A Note on ISA

❖ The ISA is Althusser’s contribution to existing Marxist analysis of State power that

explains the reproduction of social relations—the original intent of the essay.

Althusser argues that the existing Marxist theories of state power are insufficient in
explaining the role of the state as they cannot move beyond violence—the RSA.
Instead, Althusser argues that state power—which is fundamental to the reproduction
of social relations—doesn’t merely work through violence, but also through ideology.
Althusser argues that the ISA or Ideological State Apparatus forms a crucial
component of state power that explains how people are interpellated within
ideological practices. This explains why people accept their lot in life as they are.
Althusser maps each of the three terms, ideology, interpellation and practice while
drawing upon Marx and other philosophers, both past and present, as well as on his
epistemological and empirical understanding of society and history. Ideology is not
“true knowledge” as Althusser defines it is a set of empty images which when
mobilized within practices aids the “distortion” and “misrepresentation” of reality.
True knowledge is the forte of science.

Biographical:

● Louis Althusser (1910-1990) is regarded as an influential post-war Marxist thinker

whose claims were intensely debated in the 1970s and 1980s and his contribution
to Marxism occurred at the very time when the French Communist Party was
undergoing a crisis, post Stalinism. Through the 60s, he published seminar works
and his essay on the ISA appeared in a volume Lenin and Philosophy and other
Essays (1970).
● Althusser’s return to Marx happened via Lacan (Freud, naturally), Spinoza and the
French tradition of historical epistemology. From the 17 th century Dutch thinker,
Althusser drew upon the understanding that texts and authors are products of their
times and that there are two components which one should distinguish: the
ideological from the philosophical. In Theological Political-Treatise, Spinoza had
done just that through a materialist reading of the Bible: differentiated the
temporal/ideological commands of prophets from that of the ‘true word’ of God.
Althusser similarly attempted to differentiate the ideological from the
philosophical in Marx. Althusser believed that early Marx, pre-1845, was
ideological, whilst the later Marx was philosophical. True knowledge is not
ideological, according to Althusser; it is scientific.
 ● From Lacan, via Freud, Althusser borrowed the theory of the three-fold formation
of the ego: the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic. Althusser drew upon the
Lacanian Imaginary to explain the function of ideology.

Analysis

❖ In the present essay, Althusser separates ideology from false consciousness, a

common Marxist analysis for explaining the dominance of the ruling class.
Instead, Althusser draws upon the etymological definition of ideology
followed by Marx: 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”.
❖ Althusser examines the practices of ideology as he reminds that “ideology
always exists in an apparatus”—in institutional practices and that such
practices are always material. So, ideologies are never found outside practice.
He says that the 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. It is important to remember that Althusser argues for the
role of state power through the Ideological State Apparatus, through the
practices of those institutions which function on behalf of the state but in the
non-public spheres.
❖ Althusser explains, via Lacan, that ideology is a ‘representation’ (an imaginary
construct) of the relationship that individuals have to their material conditions
of reality (their reality).
❖ The imaginary relation between ideology and individual is held together by
two additional terms: subject and interpellation. Althusser argues that
interpellation is the transformative verb—the action that transforms/converts
an individual into a subject in ideology. 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
real.
Conclusion:
Althusser argues that it is the function of ideology to constitute individuals into subjects
through interpellation which, in turn, misrepresents their real social relations as real. 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.