Critical Studies in Mass Communication: Structuralist Debates

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Signification, representation, ideology: Althusser and the post‐structuralist debates

a
Stuart Hall
a
Professor of Sociology , Open University , London
Published online: 18 May 2009.
To cite this article: Stuart Hall (1985) Signification, representation, ideology: Althusser and the post‐structuralist debates, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 2:2, 91-114
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15295038509360070
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Critical Studies in Mass Communication
VOLUME 2 NUMBER 2 JUNE 1985
Signification, Representation, Ideology:

Althusser and the Post-Structuralist Debates
STUART HALL
Downloaded by [Oregon Health Sciences University] at 04:19 16 September 2014
— This essay attempts to assess with classical Marxist formulations of

Althusser's contribution to the reconcep- ideology. It argues that these gains
tualization of ideology.Rather than offer- opened up a new perspective within
ing a detailed exegesis, the essay provides Marxism, enabling a rethinking of ideol-
some general reflections on the theoreti- ogy in a significantly different way.
cal gains flowing from Althusser's break
LTHUSSER persuaded me, and I spondence between practices, are neither

A remain persuaded, that Marx con-
ceptualizes the ensemble of relations
useful nor are they the ways in which
Marx, in the end, conceptualized the
which make up a whole society—Marx's social totality. Of course a social forma-
"totality"—as essentially a complex tion is not complexly structured simply
structure, not a simple one. Hence, the because everything interacts with every-
relationship within that totality between thing else—that is the traditional, socio-
its different levels—say, the economic, logical, multifactoral approach which
the political, and the ideological (as has no determining priorities in it. A
Althusser would have it)—cannot be a social formation is a "structure in domi-
simple or immediate one. Thus, the nance." It has certain distinct tendencies;
notion of simply reading off the different it has a certain configuration; it has a
kinds of social contradiction at different definite structuration. This is why the
levels of social practice in terms of one term "structure" remains important.
governing principle of social and eco- But, nevertheless, it is a complex struc-
nomic organization (in classical Marxist ture in which it is impossible to reduce
terms, the "mode of production"), or of one level of practice to another in some
reading the different levels of a social easy way. The reaction against both
formation in terms of a one-to-one corre- these tendencies to reductionism in the
classical versions of the marxist theory of
Mr. Hall is Professor of Sociology at the Open ideology has been in progress for a very
University, London. long time—in fact, it was Marx and
Critical Studies in Mass Communication Copyright 1985, SCA

2(1985), 91-114
92
ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985
Engels themselves who set this work of non. But when we have said that we have
revisionism in motion. But Althusser only said something about language at a
was the key figure in modern theorizing very general level of abstraction: the level
on this question who clearly broke with of "language-in-general." We have only
some of the old protocols and provided a begun our investigation. The more
persuasive alternative which remains important theoretical problem is to think
broadly within the terms of the marxist the specificity and difference of different
problematic. This was a major theoreti- languages, to examine the many deter-
cal achievement, however much we may minations, in concrete analysis, of partic-
now, in turn, wish to criticize and modify ular linguistic or cultural formations and
the terms of Althusser's break-through. I the particular aspects which differentiate
think Althusser is also correct to argue them from one another. Marx's insight
that this is the way the social formation is that critical thought moves away from
in fact theorized in Marx's U1857 Intro- abstraction to the concrete-in-thought
duction" to the Grundrisse (1953/1973), which is the result of many determina-
his most elaborated methodological text. tions, is one of his most profound, most
Another general advance which neglected epistemological propositions,

Althusser offers is that he enabled me to which even Althusser himself somewhat
live in and with difference. Althusser's misinterprets (cf. "Notes on the '1857
break with a monistic conception of Introduction'", Hall, 1974).
marxism demanded the theorization of I have to add right away, however,
difference—the recognition that there that Althusser allows me to think "dif-
are different social contradictions with ference" in a particular way, which is
different origins; that the contradictions rather different from the subsequent tra-
which drive the historical process for- ditions which sometimes acknowledge
ward do not always appear in the same him as their originator. If you look at
place, and will not always have the same discourse theory, for example—at post-
historical effects. We have to think about structuralism or at Foucault—you will
the articulation between different con- see there, not only the shift from practice
tradictions; about the different specifici- to discourse, but also how the emphasis
ties and temporal durations through on difference—on the plurality of dis-
which they operate, about the different courses, on the perpetual slippage of
modalities through which they function. meaning, on the endless sliding of the
I think Althusser is right to point to a signifier—is now pushed beyond the
stubbornly monistic habit in the practice point where it is capable of theorizing
of many very distinguished marxists who the necessary unevenness of a complex
are willing, for the sake of complexity, to unity, or even the "unity in difference"
play with difference so long as there is of a complex structure. I think that is
the guarantee of unity further on up the why, whenever Foucault seems to be in
road. But the significant advances over danger of bringing things together, (such
this delayed teleology are already to be as the many epistemic shifts he charts,
found in the "1857 Introduction" to the which all fortuitously coincide with the
Grundrisse. There, Marx says, for shift from ancien régime to modern in
example, of course all languages have France), he has to hasten to assure us
some elements in common. Otherwise we that nothing ever fits with anything else.
wouldn't be able to identify them as The emphasis always falls on the contin-
belonging to the same social phenome- uous slippage away from any conceiva-
93
CSMC HALL
ble conjuncture. I think there is no other The State is the instance of the perfor-
way to understand Foucault's eloquent mance of a condensation which allows
silence on the subject of the State. Of that site of intersection between different
course, he will say, he knows that the practices to be transformed into a sys-
State exists; what French intellectual tematic practice of regulation, of rule
does not? Yet, he can only posit it as an and norm, of normalization, within soci-
abstract, empty space—the State as ety. The State condenses very different
Gulag—the absent/present other of an social practices and transforms them into
equally abstract notion of Resistance. the operation of rule and domination
His protocol says: "not only the State but over particular classes and other social
also the dispersed microphysics of pow- groups. The way to reach such a concep-
er," his practice consistently privileges tualization is not to substitute difference
the latter and ignores the existence of for its mirror opposite, unity, but to
state power. rethink both in terms of a new concept—
2
Foucault (1972/1980) is quite correct, articulation. This is exactly the step
of course, to say that there are many Foucault refuses.
marxists who conceive the State as a kind Hence we have to characterize

of single object; that is, as simply the Althusser's advance, not in terms of his
unified will of the committee of the Rul- insistence on "difference" alone—the
ing Class, wherever it is currently meet- rallying cry of Derridean deconstruc-
ing today. From this conception flows the tion—but instead in terms of the neces-
necessary "yoking together" of every- sity of thinking unity and difference;
thing. I agree that one can no longer difference in complex unity, without this
think of the State in that way. The State becoming a hostage to the privileging of
is a contradictory formation which difference as such. If Derrida (1977) is
means that it has different modes of correct in arguing that there is always a
action, is active in many different sites: it perpetual slippage of the signifier, a
is pluricentered and multi-dimensional. continuous "deference," it is also correct
It has very distinct and dominant tenden- to argue that without some arbitrary
cies but it does not have a singly "fixing" or what I am calling "articula-
inscribed class character. On the other tion," there would be no signification or
hand, the State remains one of the crucial meaning at all. What is ideology but,
sites in a modern capitalist social forma- precisely, this work of fixing meaning
tion where political practices of different through establishing, by selection and
kinds are condensed. The function of the combination, a chain of equivalences?
State is, in part, precisely to bring That is why, despite all of its fault, I
together or articulate into a complexly want to bring forward to you, not the
structured instance, a range of political proto-Lacanian, neo-Foucauldian, pre-
discourses and social practices which are Derridean, Althusserean text—"Ideo-
concerned at different sites with the logical State Apparatuses" (Althusser,
transmission and transformation of pow- 1970/1971), but rather, the less theoreti-
er—some of those practices having little cally elaborated but in my view more
to do with the political domain as such, generative, more original, perhaps be-
being concerned with other domains cause more tentative text, For Marx
which are nevertheless articulated to the (Althusser, 1965/1969): and especially
State, for example, familial life, civil the essay "On Contradiction and Over-
society, gender and economic relations. determination" (pp. 87-128), which
94
begins precisely to think about complex ical, legal, and ideological practices—
kinds of determinacy without reduction- they suppose—will conform to and
ism to a simple unity. (I have consis- therefore be brought into a necessary
tently preferred For Marx to the more correspondence with what is—mistaken-
finished, more structuralist Reading ly—called "the economic." Now, as is by
Capital [Althusser & Balibar, 1968/ now de rigueur in advanced post-struc-
1970]: a preference founded not only on turalist theorizing, in the retreat from
my suspicion of the whole Spinozean, "necessary correspondence" there has
structuralist-causality machinery which been the usual unstoppable philosophi-
grinds through the latter text but also on cal slide all the way over to the opposite
my prejudice against the modish intellec- side; that is to say, the elision into what
tual assumption that the "latest" is nec- sounds almost the same but is in sub-
essarily u the best.") I am not concerned stance radically different—the declara-
here with the absolute theoretical rigor tion that there is "necessarily no corre-
of For Marx: at the risk of theoretical spondence." Paul Hirst, one of the most
eclecticism, I am inclined to prefer being sophisticated of the post-marxist theo-
"right but not rigorous" to being "rigor- rists, lent his considerable weight and
ous but wrong." By enabling us to think authority to that damaging slippage.
about different levels and different kinds "Necessarily no correspondence" ex-
of determination, For Marx gave us presses exactly the notion essential to
what Reading Capital did not: the ability discourse theory—that nothing really
to theorize about real historical events, or connects with anything else. Even when
particular texts (The German Ideology, the analysis of particular discursive for-
Marx & Engels, 1970), or particular mations constantly reveals the overlay or
ideological formations (humanism) as the sliding of one set of discourses over
determined by more than one structure another, everything seems to hang on the
(i.e., to think the process of overdetermi- polemical reiteration of the principle
nation). I think "contradiction" and that there is, of necessity, no correspon-
"overdetermination" are very rich theo- dence.
retical concepts—one of Althusser's hap- I do not accept that simple inversion. I
pier "loans" from Freud and Marx; it is think what we have discovered is that
not the case, in my view, that their there is no necessary correspondence,
richness has been exhausted by the ways which is different; and this formulation
in which they were applied by Althusser represents a third position. This means
himself. that there is no law which guarantees
The articulation of difference and that the ideology of a class is already and
unity involves a different way of trying to unequivocally given in or corresponds to
conceptualize the key marxist concept of the position which that class holds in the
determination. Some of the classical for- economic relations of capitalist produc-
mulations of base/superstructure which tion. The claim of "no guarantee"—
have dominated marxist theories of ide- which breaks with teleology—also im-
ology, represent ways of thinking about plies that there is no necessary non-
determination which are essentially correspondence. That is, there is no
based on the idea of a necessary corre- guarantee that, under all circumstances,
spondence between one level of a social ideology and class can never be articu-
formation and another. With or without lated together in any way or produce a
immediate identity, sooner or later, polit- social force capable for a time of self-
95
GSMC HALL
conscious "unity in action," in a class cisely because it is not guaranteed by

struggle. A theoretical position founded how those forces are constituted in the
on the open endedness of practice and first place.
struggle must have as one of its possible That leaves the model much more
results, an articulation in terms of effects indeterminate, open-ended and contin-
which does not necessarily correspond to gent than the classical position. It sug-
its origins. To put that more concretely: gests that you cannot "read off" the
an effective intervention by particular ideology of a class (or even sectors of a
social forces in, say, events in Russia in class) from its original position in the
1917, does not require us to say either structure of socio-economic relations.
that the Russian revolution was the But it refuses to say that it is impossible
product of the whole Russian proletar- to bring classes or fractions of classes, or
iat, united behind a single revolutionary indeed other kinds of social movements,
ideology (it clearly was not); nor that the through a developing practice of strug-
decisive character of the alliance (articu- gle, into articulation with those forms of
lation together) of workers, peasants, politics and ideology which allow them
soldiers and intellectuals who did consti- to become historically effective as col-
tute the social basis of that intervention lective social agents. The principal theo-
was guaranteed by their ascribed place retical reversal accomplished by "no
and position in the Russian social struc- necessary correspondence" is that deter-
ture and the necessary forms of revolu- minacy is transferred from the genetic
tionary consciousness attached to them. origins of class or other social forces in a
Nevertheless 1917 did happen—and, as structure to the effects or results of a
Lenin surprisingly observed, when "as a practice. So I would want to stand with
result of an extremely unique historical those parts of Althusser that I read as
situation, absolutely dissimilar currents, retaining the double articulation be-
absolutely heterogeneous class interests, tween "structure" and "practice," rather
absolutely contrary political and social than the full structuralist causality of
strivings . . . merged . . . in a strikingly Reading Capital or of the opening sec-
'harmonious5 manner." This points, as tions of Poulantzas' Political Power and
Althusser's comment on this passage in Social Classes (1968/1975). By "double
For Marx reminds us, to the fact that, if articulation" I mean that the structure—
a contradiction is to become "active in the given conditions of existence, the
the strongest sense, to become a ruptural structure of determinations in any situa-
principle, there must be an accumulation tion—can also be understood, from
of circumstances and currents so that another point of view, as simply the
whatever their origin and sense . . they result of previous practices. We may say
'fuse' into a ruptural unity" (Althusser, that a structure is what previously struc-
1965/1969, p. 99). The aim of a theoret- tured practices have produced as a result.
ically-informed political practice must These then constitute the "given condi-
surely be to bring about or construct the tions," the necessary starting point, for
articulation between social or economic new generations of practice. In neither
forces and those forms of politics and case should "practice" be treated as
ideology which might lead them in prac- transparently intentional: we make his-
tice to intervene in history in a pro- tory, but on the basis of anterior con-
gressive way—an articulation which has ditions which are not of our making.
to be constructed through practice pre- Practice is how a structure is actively
96
reproduced. Nevertheless, we need both their appointed political places, as

terms if we are to avoid the trap of Poulantzas so vividly described it, with
treating history as nothing but the out- their number plates on their backs. By
come of an internally self-propelling developing practices which articulate
structuralist machine. The structuralist differences into a collective will, or by
dichotomy between "structure" and generating discourses which condense a
"practice"—like the related one between range of different connotations, the dis-
"synchrony" and "diachrony"—serves a persed conditions of practice of different
useful analytic purpose but should not be social groups can be effectively drawn
fetishized into a rigid, mutally exclusive together in ways which make those social
distinction. forces not simply a class "in itself,"
Let us try to think a little further the positioned by some other relations over
question, not of the necessity, but of the which it has no control, but also capable
possibility of the articulations between of intervening as a historical force, a class
social groups, political practices and "for itself," capable of establishing new
ideological formations which could cre- collective projects.
ate, as a result, those historical breaks or These now appear to me to be the

shifts which we no longer find already generative advances which Althusser's
inscribed and guaranteed in the very work set in motion. I regard this reversal
structures and laws of the capitalist of basic concepts as of much greater
mode of production. This must not be value than many of the other features of
read as arguing that there are no tenden- his work which, at the time of their
cies which arise from our positioning appearance, so riveted Althusserian dis-
within the structures of social relations. cipleship: for example, the question of
We must not allow ourselves to slip from whether the implicit traces of structur-
an acknowledgment of the relative alist thought in Marx could be systemat-
autonomy of practice (in terms of its ically transformed into a full blown
effects), to fetishizing Practice—the slip structuralism by means of the skillful
which made many post-structuralists application to it of a structuralist combi-
Maoists for a brief moment before they natory of the Levi-Straussean3 variety—
became subscribers to the "New Philoso- the problematic of Reading Capital; or
phy" of the fashionable French Right. the clearly idealist attempt to isolate a
Structures exhibit tendencies—lines of so-called autonomous "theoretical prac-
force, openings and closures which con- tice;" or the disastrous conflation of his-
strain, shape, channel and in that sense, toricism with "the historical" which
"determine." But they cannot determine licensed a deluge of anti-historical theo-
in the harder sense of fix absolutely, reticist speculation by his epigoni; or
guarantee. People are not irrevocably even the ill-fated enterprise of substitut-
and indelibly inscribed with the ideas ing Spinoza for the ghost of Hegel in the
that they ought to think; the politics that Marxist machine. The principal flaw in
they ought to have are not, as it were, E. P. Thompson's (1978) anti-Althus-
already imprinted in their sociological serean diatribe, The Poverty of Theory,
genes. The question is not the unfolding is not the cataloging of these and other
of some inevitable law but rather the fundamental errors of direction in
linkages which, although they can be Althusser's project—which Thompson
made, need not necessarily be. There is was by no means the first to do—but
no guarantee that classes will appear in rather the inability to recognize, at the
97
GSMC HALL
same time, what real advances were, appropriate "ideas" through which the
nevertheless, being generated by interests of the dominant class are to be
Althusser's work. This yielded an undia- secured. Nor why, to a significant degree
lectical assessment of Althusser, and in many different historical social forma-
incidentally, of theoretical work in gen- tions, the dominated classes have used
eral. Hence the necessity, here, of stating "ruling ideas" to interpret and define
simply again what, despite his many their interests. To simply describe all of
weaknesses, Althusser accomplished that as the dominant ideology, which
which establishes a threshold behind unproblematically reproduces itself and
which we cannot allow ourselves to fall. which has gone on marching ahead ever
After "Contradiction and Overdetermi- since the free market first appeared, is an
nation," the debate about the social for- unwarrantable forcing of the notion of
mation and determinacy in marxism will an empirical identity between class and
never again be the same. That in itself ideology which concrete historical analy-
constitutes "an immense theoretical sis denies.
revolution." The second target of Althusser's criti-
cism is the notion of "false conscious-

ness" which, he argues, assumes that
IDEOLOGY there is one true ascribed ideology per
Let me turn now to the specific ques- class, and then explains its failure to
tion of ideology. Althusser's critique of manifest itself in terms of a screen which
ideology follows many of the lines of his falls between subjects and the real rela-
critique of general positions in the classi- tions in which subjects are placed, pre-
cal marxist problematic sketched above. venting them from recognizing the ideas
That is to say, he is opposed to class which they ought to have. That notion of
reductionism in ideology—the notion "false consciousness," Althusser says
that there is some guarantee that the quite rightly, is founded on an empiricist
ideological position of a social class will relationship to knowledge. It assumes
always correspond to its position in the that social relations give their own,
social relations of production. Althusser unambiguous knowledge to perceiving,
here is criticizing a very important thinking subjects; that there is a trans-
insight which people have taken from parent relationship between the situa-
The German Ideology (Marx & Engels, tions in which subjects are placed and
1970)—the founding text of the classical how subjects come to recognize and know
marxist theory of ideology: namely, that about them. Consequently, true knowl-
ruling ideas always correspond to ruling edge must be subject to a sort of masking,
class positions; that the ruling class as a the source of which is very difficult to
whole has a mind of its own which is identify, but which prevents people from
located in a particular ideology. The "recognizing the real." In this con-
difficulty is that this does not enable us to ception, it is always other people, never
understand why all the ruling classes we ourselves, who are in false consciousness,
actually know have actually advanced in who are bewitched by the dominant ide-
real historical situations by a variety of ology, who are the dupes of history.
different ideologies or by now playing Althusser's third critique develops out
one ideology and then another. Nor why of his notions about theory. He insists
there are internal struggles, within all that knowledge has to be produced as the
the major political formations, over the consequence of a particular practice.
98
Knowledge, whether ideological or duction themselves but outside of them.

scientific, is the production of a practice. Of course, he does not mean biologically
It is not the reflection of the real in or technically reproduced only, he means
discourse, in language. Social relations socially and culturally as well. It is pro-
have to be "represented in speech and duced in the domain of the superstruc-
language" to acquire meaning. Meaning tures: in institutions like the family and
is produced as a result of ideological or church. It requires cultural institutions
theoretical work. It is not simply a result such as the media, trade unions, political
of an empiricist epistemology. parties, etc., which are not directly
As a result, Althusser wants to think linked with production as such but
the specificity of ideological practices, to which have the crucial function of "culti-
think their difference from other social vating" labor of a certain moral and
practices. He also wants to think "the cultural kind—that which the modern
complex unity" which articulates the capitalist mode of production requires.
level of ideological practice to other Schools, universities, training boards and
instances of a social formation. And so, research centers reproduce the technical
using the critique of the traditional con- competence of the labor required by
ceptions of ideology which he found in advanced systems of capitalist produc-
front of him, he set to work to offer some tion. But Althusser reminds us that a
alternatives. Let me look briefly at what technically competent but politically
these alternatives are, for Althusser. insubordinate labor force is no labor
force at all for capital. Therefore, the
more important task is cultivating that
"IDEOLOGICAL STATE kind of labor which is able and willing,
APPARATUSES" morally and politically, to be subordi-
The one with which everybody is nated to the discipline, the logic, the
familiar is presented in the "Ideological culture and compulsions of the economic
State Apparatuses" essay. Some of his mode of production of capitalist develop-
propositions in that essay have had a ment, at whatever stage it has arrived;
very strong influence or resonance in the that is, labor which can be subjected to
subsequent debate. First of all Althusser the dominant system ad infinitum. Con-
tries to think the relationship between sequently, what ideology does, through
ideology and other social practices in the various ideological apparatuses, is to
terms of the concept of reproduction. reproduce the social relations of produc-
What is the function of ideology? It is to tion in this larger sense. That is
reproduce the social relations of produc- Althusser's first formulation.
tion. The social relations of production Reproduction in that sense is, of
are necessary to the material existence of course, a classic term to be found in
any social formation or any mode of Marx. Althusser doesn't have to go any
production. But the elements or the further than Capital (Marx, 1970) to
agents of a mode of production, espe- discover it; although it should be said
cially with respect to the critical factor of that he gives it a very restrictive defini-
their labor, has itself to be continually tion. He refers only to the reproduction
produced and reproduced. Althusser of labor power, whereas reproduction in
argues that, increasingly in capitalist Marx is a much wider concept, including
social formations, labor is not repro- the reproduction of the social relations of
duced inside the social relations of pro- possession and of exploitation, and
99
CSMG HALL
indeed of the mode of production itself. The second influential proposition in

This is quite typical of Althusser—when the "Ideological State Apparatuses"
he dives into the marxist bag and comes essay is the insistence that ideology is a
out with a term or concept which has practice. That is, it appears in practices
wide marxist resonances, he quite often located within the rituals of specific
gives it a particular limiting twist which apparatuses or social institutions and
is specifically his own. In this way, he organizations. Althusser makes the dis-
continually "firms up" Marx's structur- tinction here between repressive state
alist cast of thought. apparatuses, like the police and the
There is a problem with this position. army, and ideological state apparatuses,
Ideology in this essay seems to be, sub- like churches, trade unions, and media
stantially, that of the dominant class. If which are not directly organized by the
there is an ideology of the dominated State. The emphasis on "practices and
classes, it seems to be one which is rituals" is wholly welcome, especially if
perfectly adapted to the functions and not interpreted too narrowly or polemi-
interests of the dominant class within the cally. Ideologies are the frameworks of
capitalist mode of production. At this thinking and calculation about the

point, Althusserean structuralism is world—the "ideas" which people use to
open to the charge, which has been made figure out how the social world works,
against it, of a creeping marxist func- what their place is in it and what they
tionalism. Ideology seems to perform the ought to do. But the problem for a mate-
function required of it (i.e., to reproduce rialist or nonidealist theory is how to
the dominance of the dominant ideolo- deal with ideas, which are mental events,
gy), to perform it effectively, and to go on and therefore, as Marx says, can only
performing it, without encountering any occur "in thought, in the head" (where
counter-tendencies (a second concept else?), in a nonidealist, nonvulgar mate-
always to be found in Marx wherever he rialist manner. Althusser's emphasis is
discusses reproduction and precisely the helpful, here—helping us out of the phil-
concept which distinguishes the analysis osophical dilemma, as well as having the
in Capital from functionalism). When additional virtue, in my view, of being
you ask about the contradictory field of right. He places the emphasis on where
ideology, about how the ideology of the ideas appear, where mental events regis-
dominated classes gets produced and ter or are realized, as social phenomena.
reproduced, about the ideologies of resis- That is principally, of course, in lan-
tance, of exclusion, of deviation, etc., guage (understood in the sense of sig-
there are no answers in this essay. Nor is nifying practices involving the use of
there an account of why it is that ideolo- signs; in the semiotic domain, the domain
gy, which is so effectively stitched into of meaning and representation). Equally
the social formation in Althusser's important, in the rituals and practices of
account, would ever produce its opposite social action or behavior, in which ide-
or its contradiction. But a notion of ologies imprint or inscribe themselves.
reproduction which is only functionally Language and behavior are the media, so
adjusted to capital and which has no to speak, of the material registration of
countervailing tendencies, encounters no ideology, the modality of its functioning.
contradictions, is not the site of class These rituals and practices always occur
struggle, and is utterly foreign to Marx's in social sites, linked with social appara-
conception of reproduction. tuses. That is why we have to analyze or
100
deconstruct language and behavior in main with Althusser's nomenclature.

order to decipher the patterns of ideolog-
The "Ideological State Apparatuses"
ical thinking which are inscribed in essay, again, unproblematically assumes
them. an identity between the many "autono-
This important advance in our think- mous" parts of civil society and the State.
ing about ideology has sometimes been In contrast, this articulation is at the
obscured by theorists who claim that center of Gramsci's (1971) problem of
ideologies are not "ideas" at all but hegemony. Gramsci has difficulties in
practices, and it is this which guarantees
formulating the state/civil society boun-
that the theory of ideology is materialist.
dary precisely because where it falls is
I do not agree with this emphasis. I think
neither a simple nor uncontradictory
it suffers from a "misplaced concrete- matter. A critical question in developed
ness." The materialism of marxism can- liberal democracies is precisely how ide-
not rest on the claim that it abolishes the
ology is reproduced in the so-called pri-
mental character—let alone the real vate institutions of civil society—the
effects—of mental events (i.e., thought),theatre of consent—apparently outside
for that is, precisely, the error of whatof the direct sphere of play of the State
Marx called a one-sided or mechanical itself. If everything is, more or less,
materialism (in the Theses on Feuer- under the supervision of the State, it is
bach} Marx, 1963). It must rest on the quite easy to see why the only ideology
material forms in which thought appears that gets reproduced is the dominant one.
and on the fact that it has real, material
But the far more pertinent, but difficult,
effects. That is, at any rate, the mannerquestion is how a society allows the
in which I have learned from Althusser's relative freedom of civil institutions to
much-quoted assertion that the existence operate in the ideological field, day after
of ideology is material "because it is day, without direction or compulsion by
inscribed in practices." Some damage the State; and why the consequence of
has been done by Althusser's over- that "free play" of civil society, through
dramatic and too-condensed formula- a very complex reproductive process,
tion, at the close of this part of his nevertheless consistently reconstitutes
argument, that—as he quaintly puts its: ideology as a "structure in dominance."
"Disappear: the term ideas." Althusser That is a much tougher problem to
has accomplished much but he has not to explain, and the notion of "ideological
my way of thinking actually abolished state apparatuses" precisely forecloses
the existence of ideas and thought, how- the issue. Again, it is a closure of a
ever convenient and reassuring that broadly "functionalist" type which pre-
would be. What he has shown is that supposes a necessary functional corre-
ideas have a material existence. As he spondence between the requirements of
says himself, "the 'ideas' of a human the mode of production and the functions
subject exists in his [or her] actions" and
of ideology.
actions are "inserted into practices gov- After all, in democratic societies, it is
erned by the rituals in which those prac-not an illusion of freedom to say that we
tices are inscribed within the material cannot adequately explain the structured
existence of an ideological apparatus," biases of the media in terms of their
which is different (Althusser, 1970/ being instructed by the State precisely
1971, p. 158). what to print or allow on television. But
Nevertheless, serious problems re- precisely how is it that such large num-
101
CSMC HALL
bers of journalists, consulting only their begin to make sense of how complex are
"freedom" to publish and be damned, do the processes by which capitalism must
tend to reproduce, quite spontaneously, work to order and organize a civil society
without compulsion, again and again, which is not, technically, under its
accounts of the world constructed within immediate control. These are important
fundamentally the same ideological cate- problems in the field of ideology and
gories? How is it that they are driven, culture which the formulation, "ideolog-
again and again, to such a limited reper- ical state apparatuses," encourages us to
toire within the ideological field? Even evade.
journalists who write within the muck- The third of Althusser's propositions
raking tradition often seem to be is his affirmation that ideology only
inscribed by an ideology to which they do exists by virtue of the constituting cate-
not consciously commit themselves, and gory of the "subject." There is a long and
which, instead, "writes them." complicated story here, only part of
This is the aspect of ideology under which I have time to rehearse. I have said
liberal capitalism which most needs elsewhere4 that Reading Capital is very
explaining. And that is why, when similar in its mode of argumentation to

people say "Of course this is a free Levi-Strauss and other non-marxist
society; the media operate freely," there structuralists. Like Levi-Strauss (1958/
is no point in responding "No, they 1972), Althusser also talks about social
operate only through compulsion by the relations as processes without a subject.
State." Would that they did! Then all Similarly, when Althusser insists that
that would be required would be to pull classes are simply "bearers and sup-
out the four or five of their key control- ports" of economic social relations, he,
lers and put in a few controllers of our like Levi-Strauss, is using a Saussurean
own. In fact ideological reproduction can conception of language, applied to the
no more be explained by the inclinations domain of practice in general, to displace
of individuals or by overt coercion (social the traditional agent/subject of classical
control) than economic reproduction can western epistemology. Althusser's posi-
be explained by direct force. Both expla- tion here is very much in line with the
nations—and they are analogous—have notion that language speaks us, as the
to begin where Capital begins: with ana- myth "speaks" the myth-maker. This
lyzing how the "spontaneous freedom" abolishes the problem of subjective iden-
of the circuits actually work. This is a tification and of how individuals or
problem which the "ideological state groups become the enunciators of ideolo-
apparatus" nomenclature simply fore- gy. But, as Althusser develops his theory
closes. Althusser refuses to distinguish of ideology, he moves away from the
between state and civil society (on the notion that ideology is simply a process
same grounds which Poulantzas (1968/ without a subject. He seems to take on
1975) also later spuriously supported— board the critique that this domain of the
i.e., that the distinction belonged only subject and subjectivity cannot be simply
within "bourgeois ideology"). His no- left as an empty space. The "decentering
menclature does not give sufficient of the subject," which is one of structur-
weight to what Gramsci would call the alism's main projects, still leaves unset-
immense complexities of society in mod- tled the problem of the subjectification
ern social formations—"the trenches and and subjectivizing of ideology. There are
fortifications of civil society." It does not still processes of subjective effect to be
102
accounted for. How do concrete individ- rate compartments, a fatal dislocation

uals fall into place within particular occurred. What was originally conceived
ideologies if we have no notion of the as one critical element in the general
subject or of subjectivity? On the other theory of ideology—the theory of the
hand, we have to rethink this question in subject—came to be substituted, meto-
a way different from the tradition of nymically, for the whole of the theory
empiricist philosophy. This is the begin- itself. The enormously sophisticated the-
ning of a very long development, which ories which have subsequently developed
begins in the "Ideological State Appara- have therefore all been theories about the
tuses" essay, with Althusser's insistence second question: How are subjects con-
that all ideology functions through the stituted in relation to different dis-
category of the subject, and it is only in courses? What is the role of unconscious
and for ideology that subjects exist. processes in creating these positionali-
This "subject" is not to be confused ties? That is the object of discourse the-
with lived historical individuals. It is the ory and linguistically-influenced psycho-
category, the position where the sub- analysis. Or one can inquire into the
ject—the I of ideological statements—is conditions of enunciation in a particular

constituted. Ideological discourses them- discursive formation. That is the prob-
selves constitute us as subjects for dis- lematic of Foucault. Or one can inquire
course. Althusser explains how this into the unconscious processes by which
works through the concept, borrowed subjects and subjectivity as such are con-
from Lacan (1966/1977), of "interpella- stituted. That is the problematic of
tion." This suggests that we are hailed or Lacan. There has thus been considerable
summoned by the ideologies which theorizing on the site of the second part
recruit us as their "authors," their essen- of the "Ideological State Apparatuses"
tial subject. We are constituted by the essay. But on the site of the first part—
unconscious processes of ideology, in that nothing. Finito! The inquiry simply
position of recognition or fixture halted with Althusser's inadequate for-
between ourselves and the signifying mulations about the reproduction of the
chain without which no signification of social relations of production. The two
ideological meaning would be possible. It sides of the difficult problem of ideology
is precisely from this turn in the argu- were fractured in that essay and, ever
ment that the long trail into psychoanal- since, have been assigned to different
ysis and post-structuralism (and finally poles. The question of reproduction has
out of the marxist problematic) un- been assigned to the marxist, (male)
winds. pole, and the question of subjectivity has
There is something both profoundly been assigned to the psychoanalytic,
important and seriously regretable about (feminist) pole. Since then, never have
the shape of this "Ideological State the twain met. The latter is constituted
Apparatuses" essay. It has to do exactly as a question about the "insides" of
with its two part structure: Part I is people, about psychoanalysis, subjectiv-
about ideology and the reproduction of ity and sexuality, and is understood to be
the social relations of production. Part II "about" that. It is in this way and on this
is about the constitution of subjects and site that the link to feminism has been
how ideologies interpellate us in the increasingly theorized. The former is
realm of the Imaginary. As a result of "about" social relations, production and
treating those two aspects in two sepa- the "hard edge" of productive systems,
103
CSMC HALL
and that is what marxism and the reduc- float around in empty space. We know
tive discourses of class are "about." This they are there because they are material-
bifurcation of the theoretical project has ized in, they inform, social practices. In
had the most disastrous consequences for that sense, the social is never outside of
the unevenness of the subsequent devel- the semiotic. Every social practice is con-
opment of the problematic of ideology, stituted within the interplay of meaning
not to speak of its damaging political and representation and can itself be rep-
effects. resented. In other words, there is no
social practice outside of ideology. How-
ever, this does not mean that, because all
IDEOLOGY IN FOR MARX social practices are within the discursive,
Instead of following either of these there is nothing to social practice but
paths, I want to break from that impasse discourse. I know what is vested in
for a moment and look at some alterna- describing processes that we usually talk
tive starting points in Althusser, from about in terms of ideas as practices;
which I think, useful advances can still "practices" feel concrete. They occur in
be made. Long before he had arrived at particular sites and apparatuses—like

the "advanced" position of the "Ideologi- classrooms, churches, lecture theatres,
cal State Apparatuses" essay, Althusser factories, schools and families. And that
said, in a short section in For Marx concreteness allows us to claim that they
(1965/1969, pp. 231-236), some simple are "material." Yet differences must be
things about ideology which bear repeat- remarked between different kinds of
ing and thinking about. This is where he practice. Let me suggest one. If you are
defined ideologies as, to paraphrase, sys- engaged in a part of the modern capi-
tems of representation—composed of talist labor process, you are using, in
concepts, ideas, myths, or images—in combination with certain means of pro-
which men and women (my addition) duction, labor power—purchased at a
live their imaginary relations to the real certain price—to transform raw materi-
conditions of existence. That statement is als into a product, a commodity. That is
worth examining bit by bit. the definition of a practice—the practice
The designation of ideologies as "sys- of labor. Is it outside of meaning and
tems of representation" acknowledges discourse? Certainly not. How could
their essentially discursive and semiotic large numbers of people either learn that
character. Systems of representation are practice or combine their labor power in
the systems of meaning through which the division of labor with others, day
we represent the world to ourselves and after day, unless labor was within the
one another. It acknowledges that ideo- domain of representation and meaning?
logical knowledge is the result of specific Is this practice of transformation, then,
practices—the practices involved in the nothing but a discourse? Of course not. It
production of meaning. But since there does not follow that because all practices
are no social practices which take place are in ideology, or inscribed by ideology,
outside the domain of meaning (semiot- all practices are nothing but ideology.
ic), are all practices simply discourses? There is a specificity to those practices
Here we have to tread very carefully. whose principal object is to produce ideo-
We are in the presence of yet another logical representations. They are dif-
suppressed term or excluded middle. ferent from those practices which—
Althusser reminds us that ideas don't just meaningfully, intelligibly—produce
104
other commodities. Those people who plex interplay of different ideological

work in the media are producing, repro- discourses and formations in any modern
ducing and transforming the field of developed society. Nor is the terrain of
ideological representation itself. They ideology constituted as a field of
stand in a different relationship to ideol- mutually exclusive and internally self-
ogy in general from others who are pro- sustaining discursive chains. They con-
ducing and reproducing the world of test one another, often drawing on a
material commodities—which are, nev- common, shared repertoire of concepts,
ertheless, also inscribed by ideology. rearticulating and disarticulating them
Barthes observed long ago that all things within different systems of difference or
are also significations. The latter forms equivalence.
of practice operate in ideology but they Let me turn to the next part of
are not ideological in terms of the speci- Althusser's definition of ideology—the
ficity of their object. systems of representation in which men
I want to retain the notion that ideo- and women live. Althusser puts inverted
logies are systems of representation commas around "live," because he
materialized in practices, but I don't means not blind biological or genetic life,
want to fetishize "practice." Too often, but the life of experiencing, within cul-
at this level of theorizing, the argument ture, meaning and representation. It is
has tended to identify social practice with not possible to bring ideology to an end
social discourse. While the emphasis on and simply live the real. We always need
discourse is correct in pointing to the systems through which we represent
importance of meaning and representa- what the real is to ourselves and to
tion, it has been taken right through to its others. The second important point
absolute opposite and this allows us to about "live" is that we ought to under-
talk about all practice as if there were stand it broadly. By "live" he means that
nothing but ideology. This is simply an men and women use a variety of systems
inversion. of representation to experience, interpret
Note that Althusser says "systems," and "make sense of" the conditions of
not "system." The important thing about their existence. It follows that ideology
systems of representation is that they are can always define the same so-called
not singular. There are numbers of them object or objective condition in the real
in any social formation. They are plural. world differently. There is "no necessary
Ideologies do not operate through single correspondence" between the conditions
ideas; they operate, in discursive chains, of a social relation or practice and the
in clusters, in semantic fields, in discur- number of different ways in which it can
sive formations. As you enter an ideolog- be represented. It does not follow that, as
ical field and pick out any one nodal some neo-Kantians in discourse theory
representation or idea, you immediately have assumed, because we cannot know
trigger off a whole chain of connotative or experience a social relation except
associations. Ideological representations "within ideology," therefore it has no
connote—summon—one another. So a existence independent of the machinery
variety of different ideological systems or of representation: a point already well
logics are available in any social forma- clarified by Marx in the "1857 Introduc-
tion. The notion of the dominant ideol- tion" but woefully misinterpreted by
ogy and the subordinated ideology is an Althusser himself.
inadequate way of representing the com- Perhaps the most subversive implica-
105
GSMC HALL
tion of the term "live" is that it connotes account be confused with the real. It is
the domain of experience. It is in and only later in his work that this domain
through the systems of representation of becomes the "Imaginary" in a proper
culture that we "experience" the world: Lacanian 5 sense. It may be that he
experience is the product of our codes of already had Lacan in mind in this earlier
intelligibility, our schémas of interpreta- essay, but he is not yet concerned to
tion. Consequently, there is no experi- affirm that knowing and experiencing
encing outside of the categories of repre- are only possible through the particular
sentation or ideology. The notion that psychoanalytic process which Lacan has
our heads are full of false ideas which posited. Ideology is described as imagi-
can, however, be totally dispersed when nary simply to distinguish it from the
we throw ourselves open to "the real" as notion that "real relations" declare their
a moment of absolute authentication, is own meanings unambiguously.
probably the most ideological conception Finally, let us consider Althusser's use
of all. This is exactly that moment of of this phrase, "the real conditions of
"recognition" when the fact that mean- existence"—scandalous (within contem-
ing depends on the intervention of sys- porary cultural theory) because here
tems of representation disappears and Althusser commits himself to the notion

we seem secure within the naturalistic that social relations actually exist apart
attitude. It is a moment of extreme ideo- from their ideological representations or
logical closure. Here we are most under experiences. Social relations do exist. We
the sway of the highly ideological struc- are born into them. They exist indepen-
tures of all—common sense, the regime dent of our will. They are real in their
of the "taken for granted." The point at structure and tendency. We cannot
which we lose sight of the fact that sense develop a social practice without repre-
is a production of our systems of representing those conditions to ourselves in
sentation is the point at which we fall, one way or another; but the representa-
not into Nature but into the naturalistic tions do not exhaust their effect. Social
illusion: the height (or depth) of ideolo- relations exist, independent of mind,
gy. Consequently, when we contrast independent of thought. And yet they can
ideology to experience, or illusion to only be conceptualized in thought, in the
authentic truth, we are failing to recog- head. That is how Marx (1953/1973)
nize that there is no way of experiencing put it in the "1857 Introduction" to the
the "real relations" of a particular soci- Grundrisse. It is important that
ety outside of its cultural and ideological Althusser affirms the objective character
categories. That is not to say that all of the real relations that constitute modes
knowledge is simply the product of our of production in social formations,
will-to-power; there may be some ideo- though his later work provided the war-
logical categories which give us a more rant for a quite different theorization.
adequate or more profound knowledge of Althusser here is closer to a "realist"
particular relations than others. philosophical position than his later
Because there is no one to one rela- Kantian or Spinozean manifestations.
tionship between the conditions of social Now I want to go beyond the particu-
existence we are living and how we lar phrase I have been explicating to
experience them, it is necessary for expand on two or three more general
Althusser to call these relationships things associated with this formulation.
"imaginary." That is, they must on no Althusser says these systems of represen-
106
tation are essentially founded on uncon- subsequent ideological discourses. It is

scious structures. Again, in the earlier quite clear that such processes do operate
essay, he seems to be thinking the uncon- in early infancy, making possible the
scious nature of ideology in ways similar formation of relations with others and
to those in which Levi-Strauss used the outside world. They are inextricably
when he defined the codes of a myth as bound up—for one thing—with the
unconscious—in terms of its rules and nature and development of, above all,
categories. We are not ourselves aware of sexual identities. On the other hand, it is
the rules and systems of classification of by no means adequately proven that
an ideology when we enunciate any ideo- these positionings alone constitute the
logical statement. Nevertheless, like the mechanisms whereby all individuals
rules of language, they are open to locate themselves in ideology. We are not
rational inspection and analysis by entirely stitched into place in our rela-
modes of interruption and deconstruc- tion to the complex field of historically-
tion, which can open up a discourse to its situated ideological discourses exclu-
foundations and allow us to inspect the sively at that moment alone, when we
categories which generate it. We know enter the "transition from biological
the words to the song, "Rule Brittania" existence to h u m a n e x i s t e n c e "

but we are "unconscious" of the deep (Althusser, "Freud and Lacan," 1970/
structure—the notions of nation, the 1971, p. 93). We remain open to be
great slabs and slices of imperialist histo- positioned and situated in different ways,
ry, the assumptions about global domi- at different moments throughout our
nation and supremacy, the necessary existence.
Other of other peoples' subordination— Some argue that those later position-
which are richly impacted in its simple ings simply recapitulate the primary
celebratory resonances. These connota- positions which are established in the
tional chains are not open nor easily resolution of the Oedipus complex. It
amenable to change and reformulation at seems more accurate to say that subjects
the conscious level. Does it therefore are not positioned in relation to the field
follow that they are the product of spe- of ideologies exclusively by the resolution
cific unconscious processes and mecha- of unconscious processes in infancy.
nisms in the psychoanalytic sense? They are also positioned by the discur-
This returns us to the question of how sive formations of specific social forma-
it is that subjects recognize themselves in tions. They are situated differently in
ideology: How is the relationship relation to a different range of social
between individual subjects and the posi- sites. It seems to me wrong to assume
tionalities of a particular ideological dis- that the process which allows the indi-
course constructed? It seems possible vidual to speak or enunciate at all—
that some of the basic positionings of language as such—is the same as that
individuals in language, as well as cer- which allows the individual to enunciate
tain primary positions in the ideological him- or herself as a particular gendered,
field, are constituted through uncon- raced, socially sexed, etc., individual in a
scious processes in the psychoanalytic variety of specific representational sys-
sense, at the early stages of formation. tems in definite societies. The universal
Those processes could then have a pro- mechanisms of interpellation may pro-
found, orienting impact on the ways in vide the necessary general conditions for
which we situate ourselves in later life in language but it is mere speculation and
107
CSMC HALL
assertion which so far suggests that they hood. . . . A mass of research remains to
provide the sufficient concrete conditions be done on these ideological formations.
for the enunciation of historically spe- This is a task for historical materialism"
cific and differentiated ideologies. Dis- (p. 211). But in the later formulations,
course theory one-sidedly insists that an (and even more so in the Lacanian
account of subjectivity in terms of deluge which has subsequently followed)
Lacan's unconscious processes is itself this kind of caution has been thrown to
the whole theory of ideology. Certainly, the wind in a veritable riot of affirma-
a theory of ideology has to develop, as tion. In the familiar slippage, "the
earlier marxist theories did not, a theory unconscious is structured like a lan-
of subjects and subjectivity. It must guage" has become "the unconscious is
account for the recognition of the self the same as the entry into language,
within ideological discourse, what it is culture, sexual identity, ideology, and so
that allows subjects to recognize them- on. 55
selves in the discourse and to speak it What I have tried to do is to go back to
spontaneously as its author. But that is a much simpler and more productive
not the same as taking the Freudian
way of beginning to think about ideolo-

schema, reread in a linguistic way by gy, which I also find in Althusser's work
Lacan, as an adequate theory of ideology though not at the fashionable end of it.
in social formations. Recognizing that, in these matters—
Althusser himself appeared, earlier though our conceptual apparatus is
(in his u Freud And Lacan" essay, first extremely sophisticated and "advanced,"
written in 1964 and published in in terms of real understanding, substan-
Althusser, 1970/1971), to recognize the tive research, and progress to knowledge
necessarily provisional and speculative in a genuinely "open" (i.e., scientific)
nature of Lacan's propositions. He way—we are very much at the beginning
repeated the succession of "identities" of a long and difficult road. In terms of
through which Lacan's argument is sus- this "long march," For Marx is earlier
tained—the transition from biological to than the flights of fancy, and occasionally
human existence paralleling the Law of of fantasy, which overtake the "Ideologi-
Order, which is the same as the Law of cal State Apparatuses" essay. It ought
Culture, which "is confounded in its not, however, be left behind for that
formal essence with the order of lan- reason alone. "Contradiction and Over-
guage" (p. 193). But he does then pick determination" contains a richer notion
up the purely formal nature of these of determination than Reading Capital,
homologies in a footnote: "Formally: for though not so rigorously theorized. For
the Law of Culture which is first intro- Marx has a fuller notion of ideology than
duced as language . . . is not exhausted does "Ideological State Apparatuses,"
by language; its content is the real kin- though it is not as comprehensive.
ship structures and the determinate ideo-
logical formations in which the persons
inscribed in these structures live their READING AN
function. It is not enough to know that IDEOLOGICAL FIELD
the Western family is patriarchal and Let me take a brief, personal example
exogamic . . . we must also work out the as an indication of how some of the
ideological formations that govern pater- things I have said about Althusser's gen-
nity, maternity, conjugality and child- eral concept of ideology allow us to think
108
about particular ideological formations. great weight to these finely-graded clas-

I want to think about that particular sificatory distinctions and, because of
complex of discourses that implicates the what it signified in terms of distinctions
ideologies of identity, place, ethnicity of class, status, race, color, insisted on the
and social formation generated around inscription. Indeed, they clung to it
the term "black." Such a term "functions through thick and thin, like the ultimate
like a language," indeed it does. Lan- ideological lifeline it was. You can
guages, in fact, since the formations in imagine how mortified they were to dis-
which I place it, based on my own cover that, when I came to England, I
experience, both in the Carribean and in was hailed as "coloured" by the natives
Britain, do not correspond exactly to the there precisely because, as far as they
American situation. It is only at the could see, I was "black," for all practical
"chaotic" level of language in general purposes! The same term, in short, car-
that they are the same. In fact what we ried quite different connotations because
find are differences, specificities, within it operated within different "systems of
different, even if related, histories. differences and equivalences." It is the
At different times in my thirty years in position within the different signifying
England, I have been "hailed" or inter- chains which "means," not the literal,
pellated as "coloured," "West-Indian," fixed correspondence between an iso-
"Negro," "black," "immigrant." Some- lated term and some denotated position
times in the street; sometimes at street in the color spectrum.
corners; sometimes abusively; sometimes The Caribbean system was organized
in a friendly manner; sometimes ambig- through the finely graded classification
uously. (A black friend of mine was systems of the colonial discourses of race,
disciplined by his political organization arranged on an ascending scale up to the
for "racism" because, in order to scan- ultimate "white" term—the latter al-
dalize the white neighborhood in which ways out of reach, the impossible, "ab-
we both lived as students, he would ride sent" term, whose absent-presence struc-
up to my window late at night and, from tured the whole chain. In the bitter
the middle of the street, shout "Negro!" struggle for place and position which
very loudly to attract my attention!) All characterizes dependent societies, every
of them inscribe me "in place" in a notch on the scale mattered profoundly.
signifying chain which constructs iden- The English system, by contrast, was
tity through the categories of color, eth- organized around a simpler binary
nicity, race. dichotomy, more appropriate to the colo-
In Jamaica, where I spent my youth nizing order: "white/not-white." Mean-
and adolescence, I was constantly hailed ing is not a transparent reflection of the
as "coloured." The way that term was world in language but arises through the
articulated with other terms in the syn- differences between the terms and cate-
taxes of race and ethnicity was such as to gories, the systems of reference, which
produce the meaning, in effect: "not classify out the world and allow it to be
black." The "blacks" were the rest—the in this way appropriated into social
vast majority of the people, the ordinary thought, common sense.
folk. To be "coloured" was to belong to As a concrete lived individual, am I
the "mixed" ranks of the brown middle indeed any one of these interpellations?
class, a cut above the rest—in aspiration Does any one of them exhaust me? In
if not in reality. My family attached fact, I "am" not one or another of these
109
CSMC HALL
ways of representing me, though I have the unspoken, the unsayable. Meaning is
been all of them at different times and relational within an ideological system of
still am some of them to some degree. presences and absences. "Fort, da."
But, there is no essential, unitary " I " — Althusser, in a controversial passage
only the fragmentary, contradictory sub- in the "Ideological State Apparatuses"
ject I become. Long after, I encountered essay says that we are "always-already"
"coloured" again, now as it were from subjects. Actually Hirst and others con-
the other side, beyond it. I tried to teach test this. If we are "always-already"
my son he was "black" at the same time subjects, we would have to be born with
as he was learning the colors of the the structure of recognitions and the
spectrum and he kept saying to me that means to positioning ourselves with lan-
he was "brown." Of course, he was guage already formed. Whereas Lacan,
both. from whom Althusser and others draw,
Certainly I am from the West uses Freud and Saussure to provide an
Indies—though I've lived my adult life account of how that structure of recogni-
in England. Actually, the relationship tions is formed (through the mirror
between "West-Indian" and "immi- phase and the resolutions of the Oedipus
grant" is very complex for me. In the complex, etc.). However, let us leave that
1950s, the two terms were equivalents. objection aside for a moment, since a
Now, the term "West Indian" is very larger truth about ideology is implied in
romantic. It connotes reggae, rum-and- what Althusser says. We experience ide-
coke, shades, mangoes, and all that ology as if it emanates freely and sponta-
canned tropical fruit-salad falling out of neously from within us, as if we were its
the coconut trees. This is an idealized free subjects, "working by ourselves."
"I." (I wish I felt more like that more of Actually, we are spoken by and spoken
the time.) "Immigrant" I also know well. for, in the ideological discourses which
There is nothing remotely romantic await us even at our birth, into which we
about that. It places one so equivocally as are born and find our place. The new
really belonging somewhere else. "And born child who still, according to
when are you going back home?" Part of Althusser's reading of Lacan, has to
Mrs. Thatcher's "alien wedge." Actu- acquire the means of being placed within
ally I only understood the way this term the law of Culture, is already expected,
positioned me relatively late in life—and named, positioned in advance "by the
the "hailing" on that occasion came from forms of ideology (paternal/maternal/
an unexpected direction. It was when my conjugal/fraternal). ' '
mother said to me, on a brief visit home: The observation puts me in mind of a
"I hope they don't mistake you over there related early experience. It is a story
for one of those immigrants!" The shock frequently retold in my family—with
of recognition. I was also on many occa- great humor all round, though I never
sions "spoken" by that other, absent, saw the joke; part of our family lore—
unspoken term, the one that is never that when my mother first brought me
there, the "American" one, undignified home from the hospital at my birth, my
even by a capital "N." The "silence" sister looked into my crib and said,
around this term was probably the most "Where did you get this Coolie baby
eloquent of them all. Positively marked from?" "Coolies" in Jamaica are East
terms "signify" because of their position Indians, deriving from the indentured
in relation to what is absent, unmarked, laborers brought into the country after
110
Abolition to replace the slaves in planta- discourses do have the function of "re-
tion labor. "Coolie" is, if possible, one producing the social relations of produc-
rung lower in the discourse of race than tion." And yet, in contemporary Carib-
"black." This was my sister's way of bean societies, the two systems do not
remarking that, as often happens in the perfectly correspond. There are "blacks"
best of mixed families, I had come out a at the top of the ladder too, some of them
good deal darker-skinned than was aver- exploiters of other black labor, and some
age in my family. I hardly know any firm friends of Washington's. The world
more whether this really happened or neither divides neatly into its social/
was a manufactured story by my family natural categories, nor do ideological
or even perhaps whether I made it up categories necessarily produce their own
and have now forgotten when and why. "appropriate" modes of consciousness.
But I felt, then and now, summoned to We are therefore obliged to say that
my "place" by it. From that moment there is a complicated set of articulations
onwards, my place within this system of between the two systems of discourse.
reference has been problematic. It may The relationship of equivalences be-
help to explain why and how I eventu- tween them is not fixed but has changed
ally become what I was first nominated: historically. Nor is it "determined" by a

the "Coolie" of my family, the one who single cause but rather the result of an
did not fit, the outsider, the one who "over-determination."
hung around the street with all the These discourses therefore clearly
wrong people, and grew up with all construct Jamaican society as a field of
those funny ideas. The Other one. social difference organized around the
What is the contradiction that gener- categories of race, color and ethnicity.
ates an ideological field of this kind? Is it Ideology here has the function of assign-
"the principal contradiction between ing a population into particular classifi-
capital and labor?" This signifying cations organized around these catego-
chain was clearly inaugurated at a spe- ries. In the articulation between the
cific historical moment—the moment of discourses of class and race-color-ethnic-
slavery. It is not eternal, or universal. It ity, (and the displacement effected
was the way in which sense was made of between them which this makes possi-
the insertion of the enslaved peoples of ble), the latter is constituted as the "dom-
the coastal kingdoms of West Africa into inant" discourse, the categories through
the social relations of forced labor pro- which the prevailing forms of conscious-
duction in the New World. Leave aside ness are generated, the terrain within
for a moment the vexed question of which men and women "move, acquire
whether the mode of production in slave consciousness of their position, struggle,
societies was "capitalist" or "pre-capi- etc." (Gramsci, 1971, p. 377), the sys-
talist" or an articulation of both within tems of representation through which the
the global market. In the early stages of people "live the imaginary relation to
development, for all practical purposes, their real conditions of existence"
the racial and the class systems over- (Althusser, 1965/1969, p. 233). This
lapped. They were "systems of equiva- analysis is not an academic one, valuable
lence." Racial and ethnic categories con- only for its theoretical and analytic dis-
tinue today to be the forms in which the tinctions. The overdetermination of class
structures of domination and exploita- and race has the most profound conse-
tion are "lived." In that sense, these quences—some of them highly contra-
111
CSMC HALL
dictory—for the politics of Jamaica, and is a way of representing how the peoples
of Jamaican blacks everywhere. of a distinctive ethnic character were first
It is possible, then, to examine the inserted into the social relations of pro-
field of social relations, in Jamaica and duction. But of course, that chain of
in Britain, in terms of an interdiscursive connotations is not the only one. An
field generated by at least three different entirely different one is generated within
contradictions (class, race, gender), each the powerful religious discourses which
of which has a different history, a dif- have so raked the Caribbean: the associa-
ferent mode of operation; each divides tion of Light with God and the spirit,
and classifies the world in different and of Dark or "blackness" with Hell,
ways. Then it would be necessary, in any the Devil, sin and damnation. When I
specific social formation, to analyze the was a child and I was taken to church by
way in which class, race and gender are one of my grandmothers, I thought the
articulated with one another to establish black minister's appeal to the Almighty,
particular condensed social positions. "Lord, lighten our darkness," was a
Social positions, we may say, are here quite specific request for a bit of personal
subject to a "double articulation." They divine assistance.
are by definition over-determined. To

look at the overlap or "unity" (fusion)
between them, that is to say, the ways in IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE
which they connote or summon up one It is important to look at the semantic
another in articulating differences in the field within which any particular ideo-
ideological field, does not obviate the logical chain signifies. Marx reminds us
particular effects which each structure that the ideas of the past weigh like a
has. We can think of political situations nightmare on the brains of the living.
in which alliances could be drawn in The moment of historical formation is
very different ways, depending on which critical for any semantic field. These
of the different articulations in play semantic zones take shape at particular
became at that time dominant ones. historical periods: for example, the for-
Now let us think about this term, mation of bourgeois individualism in the
"black" within a particular semantic 17th and 18th centuries in England.
field or ideological formation rather than They leave the traces of their connec-
as a single term: within its chain of tions, long after the social relations to
connotations. I give just two examples. which they referred have disappeared.
The first is the chain—black-lazy, spite- These traces can be re-activated at a later
ful, artful, etc., which flows from the stage, even when the discourses have
identification of /black/ at a very spe- fragmented as coherent or organic ide-
cific historical moment: the era of slav- ologies. Common sense thinking contains
ery. This reminds us that, though the what Gramsci called the traces of ideol-
distinction "black/white" that is articu- ogy "without an inventory." Consider,
lated by this particular chain, is not for example, the trace of religious think-
given simply by the capital-labor contra- ing in a world which believes itself to be
diction, the social relations characteristic secular and which, therefore, invests
of that specific historical moment are its "the sacred" in secular ideas. Although
referent in this particular discursive for- the logic of the religious interpretation of
mation. In the West Indian case, terms has been broken, the religious
"black," with this connotative resonance, repertoire continues to trail through his-
112
tory, usable in a variety of new historical in the later 1960s and 1970s, when for
contexts, reinforcing and underpinning the first time the people acknowledged
more apparently "modern" ideas. and accepted their African-slave-black
In this context, we can locate the heritage, and the fulcrum or center of
possibility for ideological struggle. A gravity of the society shifted to "the
particular ideological chain becomes a roots," to the life and common experi-
site of struggle, not only when people try ence of the black urban and rural under-
to displace, rupture or contest it by sup- classes as representing the cultural
planting it with some wholly new alter- essence of "Jamaican-ness" (this is the
native set of terms, but also when they moment of political radicalization, of
interrupt the ideological field and try to mass mobilization, of solidarity with
transform its meaning by changing or black struggles for liberation elsewhere,
re-articulating its associations, for exam- of "soul brothers" and "Soul," as well as
ple, from the negative to the positive. of reggae, Bob Marley and Rastafarian-
Often, ideological struggle actually con- ism), "black" became reconstituted as its
sists of attempting to win some new set of opposite. It became the site for the con-
meanings for an existing term or catego- struction of "unity," of the positive rec-
ry, of dis-articulating it from its place in ognition of "the black experience": the
a signifying structure. For example, it is moment of the constitution of a new
precisely because "black" is the term collective subject—the "struggling black
which connotes the most despised, the masses." This transformation in the
dispossessed, the unenlightened, the meaning, position and reference of
uncivilized, the uncultivated, the sche- "black" did not follow and reflect the
ming, the incompetent, that it can be black cultural revolution in Jamaica in
contested, transformed and invested with that period. It was one of the ways in
a positive ideological value. The concept which those new subjects were consti-
"black" is not the exclusive property of tuted. The people—the concrete individ-
any particular social group or any single uals—had always been there. But as
discourse. To use the terminology of subjects-in-struggle for a new epoch in
Laclau (1977) and Laclau and Mouffe history, they appeared for the first time.
(1984), the term, despite its powerful Ideology, through an ancient category,
resonances, has no necessary "class was constitutive of their oppositional for-
belongingness." It has been deeply mation.
inserted in the past into the discourses of So the word itself has no spécifie class
racial distinction and abuse. It was, for connotation, though it does have a long
long, apparently chained into place in and not easily dismantled history. As
the discourses and practices of social and social movements develop a struggle
economic exploitation. In the period of around a particular program, meanings
Jamaican history when the national which appear to have been fixed in place
bourgeoisie wished to make common forever begin to loose their moorings. In
cause with the masses in the fight for short, the meaning of the concept has
formal political independence from the shifted as a result of the struggle around
colonizing power—a fight in which the the chains of connotations and the social
local bourgeoisie, not the masses, practices which made racism possible
emerged as the leading social force— through the negative construction of
"black" was a sort of disguise. In the "blacks." By invading the heartland of
cultural revolution which swept Jamaica the negative definition, the black move-
113
CSMC HALL
ment has attempted to snatch the fire of and social struggle. It is not free or
the term itself. Because "black" once independent of determinations. But it is
signified everything that was least to be not reducible to the simple determinacy
respected, it can now be affirmed as of any of the other levels of the social
"beautiful," the basis of our positive formations in which the distinction
social identity, which requires and between black and white has become
engenders respect amongst us. "Black," politically pertinent and through which
then, exists ideologically only in relation that whole "unconsciousness" of race has
to the contestation around those chains of been articulated. This process has real
meaning, and the social forces involved consequences and effects on how the
in that contestation. whole social formation reproduces itself,
I could have taken any key concept, ideologically. The effect of the struggle
category or image around which groups over "black," if it becomes strong
have organized and mobilized, around enough, is that it stops the society repro-
which emergent social practices have ducing itself functionally, in that old
developed. But I wanted to take a term way. Social reproduction itself becomes a
which has a profound resonance for a contested process.
whole society, one around which the C o n t r a r y to the emphasis of

whole direction of social struggle and Althusser's argument, ideology does not
political movement has changed in the therefore only have the function of "re-
history of our own life times. I wanted producing the social relations of produc-
thereby to suggest that thinking that tion." Ideology also sets limits to the
term in a nonreductionist way within the degree to which a society-in-dominance
theory of ideology opens the field to more can easily, smoothly and functionally
than an idealistic exchange of "good" or reproduce itself. The notion that the
"bad" meanings; or a struggle which ideologies are always-already inscribed
takes place only in discourse; and one does not allow us to think adequately
which is fixed permanently and forever about the shifts of accentuation in lan-
by the way in which particular uncon- guage and ideology, which is a constant,
scious processes are resolved in infancy. unending process—what Volosinov
The field of the ideological has its own (1930/1973) called the "multiaccentual-
mechanisms; it is a "relatively autono- ity of the ideological sign" or the "class
mous" field of constitution, regulation struggle in language." D
NOTES
1
The general term, "discourse theory," refers to a number of related, recent, theoretical developments
in linguistics and semiotics, and psychoanalytic theory, which followed the "break" made by
structuralist theory in the 1970s, with the work of Barthes and Althusser. Some examples in Britain
would be recent work on film and discourse in Screen, critical and theoretical writing influenced by
Lacan and Foucault, and post-Derrida deconstructionism. In the U.S., many of these trends would now
be referred to under the title of "post-modernism."
2
By the term, "articulation," I mean a connection or link which is not necessarily given in all cases, as
a law or a fact of life, but which requires particular conditions of existence to appear at all, which has to
be positively sustained by specific processes, which is not "eternal" but has constantly to be renewed,
which can under some circumstances disappear or be overthrown, leading to the old linkages being
dissolved and new connections—re-articulations—being forged. It is also important that an articulation
between different practices does not mean that they become identical or that the one is dissolved into the
114
other. Each retains its distinct determinations and conditions of existence. However, once an
articulation is made, the two practices can function together, not as an "immediate identity" (in the
language of Marx's "1857 Introduction") but as "distinctions within a unity."
3
This idea is explicated in chapter 3 of Cultural Studies (Hall, forthcoming).
4
This is the subject of chapter 5 of Cultural Studies (Hall, forthcoming).
5
In Lacan (1966/1977), the "Imaginary" signals a relationship of plenitude to the image. It is
opposed to the "Real" and the "Symbolic."
REFERENCES
Althusser, L. (1969). For Marx (B. Brewster, Trans.). London: Penguin Press. (Original work
published 1965)
Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays (B. Brewster, Trans.). London: New Left.
(Original work published 1970)
Althusser, L., & Balibar, E. (1970). Reading Capital (B. Brewster, Trans.). London: New Left.
Derrida, J. (1977). Of grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977. (C.
Gordon, Ed.), (C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, & K. Soper, Trans.). New York: Pantheon.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell-Smith, Trans.). New
York: International.
Hall, S. (forthcoming). With J. Slack, & L. Grossberg. Cultural Studies. London: Macmillan.
Hall, S. (1974). Marx's notes on method: A 'reading' of the '1857 Introduction.' Working Papers in
Cultural Studies, 6, 132-170.
Lacan, J. (1977). Ecrits: A selection. (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: International. (Original work
published 1966)
Laclau, E. (1977). Politics and ideology in Marxist theory. London: New Left.
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist strategy. London: New Left.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1972). Structural anthropology. (C. Jacobson & B. G. Schoepf, Trans.). London:
Penguin. (Original work published 1958)
Marx, K. (1963). Early writings. (T. B. Bottomore, Trans.). London: C. A. Watts.
Marx, K. (1970). Capital (Vol. 3). London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Marx, K. (1973). Grundrisse. (M. Nicholaus, Trans.). London: Penguin. (Original work published
1953)
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1970). The German ideology. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Poulantzas, N. (1975). Political power and social classes (T. O'Hagan, Trans.). London: New Left.
Thompson, E. P. (1978). The poverty of theory and other essays. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Volosinov, V. N. (1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language. (L. Matejka & I. R. Tutunik,
Trans.). New York: Seminar. (Original work published 1930)

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Critical Studies in Mass Communication

Signification, representation, ideology: Althusser and the post‐structuralist debates

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Signification, Representation, Ideology:

— This essay attempts to assess with classical Marxist formulations of

LTHUSSER persuaded me, and I spondence between practices, are neither

Critical Studies in Mass Communication Copyright 1985, SCA

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

Another general advance which neglected epistemological propositions,

marxists who conceive the State as a kind Hence we have to characterize

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

conscious "unity in action," in a class cisely because it is not guaranteed by

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

reproduced. Nevertheless, we need both their appointed political places, as

ate, as a result, those historical breaks or These now appear to me to be the

cism is the notion of "false conscious-

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

Knowledge, whether ideological or duction themselves but outside of them.

indeed of the mode of production itself. The second influential proposition in

capitalist mode of production. At this thinking and calculation about the

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

deconstruct language and behavior in main with Althusser's nomenclature.

explaining. And that is why, when similar in its mode of argumentation to

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

accounted for. How do concrete individ- rate compartments, a fatal dislocation

ject—the I of ideological statements—is conditions of enunciation in a particular

be made. Long before he had arrived at particular sites and apparatuses—like

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

other commodities. Those people who plex interplay of different ideological

tems of representation disappears and Althusser commits himself to the notion

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

tation are essentially founded on uncon- subsequent ideological discourses. It is

the words to the song, "Rule Brittania" existence to h u m a n e x i s t e n c e "

way of beginning to think about ideolo-

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

about particular ideological formations. great weight to these finely-graded clas-

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

ally become what I was first nominated: historically. Nor is it "determined" by a

are by definition over-determined. To

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

whole society, one around which the C o n t r a r y to the emphasis of

ALTHUSSER AND POST-STRUCTURALIST DEBATES JUNE 1985

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