is it because people find their material reality very hard to bear? No.
Then?
It is because “men represent to themselves in ideology”. In short, there is no access to material reality outside of
ideology. If men represent to themselves in ideology, then what do they represent: their material reality.
*Noteworthy: ideology in the last instance arises from the relations of production. So, the relation between ideological
representation and material reality is an imaginary one.
11. If ideology, ipso facto, distorts material reality, and constitutes an imaginary relation between men and
their material reality, then how are ideologies material and concrete?
Returning to the arguments of ISA and of the materiality of specific ideologies, issues that Althusser had clarified
earlier, Althusser reminds that “ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices. This existence is
material”. So, ideologies are never found outside practice.
12. How exactly does ideology function in and through practice?
Since ideology and ISA doesn’t function through coercion or through displacement (see subsection b) of point 10), it
requires some material pre-requisites for its functioning:
a) Free subject who “freely accepts and must act according to his ideas, must therefore inscribe his own ideas as
a free subject in the actions of his material practice”.
b) Ideology talks of actions—not ideas—but actions in material practice and the latter are “governed by rituals in
which these practices are inscribed, within the material existence of an ideological apparatus, be it only a
small part of that apparatus: a small mass in a small church…”
c) These actions (mentioned above) produce consciousness, not the other way around.
All the above, Althusser says, are material: the subject is of course material as it is a person; the ideas are translated
into consciousness which is contingent; the rest, rituals, actions, apparatus are all material.
13. How does ideology “constitute” a material person, a flesh and blood person into a subject? Important to
remember that subjects live in ideology, not persons. So, how does ideology constitute subjecthood?
In order to explain this ‘function’ of ideology, Althusser draws from Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage, an essential
phase in the development of the ego. Like Freud before, Lacan stressed on three stages in the development of the ego,
from infancy to adulthood based on three concepts: need, demand and desire and these corresponded to three stages of
the ego: the Real, Imaginary and Symbolic. As far as the ‘Imaginary’ is concerned, Lacan observed that between
infants between six and eighteen months were able to identify their images in reflected surfaces. This, Lacan identified
as the ‘mirror stage’ or the stage when the infant begins to move out of fragmented need to wholeness by perceiving
itself in the mirror. Since this is only an image (specular), an imaginary identification between self and image, it is
Misrecognition.
Relying on the Lacanian ‘Misrecognition’ which occurs in the Imaginary or the Mirror Stage, Althusser postulates that
a similar theory of ‘Misrecognition’ which he calls ‘Interpellation’. So, the ‘constitutive’ element of ideology—its
ability to transform the individual into a subject—is its power of interpellation.
Interpellation then is recognition, which, following Lacan, is misrecognition. Returning to the function of ideology, it
is interpellation/recognition/hailing which transforms individuals into subjects.

14: Summing up
Ideology functions through interpellation and it is this ideological function which causes the misrecognition of the
real/material relations as imaginary. Hence, in ideology, the individual is constituted into a subject through the process
of interpellation and it is in and through ideology that the subject misrecognizes his real material situation as
imaginary. The importance of specific ideologies (plurality) is evident in the fact that they relate to the State and
function through practice and actions. These constitute the ISA and it is the combined effect of the ISA and the RSA
which is responsible for the reproduction of social relations.

15: Conclusion
While Althusser provides a convincing theory for understanding the complexity of State power and the role that
ideology plays in it, he offers no solution for how the proletariat can exit from the existing ISA. How is an individual
supposed to resist the misrecognition/the interpellation/the hailing if the effect of it is so spontaneous and natural?
Granted that it is not the task of the theorist to also provide a solution to the theory that he has explained, but if the
purpose of the essay is to work toward8s building an analysis of how the proletariat can seize State power, then this is
a lacuna in Althusser’s theorizing.