Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

Introduction

Althusser published the essay in June 1970 in the journal La Pensée, presenting it as notes towards an investigation; it was an extract from a longer manuscript on the reproduction of social relations, published in full only in 1995. Every society must reproduce the conditions of its production. Alongside the “repressive” state apparatus of police, courts and army, the “ideological state apparatuses” – family, church, media and above all school – ensure this reproduction. Ideology, he writes, has no history; it represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. The essay influenced film theory, Stuart Hall’s cultural studies and Judith Butler’s theory of subjection.

Connections

Builds on

• Écrits1966 · Jacques Lacan

Answered in

• The Sublime Object of Ideology1989 · Slavoj Žižek

More works by Louis Althusser

• 1965For Marx